Castlevania: The Adventure

Whenever I play games, new or old, I try really hard to focus on the positives, and not blow negative aspects entirely out of proportion. It may make for a popular video online, but I find it to be a very tiring way of playing games. That said, there are some games that really do make it hard, and Castlevania: The Adventure is one such game. I'll get the negatives out of the way up front: the game is quite slow, even by the usual standards of the series. Christopher Belmont plods along, encountering equally slow moving enemies, and dealing with them using a slow moving whip. It certainly doesn't feel great, but if you can get used to that, the rest of the game isn't so bad.

It's definitely different from other Castlevania games in terms of art and level design, which speaks to it's launch less than six months after the Game Boy itself. Some of the enemies feel kinda odd (giant rolling eyeballs?), but for the most part the game does a decent job translating classic Castlevania enemies to a brand new handheld. The game also carries on the Castlevania tradition of having a great soundtrack, especially within the limitations of the original Game Boy (Battle of the Holy and Revenge are two of my favorites).

Overall, I certainly don't think this game deserves the hate it gets online. I have heard of a patch that is supposed to speed up the movement, along with a couple other quality of life fixes, but I haven't tried it yet, so I may update this page once I've tried it. There is also a re-released version that featured an officially colorized version of the game, which I've also not tried yet. There are two versions of the colorization, one made for the Super Game Boy in 1997 and released in Japan, and another made for Game Boy Color and released in 2000 in Europe. Even in it's original form though, I think this is a fun but imperfect game that, while definitely improved upon by it's sequels, is still worth a play today.