I’ve really liked most of the games in the Castlevania series, with the odd exception. So when I found out that the series was making its way to the Game Boy, my then pet gaming system, I immediately wanted it. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually have anything resembling an income at the time, so I had to wait until it made its way to my local used video game store, and then get it there for a pittance.
I don’t really know much about the story, other than Dracula has once again gone from being dead to not being dead, and you have to take the Belmont du jour to go and try to kill him again.
I’ve grown accustomed to Belmonts not being the most nimble folks in the world, but the Belmont in this game just seems, I don’t know, more plodding than most. He can barely run and jump, which is kind of a problem since there are several gigantic enemies that you have to try and avoid. And you’ll be able to, but only just, and only with pinpoint timing.
One of the things that’s kind of hard to convey in videos and screenshots is that the original GBA had a really smeary screen, which isn’t really that big of a problem until you have reasonably-detailed backgrounds like you do in this game. Then it becomes a big problem when you start to scroll the screen to the left and to the right and all of the backgrounds begin to blur so bad that they obscure absolutely everything on the screen, goodies, enemies, platforms, and everything. Then it gets real hard to figure out where you are, where the enemies are, and where the edges of bottomless pits are. Combine all three of those things and you have the makings of a fairly frustrating game. And, as a result of that, I never really made it much past stage 2 (out of 4!) before I decided to take it right back to the store I got it from.