Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest – Retro Reflections

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest by developer and publisher Konami—Nintendo Entertainment System Retro Reflections by Nick.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

The second entry into the Castlevania series is a weird one to discuss for the winter holidays, but there is a bit of a logical trail here. I’ve been poking at the Castlevania Collection a little of late, having beaten the first game (which I wrote about very briefly with a video in this Retro Reflection back in 2011), I figured I'd share the story about why I think of its sequel around this time of the year. Especially since I'm now playing it as part of this collection once again, and still enjoying my time with it.

This is an interesting title for me, because it’s without a doubt one of my favorite, most memorable NES games. For one, the music was fantastic in the day. Bloody Tears is a popular video game song until this day, having been covered and remastered a million ways to Sunday by now. In fact, this song alone had me *this close* to presenting Simon’s Quest for our October Memorable Music themed around horror.

Simon’s Quest was also quite a departure from the original Castlevania, but it somehow felt bigger and more adventurous for a video game released in 1987. While the first and third games in the series were strictly action platformers, there were exploration and RPG elements with a handful of different endings sprinkled into Simon’s Quest. It tried to tell an actual story, you could collect currency for purchasing items and upgrades, and there was even a day / night cycle that turned peaceful towns into dangerous places filled with monsters roaming the streets. It was also very non-linear, setting the stage for the future hit Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997. While Symphony of the Night is often credited for the ‘vania’ part of the Metroidvania genre nickname, I think Simon’s Quest was actually more appropriate member of the Castlevania family.

There were numerous secrets to uncover while playing – probably too many secrets. In the NES era, a lot of video games suffered from being too cryptic, and that was certainly the case with Simon’s Quest. The game had some challenging action and platforming elements, but it had a lot of hidden surprises as well. Places you could whip random blocks to uncover items, or illusionary floors that could cause you to fall. Some of it you could learn to handle by just whipping every wall that looked slightly off, or walking through one of the boss stages tossing holy waters out in front of you in order to see if they fall through the floor or not. Those were frustrating to be sure, but Simon’s Quest is also notorious for some of it’s incredibly vague puzzles. One in particular involves kneeling at an impassible cliff with a specific item for a few seconds and just waiting for a tornado to take you to a previously inaccessible area. There are numerous posts and videos about this topic (such as this Reddit thread here or courtesy of the Angry Video Game Nerd / AVGN, who basically launched his Cinemassacre platform off of his review of Simon’s Quest). 

The thing is? I didn’t care. Games were hard back then, and often unfair. And I had a subscription to Nintendo Power. It sounds silly I know, but man – that magazine helped me beat a ton of video games that might have otherwise stumped me as a kid, and this was definitely one of them. My uncle (the same one who had bought me my NES as a Christmas gift the year prior) had gotten me a subscription to Nintendo Power – starting with the 2nd issue. This one happened to feature Simon’s Quest – with a rather memorable cover, to say the least. Apparently, this frustrated quite a few parents with its depiction of Simon holding a decapitated Dracula's head in his hand. Who’d have guessed? I didn’t care. I thought it looked cool, and more importantly it was a very thorough walkthrough of the game, which I took the time to beat multiple times, so I could experience the different endings - which were quite short, and in retrospect probably not worth the effort. It’s the journey, not the destination, right?

I played it enough times that I found every item, beat the game with minimal upgrades and discovered well before there were YouTube videos about it, dropping a clove of garlic in front of the Grim Reaper and letting him die the slowest, most boring death possible. It was a horror adventure that I came back to time and again. However, I first played it… well, right around Christmas time. The game had been out for about a year before I actually bought it, and the aforementioned Nintendo Power was the September / October issue (it was what convinced me to buy the game). I didn’t really get to play it much right at first, but then Christmas break and it’s glorious two weeks off from school rolled around, and that’s when I really settled in with it. 

I still recall the odd timing quite fondly as I sat upstairs in the early afternoon, playing this video game as it was snowing outside and my mother was fiddling with Christmas decorations. The Christmas tree was about seven feet from the television. I like to think of it as a Christmas / Halloween mashup in my head years before The Nightmare Before Christmas Came out. 

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is a flawed masterpiece in my mind. It’s a game I went back to time and again, and it has a standout place in my video game memories. Its music, visuals and sense of adventure felt ahead of its time, even though I have to acknowledge that its cryptic, unfriendly nature was very much a product of its time as well. 

And that’s the story of how a horror video game reminds me of one of my stronger Christmastime video game retro reflections.