Unreleased Podcast Script: Castlevania II Belmont’s Revenge

I never played much of Belmont’s Revenge back in the old days. After being very disappointed in the first Castlevania game on the Gameboy I only rented it, was not that impressed, and did not try the game again until many years later where I enjoyed playing through a lot more. I was happy to go back and check it out again from the newish Castlevania collection that Konami put out. While still not that great, I enjoyed the game a lot more than I remembered from back in the old days.

So, the plot of Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge goes something like this: 15 years have passed since the events of Castlevania: The Adventure. Christopher Belmont’s son Soleil (Soul AY) is turned into a demon who assists in bringing back Dracula and his castle. So Christopher has to again defeat Dracula and save his son.

The October 1991 issue of Nintendo Power covers Belmont’s Revenge in great detail. All four castles are covered in great detail with some awesome artwork of Christopher Belmont. Other games covered in this issue include Star Trek, F-Zero, Super Ghouls N Ghosts, plus tips for Super Mario World, Maniac Mansion, and a very retro feature on Metroid (gearing up for Super Metroid). There is also “gossip” about about Final Fantasy II that calls Cecil and the crew “The Light Warriors.” Hmm…

Belmont’s Revenge was reissued on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection a few years ago along with a ton of other games in the series. I see this collection on sale regularly and it is an essential purchase!

First and foremost we need to acknowledge the lack of Wall Meat in this game as far as I can tell. Frustrating! This is a decent platformer for the Gameboy, but a bunch of limitations here really hinder the game from being better. I remember being so frustrated by both Castlevania games on the Gameboy.

Reactions in this game are SO SLOW. Your whip moves like it is caught in molasses. Generally your reactions make it very hard to dodge anything and everything around you. Spikes of out walls interesting idea, but you move so slowly. You kinda have to take damage…this is an issue in a few other Konami games in this era.

It is also hard to tell what takes HP off of you sometimes. For example the blobs in water at first look like just part of the background. On the grey Gameboy screen this is a very cheap game device as are the spikes in level two that are very hard to avoid. I cannot imagine trying to play this game on a car ride. I rarely bought my Gameboy on trips because one bump or swerve and you would end up losing a life or crashing and burning in a boss fight.

Where this game really lacks for the NES games: The music is pretty good for a Gameboy game, but really lacks the ambiance of the games on the NES. Everything feels really generic. There lack of classic bosses hinders the game too. Like the GBA games that do not even have Belmonts in them, it is hard to care either way.