Into the Wild #1: Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse

Welcome to Into the Wild, my exclusive foray into the wonderful world of Retro Gaming!

Anyone who knows me, if they pay attention in the least bit, knows that my most cherished gaming series (and the one I’m most passionate about) is Konami’s wonderful monster-filled, Castlevania series.  What is it about this series that draws me too it?  Is it the dark, Gothic style?  The intense, action packed story? The beautiful and incredibly catchy music?  Lord knows, it’s not the fucking difficulty.

This episode I decided to try my hand at my favorite NES title of all time, and, arguably, the best Castlevania title of all time, as well (it’s a hard choice between it, and Symphony of the Night, of which I will write about at a later date).  This game of course, is Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse.

As far as it goes, I must really fucking hate myself, because the more and more I play this game, the more and more I realize that I absolutely DESPISE it.  Wow, did THAT make any sense?

Contradictions aside, as soon as you pop this bitch in, if you even get the goddamn cart running, you’re off for some hair-raising thrills come level one.

After of course, you sit through the long exposition text crawl that instead of revealing back story, should have gone a little something like this: “Have you gone to the bathroom? Hopefully, though it doesn’t matter, for you will likely shit your pants in frustration, anyway.  Do you have your bag of chips? Fuck em…you think you’ll have a second to grab one?  Most importantly of all, have you taken your Nortriptaline?  Because you’re about to have a fucking mind-meltingly enraging anxiety attack.  Also, Dracula sucks…blood.”

CV3 has quite possibly the coolest (in-game) intro known to man.  Our hero, Trevor Belmont, rubbing one out on an altar.  Also, praying.  Upon completion of shining his whip, he swings open his cape triumphantly, ready for the dangers that lay in wait.

Now fast-forward to level 2, or 2cc or some shit (there are so many levels, the game can’t even keep up with which ones are which), and prepare yourself for one of the most difficult attempts of skill you’ve ever faced.  The rigged, hammer game at the carnival is easier than this piece of shit, and at least THAT game has carnies.

Apparently, Dracula’s actual curse itself has absolutely nothing do with destroying the beautiful Romanian countryside as it says in the slow opening text crawl, oh no; rather, flying Medusa heads smacking into you at uncanny rates of speed when there is no way to avoid, seems to be the real hex here.  So if killing sweet, innocent animals with flying axes and cross-shaped boomerangs doesn’t get your crotch heated up, maybe the mind-numbing difficulty level will make you open up your Hoover Dam of Rage.

Whats that you say?  You’ve beaten Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse?  I’m a big vagina?  Is that it?  Well you know what?

The only person I’ve ever seen beat this game live, has only done it once, and he sucked at it. And his name is DawnOfTheDan.  And he’s also a homosexual for even thinking he’s remotely better than me at anything.

As far as it goes, it’s a pretty straight laced, Nintendo side-scrolling, platformer.  However, this game is the very definition of Nintendo Hard.  Don’t know what that stands for?  Well go play this marvelous gem, because what it lacks in simplicity (difficulty wise) makes up for itself ten-fold with everything else.

I absolutely love this fucking game…and if I didn’t HATE it so much, I’d probably love it even more. Even Trevor Belmont agrees, that it is just WAY too goddamn hard.  But with box art like this:

How can you not, immediately, expect difficulty only the great Fabio can conquer? And THAT guy destroyed the Night.  Twice.  Before the bird hit him in the face, of course.