How Super Castlevania IV is the perfect Halloween accompaniment
Super Castlevania IV (1992)
Super Castlevania IV (1992)
You and I most probably have a rather different idea of what Halloween is all about. You may see it as an opportunity to have fun in fancy dress, maybe admire other people’s costumes, and sit inside watching Hocus Pocus and a few more Halloween films besides.
You can even score a whole shopping bag worth of sweets for your child, or more likely yourself, having knocked on fifty different houses that night, sometimes twice - parents, I’m on to you.
For me however, Halloween signifies booze, dodging thrown fireworks, and doing one's very best to avoid getting stuck answering the door to all manner of infernal children. And in between all of this, you may or may not even get the time to work on your own costume.
Let me deal with these Halloween mainstays in turn. First and foremost, the booze. You may find that there is that certain atmosphere around Halloween, a sort of free licence to go crazy. The police and emergency services are probably having an almighty royal rumble at some bonfire elsewhere, so for this night only, you’re pretty much living in a lawless society.
This is ideal because drinking cans while observing a bonfire is pretty much the lowest class thing you could possibly do, apart from having a ringtone on your phone, and it pays to cut loose and leave our dignity at home every once in a while. Thrillingly, once you’ve finished your can, you can toss it at the daredevil youth currently running and jumping through the bonfire in their bid to impress all the onlookers.
Next, the fireworks. Noted arsonists of Dublin used to have to “go up north” to get bangers and fireworks in, and there was a time when the whole place would resemble Damascus on a bad Friday - you’re talking rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat every second, live bangers lying about the place like unexploded bombs from World War II, and your pets just hated the whole month.
The best was when you’d be in school - invariably bins would be torn to pieces by alarmingly strong fireworks. But you didn’t even have time to lament over such petty vandalism because if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Then watch out, there’s a screamer nearly on you.
Can you duck fast enough? Or will you be spitting out gunpowder and shrapnel for days, your eyebrows completely singed? It was a gauntlet every single day, and secretly I loved it. I should say that I never did get tagged by enemy fireworks, which is why even at my age I'm still able to remember it as cool and hilarious, rather than cursing the terrible bottom feeders who nailed me.
Then there’s the children who come begging for chocolate, and maybe Robux. I always try to be out of the house at this time of course, loath as I am to deal with any children. But some years you might get two or three kids, then other years you’ll get three classrooms full of them. What’s all that about?
The best is when you see parents actually pull up in their cars before methodically hitting all the houses in sight, the cheeky snakes. They use maps, checklists, night-vision goggles, hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, the lot. I’ve seen them at it.
So eventually you just designate a time where all the lights must go off and nobody answers the door anymore, under any circumstances. You might risk your house taking an egging, but at least you’ll have a healthy coffer of treatsize Mars Bars to rifle through the next day.
And finally, the costumes. Well, I’ve seen 7-year-old Stormtroopers and Frankensteins come to my door with outfits that would shame the top cosplayers. This is a fairly far cry from my go-to costume as a young lad, which was a plastic-and-elastic Darth Vader mask. I think I sometimes brought my green Return of the Jedi lightsaber along as well, just for additional wrong points. And completing my ensemble was that Irish classic - a black sack.
Every costume back then was a black sack or a white sheet. What, were parents just complacent or something because nobody had cameras? I must have looked dreadful, but I was obviously no worse than the other children in my area. Actually, one lad used to dress up as a donkey. So next to I, the exalted Lord Vader, he looked pretty shocking.
Now that I’ve got more money, and more accurately now that the cameras are on me, you’d think I’d make more of an effort with my costumes. I always have these lofty ideas of putting together a full Bane or Joker outfit or something. Really blow everyone's socks off.
But then I balk at the price, shudder, and I put on last year’s effort instead. Sometimes I like to dream up something different, and sometimes I ask someone far more creative than I to run me up a bit of facepaint. But really, what I’m lacking in is ideas.
Good thing Super Castlevania IV is here to pump some creative juices right into me. Me and Castlevania historically never got along, although I would have to temper that by saying that Symphony of the Night is one of the greatest games ever made. Dawn of Sorrow for DS was good gas as well.
But those are Metroidvanias. We’re here to talk about the rough-and-ready, your-whip-and-your-wits kind of action platformer, and I wasn’t much amused by Super Castlevania IV when I first played it. I was thinking, God, does this lad move slow or what?
And he just can’t wait to die – jump off the wrong set of stairs and you’re dead, and Jesus save you on the vertically scrolling levels. As most people know, getting hit by an enemy or a hazard in Castlevania knocks you back, whether they're a hulking Gorgon beast or a squishy little frog. 95% of the time, this will see you falling ass-backwards into yet another bottomless pit - or better, a nice bed of spikes.
The music in this game was weird at first too, this attention-seeking 16-bit organ blared out over a lot of the pieces. Finally, the graphics were nice but not exceptional. All in all, I couldn’t see why somebody would play this over Mario.
But the more I played, the more I learned and the more I was inspired. The daunting difficulty was pretty well tempered by the fact that you have infinite continues, you can whip in 8-directions and you can use the Cross subweapon to basically destroy anything.
I was still dying for fun of course, but seasoned Castlevania wags sometimes criticise this game for being too easy in comparison to the rest of the series. Is it really?! To me, it still seems like quite a lot to handle, and I'm often to be found clenching my teeth when I lose all my lives late on in a level and I have to start it all over again.
Slowly, the dark and foreboding atmosphere of the game began to win me over, I appreciated the immersive soundtrack more, and I realised that all of the Halloween and horror elements were presented in a great way - I took down Medusa, Frankenstein (ah, Frankenstein’s monster), a mummy, a giant bat, two ghostly dancers called Fred Ascare and Paula Abghoul (that’s the God’s honest), a golem, the Grim Reaper… and finally, Dracula himself.
Super Castlevania IV is a game so slow-burning, you might not realise you’re enjoying it until after it’s done. It might even take a hundred years, when the next Belmont comes along, before you appreciate this game. A tough but rewarding experience, it’s a true game for Halloween. It’ll have you popping and hissing like a firework, gibbering like a child on candy; it may even turn you to drink.
But when you’re all done with it, and you’re viewing that wonderful credits sequence with its nostalgic music, it’s just as nice and warm as kicking back on November 1st with a humongous bag full of Refresher bars and Drumstick lollies.
31 October 2023