2832 The Angry Place.

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Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest came out when I was 12. (Which completely screws up my memory of when it came out, because I would swear to you I got Starscream and Jazz for my 12th birthday, but it must’ve actually been my 8th or 9th and I’ve just misremembered basically my entire life.) I probably got it that Xmas or on my birthday. It released in November, so probably Xmas. I have virtually no specific memories of the time around playing it, just a few of playing it and being frustrated by one particular part. It’s the only game I ever called Nintendo’s help service over. The game itself is not as difficult as people claim it is these days, but the translation of the in game clues make it basically impossible to complete without outside help. (C2 has one of the most notorious editing errors of the NES. When you obtain one of Dracula’s body parts it tells you “You now prosses Dracula’s rib.” or whatever part you just got.) Many of the in game hints are cryptic to the point of being almost useless. At some point I’m pretty sure I got the Nintendo Power issue that went over the most poorly presented ones but not before I got so frustrated I asked mom if I could call Nintendo over it. At the time that was a big deal because phone charges for something like that were expensive. Now you can just look it all up in a few seconds.
Anyway, I hadn’t played it in decades, but I randomly listened to a video walkthrough and got the urge to play it. I think you can beat it in under an hour if you’re good at avoiding damage and have a decent understanding of where things are already. Even after all these years I have a general recollection of the game’s map and all the important clue set to permanent memory. There are several optional items you don’t need at all if you know how to power up your whip to the maximum level. As far as weapons go you only really need Holy Water, & Sacred Flame. You technically don’t even need Sacred Flame, it’s just easy to get and you can beat 2 of the game’s 3 bosses easily by spamming it. The golden knife is good too, and easy enough to get, but you have to get all the other versions of it first and garlic to obtain it. It also stuns enemies, but doesn’t rise up as a wall of flame, so you have to actually aim it a little more than just throwing a handful of fire at things.
You technically only need to buy the strongest whip upgrade to get the flame whip, but the game is much harder if you try to get that far with just the basic whip. You can skip the first upgrade pretty easily though if you get the dagger and use it in tandem with the whip until you get the first upgrade.
You might be wondering why we need to be worrying about time at all in a game that clearly has RPG elements and encourages exploration. Well, that’s because Castlevania 2 commits the unforgivable sin of having it’s ending conditions bound to a timer.
If you’ll forgive me the tangent… If your game has a large map, filled with secrets, and encourages you to explore the entire thing, don’t tie the ending conditions to a timer. Metroid does the same thing and it’s one of my biggest gaming peeves. I want to noodle around at my own pace. In Castlevania there’s a set path that you never deviate from. Having a timer for it makes sense. There’s only one way to go, so go there. Castlevania 2 doesn’t even clearly tell you what order to do anything in. You have 7 in game days to complete all the mansions and re-kill Dracula to get the best ending. The timer pauses inside buildings, and I think when you use the item menu. I think it’s five minutes of daylight then 3 minutes of night in a cycle. Plus the first day starts at almost complete. You’ve got to move like a man on a mission and stopping to talk to all the random villagers just sucks your time away while not providing you with much useful information. And I get it, it’s a cheap tactic to get you to play the game multiple times. I don’t care, it’s annoying. Let me enjoy the game world you spent all that time creating.
One of the reasons I like Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom is that you can finish the game at basically any time you’re capable of reaching the final boss, but it never punishes you for wandering around. I think I’ve seen every fucking inch of that overworld map. I didn’t explore the sky and caves as much in TOTK, but I’ve seen all of the important bits. Those games give you better endings for doing more things, which makes more sense.
You can argue that the timer in C2 is meant to represent the urgency of Simon’s curse, and that’s fine, but I still think it’s fundamentally at odds with a game that wants you too look for secrets and is wildly obtuse.
The endings that you can get also don’t make a lot of sense based on the conditions to get them. It’s hard to tell for sure which ending is the “best” one. If you beat the game in under 7 in game days it implies that Simon dies anyway AND Dracula 100% rises from the grave. In the middle ending it outright says that Simon dies, but Dracula doesn’t rise from the grave in front of you. In the “Worst” ending Simon seems to live on to old age and the threat of Dracula is pushed back for some length of time. So it’s hard to tell what the best outcome is. The first two endings have more animated parts though, so that implies that they are “better” in some way. The thing is something may have been lost in translation that would clear up these issues, but we have what we have.
Long story short I played all the way through but missed the deadline for the “best” ending by about a day of in-game time. I got that ending on the NES ages ago, so I didn’t feel like I needed to delve back in. I played it on my Switch since they had a sale on one of the collections digitally at some point and I didn’t want to try and dig out my NES. It is quite possible that this was the last time I will ever play Castlevania 2. In spite of how it may sound I actually like the game a lot and spent a lot of time with it when it was new. The win conditions have always been what keep me from going back. Much like the Metroid series. I deal with deadlines all the time in my regular life, I don’t want to have them hanging over me in my down time.
I bought Metroid Dread and the Metroid 2 remake at launch and have never played then for more than a few minutes because I assume they both have timer conditions for the endings.
I can’t remember if Metroid Zero Mission had timer conditions, but I’m pretty sure I used a cheat device to reset the clock so it wouldn’t matter. That’s one of the many things I miss about old games. Being able to change the conditions to suit your tastes, while not screwing anyone else over, was nice.

Anyway it’s almost posting time. Ironically typing out this blog probably took about half as long as it did you complete Simon’s Quest. Ignoring the blog and playing the game again might have been a better use of my time. I’m not always sure the blog is much of a value add for the comic, since it’s more like a personal journal than something expressly connected to the comic other than both of them coming from me.

In any case I hope the middle of the week treats you well and hope to see you here on Friday. Until then, it’s a horrible night to have a curse.