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You can't really blame The Castlevania Adventure for being a bad game. After all, most of the GameBoy's '89 library was very timid of expressing its full potential due to its developers inability to yet fully understand the portable's capabilities. Heroes were tiny as ants and backgrounds blank or almost empty. There was an odd abundance of brick tiles everywhere, and an even odder lack of type font variety.
So even though the first portable instance of the series was initially received with decent reviews, nowadays it shares the same general opinion Castlevania Legends (although for completely different reasons) rightfully deserves: below mediocre.
The problem with this notion is that Belmont's Revenge is often thrown into the same bag as its inferior brothers. Misjudged as guilty by association, I have even heard some people refer to Legends as the best of the monochrome trilogy. This, of course, means they haven't even spent 5 minutes with each of them.
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Castlevania fans know better than anyone else about the series' ridiculously convoluted chronology and by now stale plot. Because no matter how tired you are of watching castles crumble in the horizon, Dracula will still raise from his coffin as many times as Konami needs him to and there will always be a vampire killer trying to tuck him back in. Not that action-platformers need to be complemented by a decent background story (specially a series that does a great job of standing on its own through its beautiful art design, atmosphere, and soundtrack), but that is really all you need to know before pressing start on any of the series' entries.
To those of us who still sort of care, Belmont's Revenge takes place 15 years after The Castlevania Adventure, and it's chronologically followed by the original NES title. Christopher Belmont returns to action and must this time defeat Dracula not only for humanity, but also to save his son Soleiyu who happened to be kidnapped and brainwashed on his 15th birthday by the ever-resurrecting vampire.
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Unlike the prequel, Christopher now traverses 4 differently themed stages that can be tackled on any order: the Cloud Castle, full of floating platforms and ropes to climb; the Plant Castle, where swamps and fragile bridges abound; the Crystal Castle, with its cracking platforms and dangerous water streams; and the Rock Castle, home of pitch-black halls and cave-dwelling creatures. Once each one is cleared and its corresponding boss defeated, Dracula's castle makes its appearance in the stage selection screen, slowly rising from the bottom of the lake as the final challenge. This legendary fortress is subdivided in an additional 2 stages (Christopher's own possessed son guarding the second one), plus a short third one that includes the final battle against the lord of vampires.
Improvements over its prequel include the return of classic Castlevania subweapons (holy water and axe in the English version, holy water and cross in the Japanese version), more accessible difficulty level (Christopher's whip only downgrades when hit by certain enemies, less difficult jumps), password support, and an overall much more enjoyable journey with more enemies and vastly cooler bosses.
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This second installment of GameBoy Castlevania finally shows off the series' characteristic art design by recycling anything salvageable from the previous title and redrawing it with higher detail, then adding it to an even bigger selection of newly designed sprites. They are not the best visuals achieved on the system by any means, but certainly the best in the monochrome series.
It's also impossible not to notice how much cleaner and varied the backgrounds look, and how many different platform tiles are used when compared to the handful different bricks of the previous game (in the Plant Castle's background, if you look closely, you'll notice that the huge flowers open up as Christopher passes by. A detail almost impossible to catch in the original hardware due to its blurry screen).
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Not just 2 or 3, but all tracks composed for Belmont's Revenge are completely new to the series and more than hold up to Castlevania standards, something very few portable titles in the series can brag about. Renditions of two music history classics are also present: Debussy's "Passpied" and Bach's "Chromatic Fantasia", adding some classy melodies to the richest and most elaborate fast rock and gothic chip tunes on the hardware period. Don't be surprised if you find yourself humming these catchy tunes over and over after powering down your GameBoy. I somehow still remember every single track 15 years after selling my copy of the cartridge.
Make sure to enter "heart", "heart", "heart", "heart" in the password screen to access the sound test, whose Japanese version displays every track's title.
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The most common complaints are, although minor, the hero's slow walking speed and tiny jumps; something that might take you a stage or two to get used to.
There's also the game's somewhat short lifespan. Final battle aside, the remaining 6 stages' difficulty is noticeably below usual Castlevania standards, making the experience shorter for pros but more accessible to newcomers (use password "blank", "crystal", "blank","crystal" to increase the difficulty level. Every time Christopher gets hit, his whip will be downgraded like in the prequel).
However, there's definitely quality over quantity here. The traps, enemies, and obstacles are so well condensed into each stage that you won't find yourself walking endlessly through repetitive scenery or fighting the same cast of monsters over and over again. Finally, and in spite of (or perhaps because of) its relative shortness and below average difficulty, it always leaves you wanting more even after beating it. Blame the gorgeous soundtrack, detailed graphic design, awesome bosses, and lack of cheap deaths characteristic to the series.
This title was also included in the GameBoy compilation Konami GB Collection 4. These nowadays rare cartridges feature Castlevania II in its monochrome version in Japan, while the Europe-only release was upgraded with a GameBoy Color palette which of course resembles a 5-year-old's crayon coloring book. They both support Super GameBoy borders, and both of them also have Christopher wielding the cross subweapon instead of the axe.
Unfortunately, follow-up Castlevania Legends destroyed the good momentum this portable series was building with what seemed to be a throwback to the first game's flaws: long, boring levels; poor art design; and a mediocre soundtrack. Unlike the first two entries, it was developed by Konami's Nagoya team.
- Special thanks to Rey from vgmuseum.com for most of the screenshots, and GameSpite.com's Nicola Nomali for pointing out the soundtrack's classic composers.
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