Spent Cartridges #1: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Spent Cartridges is an ongoing (maybe) series of columns devoted to classic (or sometimes just old) video games. Join us as we explore the past and prance about in the clovered fields of nostalgia.

There are only two things is the world that I take completely seriously and regard with undying reverence. The first is the teachings passed down in the Wu Tang manual by the prophet RZA, and the second is a series of video games about killing Draculas.

I’m of course talking about the Castlevania series from Konami in which you take the role of various and sundry vampire hunters in a quest to finally rid the world of Vlad Tepes Dracula. The history of the series is actually quite complicated, and I’m sure I’m a big enough dork that I’ll explore it in more detail in future articles. Today, we’re just talking about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, originally released for the Playstation in 1997. Up until this point, the Castlevania games had stuck fairly closely to their formula by consistently being really good, and really hard, platformers with a flair for supplying terrific atmosphere and music.


Did I mention the English translation and voice acting sucks? It sucks.

Symphony of the Night was radically different from its predecessors though, largely in thanks to designer, Koji Igarashi, who would go on to be in charge of the whole franchise for 12 years and counting. Igarashi had always dreamed of directing a Castlevania game while developing Japanese dating sims for Konami and finally got his chance with SotN. Apparently he thought the Castlevanias of the past were limiting their audience and lasting appeal by being too linear and challenging. His solution was to open up the game world, loosen up the series’ traditionally stiff controls, and adding RPG elements, that made the game conquerable for even the least experienced action gamers.

Structurally, he basically ripped off Super Metroid, which when you think about it is a completely terrific thing to rip off. Everybody loves that game but nobody (at the time) really copied the formula, and even Nintendo waited a gajillion years to bother making another one. The basic idea of Symphony is that your progression through Dracula’s castle was limited by your character’s abilities, and as you became more powerful and retrieved new relics, new areas would become accessible to you. Can’t reach that passageway on the ceiling? Wait until you get the high jump power up, or learn how to transform into a bat. That kind of thing. It works well, and while there is an invisible guiding hand directing you down the “correct” path, you’re totally free to wander into whatever areas you want.

Having just recently finished SotN for the first time since it was still new, I’m happy to announce that it holds up extremely well. In fact, I’m amazed by how much stuff the younger me missed the first time around. Combining the shield rod item with a shield for example, can cause special effects and power ups to occur. That seems obvious now, but it’s things like this that make SotN considerably deeper than your usual platformer. Another thing I discovered that really surprised me was a reference to my favorite author Kurt Vonnegut. There’s a boss enemy in the game (named “Legion” in future games) that is a floating ball of brainless zombies. In SotN the creature is named “Granfaloon” which is a reference to Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle where he describes a granfaloon as "a proud and meaningless association of human beings." Naturally this intersection of my favorite things gave me a great big nerd boner.

Castlevania is a series that once had a reputation for being notoriously difficult, but with SotN things may have been taken a little too far in the other direction. If you spend time exploring beyond the required paths and looking for secrets (which you absolutely should do), you’ll naturally level up to the point that few areas will offer much of a challenge. The second castle (an inverted version of the first that opens up after you avoid the “bad” ending) is considerably more challenging, but still pretty easy compared to Castlevanias of old. Ultimately though, this lack of challenge didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the game much at all since it’s still such a deep experience.

I wasn’t going to say much about the story at all because despite being a lifelong fan of the series, the story to the Castlevania series is one of those simplistic, yet totally complicated clusterfucks that only seem to happen in Japanese video games. The basic idea is that Dracula comes back to life every hundred years to menace humanity, and uh…this is one of those times I guess. In this one you play as Alucard, son of Dracula (har har) who is totally rebellious and metrosexual and wants to kill his dad and fuck up his house. And I’m serious about the metrosexual thing. Alucard is consistently depicted as a very beautiful lady. SotN is a direct story sequel to the also totally excellent Rondo of Blood, so if you care about your video game vampire continuity, you should play that too I guess. Normal people however, can stick to the basics and not worry about it. If you’re weird or something though, feel free to check out sites like this. Nerd.

Symphony of the Night is one of those “secret” classic games that is well-renowned amongst gamers (dorks) but kind of unknown to more casual enthusiasts. If you’ve missed out somehow, this game is available pretty much everywhere these days. It’s available on PSN and XBLA for just ten bucks, or can be unlocked in the Dracula X Chronicles for PSP. OR you could go to Japan and buy a used copy of the janky Saturn version that never made it to the US. Whichever is most convenient.

(special shout outs to the works of Jeremy Parish and friends for inspiring this ludicrously nerdy column. If you like old nerd stuff their work is required reading. Him and his cohorts can be found at GameSpite and the Retronauts blog.)