One thing we’ve lost somewhat over the procession of console generations we’ve lived through is a feeling of “uniqueness” for each platform, and Super Castlevania IV brings that very much into focus.
Sure, Nintendo still does its own thing with the Switch and its games are immediately recognisable, but I’m talking more about a very clear look, sound and feel of games on a specific platform; partially a product of the hardware itself, and partially that of the companies specifically choosing to produce work for that platform in particular.
I hadn’t really spent a lot of time with Super Castlevania IV for Super NES until relatively recently, but within about five minutes of delving into it in earnest thanks to the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for Switch, Xbox One, PS4 and PC, I’m absolutely convinced that it is the perfect example of what a SNES game really “is”.
There are a number of aspects to this. Firstly and most obviously are the presentational aspects. The SNES had a larger colour palette than its contemporary, the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, meaning that SNES titles often prided themselves on being packed with subtle details made possible by the wider range of possible on-screen colours at once.
This is very much in evidence throughout Super Castlevania IV, with its parallaxing backgrounds giving a wonderful sense of time and place to the locales through which you trudge on your way to give Dracula a good whipping. And this isn’t even touching on its use of the SNES’ “Mode 7” scaling and rotation capabilities to create some truly distinctive situations!
Even more obvious than the graphical disparity between the Super NES and the Mega Drive is the difference in their sound chips. While the Mega Drive’s Yamaha YM2612 chip produces clear, crisp FM synthesis with a very distinctive sound to it, the Super NES’ custom Nintendo S-SMP sound module, meanwhile, makes use of a system called wavetable synthesis, which is capable of using actual instrument samples rather than synthesised waveform approximations.
The result is that SNES soundtracks often sound more “warm” and “full” than many Mega Drive soundtracks — though the tradeoff is that the heavy use of samples can sometimes result in a somewhat “muffled” sound compared to the clarity of Sega’s system.
As always, there are exceptions to both of the above characteristics — and before the more passionate Sega enthusiasts get angry, I’m not saying the Mega Drive is “worse”, because the best Mega Drive programmers are masters of getting the most out of that hardware! We’re specifically concerned with Super Castlevania IV here, and these descriptions very much hold true, which is a big part of why I feel like Super Castlevania IV is one of the most representative examples of a SNES game out there.
Along with the technical specifications of the hardware producing the music, the actual compositional techniques used tend to vary between Mega Drive and SNES music, too. While the SNES certainly isn’t short of bouncy, jolly, happy tunes in Nintendo’s more colourful titles such as Mario and Kirby, that wavetable sound chip is ideal for producing more atmospheric soundscapes than had been possible on earlier audio hardware.
Many people will point to Kenji Yamamoto’s seminal work on Super Metroid as a prime example of this, but Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo’s Super Castlevania IV soundtrack predates it by a good three years, de-emphasising the usual “melodic hook” approach to video game composition in favour of rich, thick harmonies, contrasting instrument timbres and a distinct sense of audible personality to each area you visit.
Not only that, hints of inspiration from Adachi and Kudo’s work can be heard in many later SNES games — Nobuo Uematsu’s 1994 soundtrack for Final Fantasy VI makes heavy use of a similar upright bass sample to that heard in Super Castlevania IV’s music, for example, and both use this to contribute to a somewhat “atmospheric jazz” feel in certain parts of their respective games.
This style of music is very much an iconic part of the SNES’ audible identity, blending feelings of both nostalgia and modernity.
There are more subtle aspects of Super Castlevania IV that very much make it feel like the quintessential SNES game, too. Most notably, the first stage acts as an interactive tutorial without ever saying a word to the player; instead, the nature of its design gradually introduces various mechanics and possibilities and invites the player to determine the most effective way to tackle various situations.
Probably the best example of this is the sequence where you enter the stables. The first candle in the area provides you with the holy water item, and the Viper Swarm enemies you encounter immediately afterward drop from the ceiling and then slowly creep across the floor below the normal level of your whip attacks. This, naturally, makes them ideal holy water fodder, since this item works by you throwing it in a low arc in front of you, then it burning for a few seconds.
It doesn’t stop there, though; after dealing with a few Viper Swarms, you’re subsequently confronted by the “Mr. Hed” severed horse-head enemies, which remain dormant on the floor until you approach. If you anticipate their quick movement towards you, you can toss down a holy water and they will slide right into it before they get anywhere near you; fail to do so, however, and they’ll take flight after a while.
In fact, even if you successfully deal with the first couple of Mr. Heds immediately, the last one starts on the ceiling and thus immediately takes to the skies, educating the player as to what to expect from this enemy even if they never reached that particular mechanic through their own incompetence or inaction.
This approach to “learn through doing” is very Nintendo; Super Castlevania IV is a Konami game, obviously, but at the time it was released, this was still a franchise that was heavily associated with Nintendo platforms so it made a lot of sense for the team behind it to follow Nintendo’s design principles. Those playing on the SNES would have come to expect them by this point, after all, especially as one of the most “Nintendo” games of all time — Super Mario World — was a pack-in game for many system bundles.
One might think that a stereotypical “Nintendo fan” might not be ready for the stiff challenge that Super Castlevania IV offers, what with Nintendo’s output often being regarded as “family-friendly” or aimed specifically at children these days. But remember that the term “Nintendo Hard” is a thing for a reason, and Super Castlevania IV certainly doesn’t disappoint in that regard.
In fact, the difficulty factor of Super Castlevania IV got me thinking about a few things. Specifically, it’s got me thinking about whether or not the concept of playing a game in the “correct” way really exists — and if that’s the same thing as experiencing the game in the same manner and the same context as its original release. This is a question that is particularly relevant to modern rereleases of retro titles such as Super Castlevania IV, so let’s ponder it together!
Early-era Castlevania games are hard. We’ve previously talked about how the NES-era Castlevania titles in particular began a trend of deliberately paced, technical action games that can be traced pretty much directly forward to From Software’s popular Souls games and their numerous imitators.
But it’s not just about how the individual challenges you come up against in Castlevania games are difficult. No, it’s also about the overall game structure — and how it makes use of old-school arcade game-style conventions despite not actually being an arcade game. (Well, yes, Vampire Killer, I know, but the less said about that the better.)
For those unfamiliar with the pre-Symphony of the Night installments in the Castlevania series — Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest excluded — they unfold in a mostly linear fashion. You proceed through a series of numbered “blocks”, each of which are divided into substages, and there is a boss fight at some point in each block — usually, but not always, at the end.
There are occasional wrinkles in this formula — most notably Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse offering a choice of two routes at several points — but for the most part, this is how the original Castlevania, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and Super Castlevania IV are all structured.
Lose all your health or fall off the bottom of the screen and you lose a life as well as being sent back to the start of the substage you’re on — even if you’re several “screens” into it. Lose all your lives and, should you choose to continue, you’ll restart from the beginning of the block. It is possible to obtain extra lives by scoring 20,000 points (and every 50,000 points thereafter) or through collecting special items — though the latter are few and far between.
This was a pretty standard structure for games in the 8-bit era in particular, and up to partway through the 16-bit era. They both have their roots in arcade culture: score is a means of comparing your performance against other people and engaging in some friendly competition, while lives are a means of controlling the length of a single player’s stay at the machine on a single coin.
In Super Castlevania IV, they have a slightly different purpose, however. Score is pretty much only relevant for the aforementioned score-based extra life bonuses, since there’s no high score table or competitive multiplayer mode, while lives are less a means of controlling how long you play the game for, and more a means of encouraging you to practice and get better.
The implementation of a fail state in Super Castlevania IV is seemingly designed to be inconvenient and annoying — particularly if you lose your last life, continue and go all the way back to the beginning of a block. But the actual thinking behind it is a bit more clever: when engaged with as originally designed, this game structure means that you’ll end up practicing, learning, memorising and mastering the parts you have difficulty with until you can sail past them with ease.
I’ve found this from my own personal experience. Rather than writing down passwords to start at later stages, I’ve started the game from the beginning each time, and each time I play, I find myself remembering more than the last time I went through it. On top of that, in most play sessions I find myself getting a little further than I did last time; I’m showing a gradual improvement in both overall competence at the game and knowledge of what its various stages confront me with. I’m still nowhere close to beating it in this way, mind, but I’m having a good time trying.
Herein lies a question for modern retro enthusiasts, though: although this is the way the game was originally designed to be experienced, is it the “best” way to do so? Is it the “right” way to play? Or does it make more sense for modern players to make use of tools that SNES-era gamers didn’t have access to — most notably save states?
There’s been a lot of discourse surrounding this issue online in the last few years, mostly relating to whether or not games “should” have an “Easy” mode available. And there isn’t really a straightforward answer, as passionate as some people get about this matter one way or the other.
The fact is, different people play games for different reasons. I’m enjoying playing Super Castlevania IV for the challenge factor; I appreciate the game design, and the structure of the game in its original form is proving to be pleasingly satisfying, as I can feel myself getting better at it each time I play. As such, I’m not using save states at all and, as previously mentioned, when I sit down with the game for a new session, I play from the start rather than using a password or save file.
But not everyone feels that way. Someone who simply wants to appreciate or explore Super Castlevania IV for its aesthetic qualities would doubtless approach the game in a very different way. It is, after all, as we’ve already discussed, the quintessential SNES game and is thus well worth studying — but the traditional game structure would somewhat get in the way of being able to do this. There’s no reason why someone who wishes to enjoy the game in this way shouldn’t be able to make use of tools such as save states, difficulty adjustments and even cheat codes to delve into the aspects of the experience that are particularly important to them.
In other words, there’s no real “right” way to play most games — even seemingly rigidly structured ones such as Super Castlevania IV. And the great thing about many of these titles being resurrected for a modern audience with today’s gaming technology is that now a broader range of people can experience them in the ways that they really want to; the choice is there. And it’s always better to have more choice in how you approach something than no choice whatsoever!
Me, I’m going to keep banging my head against the game’s challenges and see if I can beat it in the way it was designed to be beaten back in 1991 — but if you want to save-state your way through in order to say that you’ve seen all of it, I’m certainly not going to stand in your way, and I definitely don’t think any less of you!
