DMG = Dracula's Mobile Grind: Castlevania The Adventure | Game Boy Works Vol.2 005

[@SaxcatGamingCorner]

I know people don’t like this game, but it was perfect for me in 1990. I got it as a gift from my grandmother and played it non stop when my NES was not available. When I beat it the first time I was staying with that grandmother. Good memories of a game I still like.

[@MrVictorRong]

I loved this game and it was my first Castlevania game I ever played. I can still play through this game anytime today! It felt so atmospheric to me, and the music was great. The first stage music still brings me out in goosebumps

[@joshzumstien6289]

Same guys! I actually have a special place in my heart for this game as my Mom got it for me as a Valentines gift with a giant Hershey Kiss. She lived in another city as my parents were divorced so it was special to me. Goes to show that sometimes a game can touch you a certain way despite the general dislike of it

[@Gameboy-Unboxings]

Hell yeah, man.. it actually really bothers me when people talk bad about this game.. I mean it was the very first handheld Castlevania game & literally came out the same year as the Gameboy.. Hell, even if it had come out years after the gameboy, I would still think it was a great game. Even the slow down is fine with me because I feel like the game was built around it very well. Absolutely love this game. I actually really feel like the majority of people who talk bad about it didn't give it enough of a chance at all.

[@osurpless]

@@Gameboy-UnboxingsSure enough, and you can always get a copy of the GBC collection (JPN/PAL) in which the speed is upped by like 20%.

[@54321ZachMr]

I like CVA much more playing on a screen that doesn’t blur. Sure it’s a bit slow, but that music is some of the best on GB. My ‘Grandmother Gift’ game was LJN’s Karate Kid. I love that game to this day and could run through it in about 10-15 mins when I was a kid. People hate on it and Jaws, but I love those games and I consider both hidden gems.

[@diegog1853]

In my experience, the enduring legacy of Castlevania the Adventure, at least in terms of game analysis, is that it just makes it even easier to appreciate how well designed the original Castlevania was. As simply by removing some of its presumably minor elements completely breaks the game in half.

[@fangjokerLS]

The working beta of BELMONT'S REVENGE

[@osurpless]

Score-wise not entirely, as “Battle of the Holy” and “Death Fair” are just as exemplar as the legendary ones in Revenge.

[@archstanton2530]

More like Konami's revenge

[@RndStranger]

I think it's worth pointing out how Konami kept stumbling with Castlevania in Japan. It is one of the best regarded games on the Famicom Disk System, but that peripheral was not a success so most Japanese players wouldn't get a chance to encounter it. The Adventure was the first Castlevania game released on a successful platform in Japan, so for many Japanese players it would be the first Castlevania game they had played. On top of that, in 1989 the Japanese market was fairly hostile toward action games. Everyone wanted RPGs, adventure games, or baseball. Maybe, if Akumajou Densetsu got to market first then things might have turned out a bit better, but I think Konami missed their moment in Japan while they hit the moment exactly in the US.

[@DaRoblin]

I've played through this game at least 4 times now and it's a staple of my October festivities. I'd like to say that, if you deliberately sit down to play this game, it's got its own charm. It's a hard game but it's fair. To me, Castlevania is a series where you plan and commit to your choice of when to jump and whip. Castlevania Adventure teaches you how to play it; how to intuit when Mr. Bucket is going to shoot balls out of his mouth at an unfortunate angle, how to mark the wall tile in your head to consistently time your jump, or to develop your plan like Madden with the boss screen paused. In my latest playthrough, I found sneaky spots to incorporate damage boosting to outrun the spike wall and pass a miniboss gauntlet. In an early playthough I found the rhythm of the music and the pace of the character line up to give you audio cues for the various hazards. Does the thing hardly run? It doesn't crash. Is it missing sub-weapons? Nobody hates on CV4 for outmoding them. Is it unfair? If Christopher gets balls in his mouth in the same spot every time perhaps it's possible to consider player error? I'd like to point out that fans of classic-vania have very few real choices. You can't be picky when every title since symphony allows you to potion & grind in lieu of learning & planning. You have to lick your plate whether it's Curse of the Moon or Haunted Castle (OG). You've got a reasonably good title with an unreasonably good soundtrack. Why tear it down? Thanks for highlighting this game and for all the great work Mr. Jeremy Parish. Happy spooky season and Cheers!

[@JeremyParish]

Actually, check my Castlevania IV video. I absolutely have complaints about the uselessness of subweapons. But I’m glad you dig this game despite its faults.

[@flicsmo6838]

Couldn't agree more! I actually enjoy this game quite a bit, and it's odd to me how negatively it's often viewed. It has most of the same elements that make the original Castlevania so great - unforgiving yet consistent mechanics, a slow and deliberate pace, restricted controls and moveset, fantastic soundtrack. The level design, art, and pacing don't hit the same peaks as Castlevania NES, but what does? Granted the game is certainly not for everyone, it's an acquired taste at best, but it's strange to me how it's usually criticised for the same things Castlevania NES is criticised for, but by people who enjoy that game - the section on jump mechanics in this video is a perfect example, around 14:00.

[@MazzinYT]

the game is great. really well designed and fun. a remarkable work for just 2 people programming it.

[@JesseDylanMusic]

I’ve tried so many times, but I always rage out on level 3.

[@volvoguy804]

Castlevania: The Adventure still has good cover art!

[@miltiadiskoutsokeras9189]

And masterful music.

[@Gameboy-Unboxings]

And great gameplay 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@VahanNisanian]

Biggest contrast ever. Extremely slow and sluggish, yet incredible music.

[@RogerPyoko]

Funny enough, M2 *didn't* keep the soundtrack. Every song in the game is a remix from other Castlevania games and the one Adventure track that got remixed ("Battle of the Holy", of course) went unused!

[@lilwyvern4]

Yeah, on the one hand it's sort of unfortunate that we didn't get to hear their take on the soundtrack, but on the other, we did get what I would call the finest iteration of Aquarius the series ever got.

[@Gorton]

Cheeky flex with the Analogue Pocket GitD in the background there. Very nice!

[@bxsolx5086]

Game Boy Works returns! Much welcome.

[@InfectiousGroovePodcast]

I wanted to love this game SO much upon launch. I didn't but I really wanted to.

[@AnAverageGoblin]

very unfortunate that the Belmont in the credits sequence looks like he's taking a piss thanks to the questionable whip placement

[@JeremyParish]

It’s a metaphor for what the game does to your hopes and dreams for a great portable Castlevania

[@AnAverageGoblin]

@@JeremyParish lmao

[@EdwardoFE]

In the sequel it somehow looks even sillier because his son stands next to him doing the same thing.

[@holdingpattern245]

if you play this game, urine trouble

[@BrettDulaney-hf8yd]

You crack me up bro with your amazing retrospectives best channel on you tube​@@JeremyParish

[@HybridAngelZero]

Game Boy Works is back! And I had to look up the word "parcimonius", so I have expanded my vocabulary today, too

[@BrettDulaney-hf8yd]

Jeremy usually has big words that I never heard in his awesome retrospectives

[@mrnobones01]

I also borrowed this game from my childhood best friend, and you brought memories of my bitter disappointment back from the deepest murky reaches of my mind

[@jasonblalock4429]

Man, I was raging all over again just watching the footage of all those missed jumps. I genuinely don't understand why they made the jumping so cruel in this one.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

I can definitely see why this was originally produced after Fester's Quest and I am looking forward to that episode. Castlevania The Adventure is a game that I fell off of really quickly because of those wonky jumps. We probably need more Castlevania Rebirth games. Oh well, back to this year's playthrough of Aria of Sorrow for me.

[@gazzy_burns]

Fester’s Quest ❤

[@RogerPyoko]

Jeremy really went "You were maybe expecting the Addams Family?" at everyone.

[@vincentgood2234]

It's all coming back, it's all coming back to me now...the cold fury of missing jumps off of those falling platforms, the white hot rage of being unable to outpace the rising spikes with a protagonist whose feet seemed to be glued to every surface he set foot on. I did miss one detail from your original GBW video on this game: where you highlighted one of the game's more interesting sequences, the bit with the rolling eyes and the destructible bridge. I couldn't articulate why when playing it as a kid, but that was always my favorite part of the game (apart from the soundtrack), and your blurb on it from the first time around went a long way toward explaining to me why I thought it was cool.

[@billcook4768]

There were nights of endless pleasure It was more than all your laws allow Baby, baby, baby. Castlevania the Adventure, baby.

[@vincentgood2234]

@billcook4768 When I whip you like this And the spikes rise like that There were eyes on the bridge But it's all coming back to me

[@Nekkoru]

"The original Nintendo game tape" oh my GOD jeremy

[@PopMusicKiller]

Alert! Bangai-O mentioned! I repeat! Bangai-O mentioned!

[@AndrewAmbrose]

Battle of the Holy was my favorite Castlevania song until I heard Yuzo Koshiro's Invitation of a Crazed Moon from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Either way, I still love it.

[@MrLeo34]

This was one of a handful of GB games I owned as a kid, so I played it so much I more or less memorized it and have lots of fond feelings for it despite the flaws. The final fight with Dracula is still difficult though, you more or less have to know where to stand. I almost want to say the re-release of this on those Konami GB collections in Europe made you walk a little faster but I'm not sure.

[@RemnantCult]

I'm not sure you could get it officially anywhere, but I remember the Wii's online service featuring a remake of this very game as a Wiiware title sometime in the late 2000s. It's a surprising remake and one that actually fixes the issues this freshman try on portable castlevania had, as I've heard then. Though, with it being on console, the main appeal is gone, and castlevania still got attention as a series around that time I believe, so The Adventure getting a remake is confusing for me but from what I remember, it was a fine castlevania game. Interesting little factoid I just remembered.

[@todesziege]

Castlevania: The Adventue ReBirth. He mentions (and shows) it in the video.

[@JesseDylanMusic]

I wish they’d have put it into one of the Castlevania collections.

[@todesziege]

@@JesseDylanMusic With all the compilations Konami have put out (Castlevania, Contra, Gradius, Ninja Turtles) I wouldn't be surprised if they put out, either a pack of all the ReBirth games, or more likely having them included in additional volumes. IIRC all of those "collected" series have remaining games that haven't been re-released yet.

[@JesseDylanMusic]

@@todesziege I'd be pretty excited either way!

[@MurphyAmadeus]

GAME BOY WORKS STILL GOIN' STRONG!

[@bxsolx5086]

Great video, but man does the ending make me pine for a Bangai-O! Missle Fury re-release. Have never played it, but am a Massive fan of the Dreamcast & N64 original (the DS entry also has merit)

[@teranokitty]

Same here. Bangai-O for life!

[@MattM-wo4wu]

The Return of the King

[@chamchamtrigger]

I guess I should revisit the game. I was only around 7 when I played it, but I remember enjoying it. Maybe it was because I played the TIGER electronics version of Simon's Quest around the same time making any game fun in comparison.

[@Gameboy-Unboxings]

You probably enjoyed it because it's actually a great game. Does not deserve any of the hate it gets.

[@holdingpattern245]

When a kid let me play Castlevania Adventure on his Gameboy in 1989 I had the opposite reaction, I needed my own Gameboy ASAP, the game is meh for sure but it was like a NES game running on the equivalent of a little kid's toy, on the scale of technology miracles this was like iPods or online shopping, my memory of that moment is still pretty vivid.

[@MaidenHell1977]

I remember playing it. I can't remember if I finished it but I do remember enjoying it despite it's meager gameplay. Super excited for NES works. I know I always say this but I can't stress enough how much I adore this channel and your analysis, Jeremy, especially from one who was there with me in that same era.

[@OsakaSan]

Nice to see some appreciation in the comments, not like i think it's particularly good or anything, but it has its charm, and it was its dev team's first Castlevania, i think it's fair to cut them some slack. I play it to completion from time to time, being short is a grace because it's a perfect prelude to Belmont's Revenge, wich fixes every single one of this title's blemishes. Also, i'd like to add, it feels a bit inconsistent to bring up how Konami still didn't have the series' staple gameplay elements fully set in stone and then rant about how The Adventure lacks certain elements or juggles with others. Particularly, given the GB screen's resolution i think switching stairs for climbing ropes is an elegant solution when every pixel of horizontal resolution is precious, plus the ropes have their own mechanics and strategies that are put in display in the second half of the game and even further in the sequel.

[@TheCastellan]

I liked this game in particular. And was my first Castlevania, snagged it in November of '90. Liked the level one music, a fav track of mine.

[@MysticMike]

Castlevania The Adventure was my first CV game I ever saw and owned. I played this very often trying to see if I can get a bit further. Even though its slower and simpler there is the GBC release that not only gave it color but no slow down making it a very fast moving game. It's a game you can easily pick up and and play since it's not too long. I have do many times beating it deathless. I took many tough spots as puzzle rooms to find the most optimal way through. One example is that last corridor before dracula to just simple look right before taking a hit and through those big enemies 3 times.

[@Gameboy-Unboxings]

Does the GBC version only fix the slow down if you play it on a GBC/GBA? I have both versions & when I first played the original version, the slow down bothered me. So out of curiosity, I tried the GBC version but I unfortunately do not have a gbc or gba at the moment (I know, it sucks) and I tried it on my gameboy pocket & it still had the exact same slow down. Very interesting if it only fixes it when it's played in color.

[@MazzinYT]

@@Gameboy-Unboxings they mean the konami collection for gameboy color that had 4 games in it and one of them was a colorized version of castlevnaia adventure. however as the number 1 fan of the game, i can not recommend the konami collection at all, because the colors are way off and kinda random at time, making it feel cheap and ugly despite being "richer" than the original (plus, due to the recolor they somehow took away the blinking of enemies when you hit them, so it makes for a very downgraded gameplay experience). and the KC version is also emulated/processed differently in a way that every new room loads every object at the beginning, so that the loading times are way longer between each room and in exchange the rest of the room will run at break neck speed after, because everything is already loaded unlike in the original where objects only load in when they are needed. however this effect causes another problem, because the music in this game is also somehow integrated into the screen process, so if you speed up the gameplay like the KC version does, then the sound also speeds up and slows down hard depending when stuff gets loaded in or not and that makes the whole experience unbareable to me. i would recommend staying away from that konami collection, at least for castlevania adventure (for the other collection with belmonts revenge they got it right, but not on the first game).

[@acem7749]

Sad my 1st Castlevania was one of the worst. I remember playing this in the car waiting for my mom to get out of the store. Damn I do remember it be annoyingly tough. Never completed it..

[@jorymil]

Nice reference to the Tiger Simon's Quest: those were the "alternative" to Game Boy back in the day, though not really comparable. Still... when you couldn't afford a Game Boy, it was still something to play in the car on the way to Grandma's house. A fair step up from "count the cows" or "count the license plates."

[@eelobrian6727]

I've played hours and hours of this game. It feels like you weight 1000 tons or you are deep underwater. I suspect this was an overreaction to the GB's tendency to have ghosting. That being said, the fatal flaw is the jumping. I remember scooching to the very edge of each platform, just to miss.

[@JonnyD79]

The irony of course (I may have said this on the original vid) is that this was indeed my FIRST game I ever played of the series so I thought the slow-down, sluggish whip attack and terrible jumping was just "the norm" 😅

[@David-ln8qh]

Must've been what brits thought of the whole series to that point :P

[@shadowscribe]

It's less that he's the toughest and more that he went out without learning how to Belmont.

[@thecunninlynguist]

My uncle got this for me as a kid...but it was the Japanese version. Back then I thought it was magic it could work on my us GB...I wasn't privy to the GB being region free at the time. But God this game was frustrating and so sloooow. I only beat it as a teen on emulator using saved states

[@gfhrtshergheghegewgewgew1730]

wait, electrocop looks sick. i'm gonna make someone play it

[@JeremyParish]

It's a graphical showcase for portable gaming, but the gameplay... kinda never comes together

[@EdwardoFE]

I never realized how early this game came out in the Game Boy lifespan. It almost makes me want to cut it some slack, but it really is just sooooo slooooow.

[@Larry]

I honestly believe Konami purposely made CastleVania Adventure slow, as the GameBoy turned into a blurry mess with fast movements on screen, and that was a major issue with Motocross Madness, so they course corrected a little too much.

[@adamsargent4935]

Ohh I hope this means more Gameboy works coming too.

[@Cory_]

I remember buying this on the 3DS eShop like 10 years ago without knowing anything about it and being really disappointed that I wasted $5.

[@Gameboy-Unboxings]

Cringe.

[@damyuu23]

I actually don't hate this game. It's slow as hell, but not that hard. Beating this prepped me for the three weeks it would take me to get through castlevania 3. A great exercise in patience. For reference i beat castlevania in four hours.

[@2dskillz]

I have always enjoyed the methodical pace of The Castlevania Adventure. But I agree it is just barely Castlevania.

[@MazzinYT]

good game, but bad castlevania

[@ValkyrieTiara]

The prodigal son returns.

[@ellipticalsoul]

The time it used to take for localisations to reach us in Europe was brutal. Three years for Castlevania 3!

[@johnsimon8457]

I guess we have a Mario Land vs Mario Bros thing where a completely different team is allowed to define their own vision for the game without any strict “This is what a Castlevania game has to have” guidelines. Still, I wouldn’t mind a game that has the structure of Cv III on the Gameboy

[@todesziege]

I never quite got what's supposedly so _weird_ about Mario Land. If anything, at a time when the series' formula had yet to solidify, it in most ways feels like a more direct sequel to Super Mario Bros 1 than most other Mario games.

[@kennethchia4194]

Just going to point out again that as a Wii digital title, Adventure Rebirth is now no longer available to acquire legally anywhere. Konami needs to rectify this.

[@jwrfb26]

I like that you like the soundtrack, but barely any of the music was carried forward into the Rebirth title, which mostly opted for remixing tracks from other games in the series. Of the three (only three) tracks revived from GameBoy, two came from the sequel. It's not that they chose to eschew the old game and redo it, they just did a new game entirely, in the vein of what they were used to by that point. It's no different from the 4 or 5 games Simon Belmont starred in that have the same plot, but completely different overall designs, except it's Christopher, whom many fewer cared about.

[@joshisnot11]

I essentially finished The Adventure out of spite lol. I wasn’t going to let just one of the games stop me from beating all of the Classicvanias. I’m glad I beat it, and on original hardware, bc it makes me even more impressed by Belmont’s Revenge. It’s also important to remember playing it as a kid and being blown away by it back then. If you never played it back in the day, I can see it feeling almost pointless to play or beat. But it’s an important entry when considering the overall arc of the franchise and Nintendo as a whole. Like everyone says, the soundtracks is epic. One of the best for Game Boy. All of the criticisms are deserved though. It is a SLOG. If you love Castlevania though, I think The Adventure is a must play. Really makes you appreciate the Game Boy soundtrack and how smooth the other games are.

[@anonymouskaiju9101]

Wow five games at launch is a small but respectable line up for holidays. But only one game for the rest of the year and it's not out till december is unthinkable by today's standards. And looking at the Japanese line up, it does make sense when gameboy didn't get third party games consistently rolling out until September but still. Obviously with the benefit of hindsight getting it out as early as possible to compete with the lynx was the right move. But I kinda wonder if at the time people thinking nintendo should have waited till 1990 when they had more games to ship for the system

[@JesseDylanMusic]

I remember staying home “sick”, sitting at my moms friends house while she babysat me, playing this game on the dark screen in a dark room not being able to get past the second level 😂 I loved the music tho.

[@chaospoet]

I got my Gameboy the following year as a birthday present and got this with it as well. I loved it. The slow movement sucked, but I got used to it. I mostly played it during car rides to relatives in other states. Never beat it though. I got to Dracula once but got destroyed. As for the change in gameplay I didn't mind. We only had 2 games over here that were wildly different from each other so nothing had really been set in stone as to what a Castlevania game truly was. Castlevania 3 is when that was established and all the rest up to Symphony were closer to each other than they were different. So looking backwards it stands out but for the time it was just another one that was as different from the rest as they were each different from it. Nothing was amiss.

[@plewlonehitknown4812]

Absolute hardest castlevania title. After I began to flow with the flaws, it really was fun to play. I died a million times in this, but somewhere around that time, it clicked. I had become really good in the game. If your able to reach the 3rd stage, you have come a long way.

[@sunwentai1]

Agreed with everything. But today, we can use youtube to listen to all those amazing GB songs.

[@goldenage]

Bangiaoh was cool. Reminded me of Metal Storm, Cybernator, Metal Warriors or even a little bit of Macross on the Saturn.

[@CassiusZedaker-pr7kc]

This is a game that definitely benefits from ROM hacks. A hack to remove weapon downgrades on hit and improve the speed goes a long way towards making this a more fun experience.

[@Gameboy-Unboxings]

The game doesn't need that stuff. All it needs is for the player to give it enough of a chance.

[@54321ZachMr]

I never had a Gameboy for the same reason you did. I wanted Castlevania badly, but on a school field trip I got to see both CVA and TMNT. It was the way the screen blurred so badly when the screen scrolled in games. It wasn’t too bad with a LightBoy with the light and magnifying screen, but it felt like a cheap experience to me. I’m glad that I chose the Genesis over getting the Gameboy Christmas of ‘89.

[@Athesies]

This is an interesting new way to present metroidvania works, wow. (JK)

[@ArcaneAzmadi]

Watching this video fills me with dread at the realisation that I'm going to have to complete this game to get 100% achievement completion for the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Steam...

[@Choralone422]

This was the 3rd or 4th game my family got for our Game Boy way back then. I so desperately wanted to love it. However, for all the reasons listed in this video I just couldn't. Even if the music was awesome and the graphics were pretty good. It was just too slow and way to punishing to be fun for me or anyone else in the family. Still a good walk down memory lane and it's backstory was also very interesting as always!

[@Alufear]

Would you consider a deep dive on Haunted Castle Revisited? Such an out of left field triumph.

[@larryb5677]

Add me to the "very disappointed in this one back in the day" list. Short can be good for a portable game! SMB was easily finished in a short session, but was fun the entire way and you were rewarded with an all time classic ending theme. Castlevania should have leaned into it.

[@alex_-yz9to]

"they kept the soundtrack" yeaaaaaaaaaah... about that... they did not. Besides that one tune everyone knows from adventure (the only tune people might have heard to be frank) the rest of adventure rebirth is a bunch of remixes from other games! And its a bit of a shame because its not like the rest of the OST is bad... its just that you'll never get to hear it at all on the standard cart due to the hateful level design unless you activate the hidden sound test!

[@JeremyParish]

I know, man, I wrote the liner notes for ReBirth’s vinyl release. Some of the music is still there, which is more than you can say for any other element of the GB original besides the eyeballs.

[@JesseDylanMusic]

I know we already did makai toushi saga (FF Legend), but can we do it again? That game and its sequel defined my childhood. I still want more.

[@christopherlundgren1700]

My cousins gifted me a copy each of Castlevania Adventure and Dr. Mario, which was awesome. But it would be quite some time before I would actually get the Gameboy with which to play them, which was decidedly NOT awesome. I just had to stare wistfully at the boxes and reread the instruction booklets and imagine how much fun I could be having. Once I finally did get the Gameboy, I played it nonstop, and I played a lot of Castlevania, at least for a while. A frustrating experience for sure. I must have complained out loud about the dumb bats knocking me off the ledges because I remember my mom teasing me about it. I wanted to like it, and I did on some level, but it eventually defeated me and I moved on to more fun titles. To this day I’ve never seen past the third stage.

[@ralang999]

What a horrible night to have a GB curse

[@ridureyu]

The first level has amazing music, though!

[@davidcarmichael4006]

Finally the Gameboy has come back to the works series!

[@JeremyParish]

Where were you in April, man?

[@davidcarmichael4006]

@ you don’t want to know, or I don’t want to say but I’m here now loving it

[@burntsiennaleigh]

The book Legends of 16-Bit Game Development: A History of Treasure and the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis backs up your assessment of Maegawa and Nakazato somewhat. It states that the team were disappointed by being assigned this project, with Maegawa stating it "felt like they'd drawn the short end of the stick" being forced to work on Game Boy.

[@JeremyParish]

Huh, somehow I had not heard about this book, but it's nice to be vindicated.

[@goranisacson2502]

As I haven't played either this or the remake, I shall instead derive sustenance from the knowledge that the people who made Gunstar Heroes and other Treasures were part of the design team. In that light the difficulty is put in painful context, but it also means that I will force myself to play through it one day because I've played almost every Treasure game out there and I do not see myself as a quitter, even when I maybe should.

[@chrismcovell]

Curiously, several of the "speed up ROM hacks" of this title point to the *music code* as being most responsible for seriously slowing down this game. (Also should be mentioned alongside mid-screen scrolling and sprite updates, giving it a wobbly, glitchy play experience.) The GB coder for this perhaps did not move over to Treasure later. :]

[@ruminator3570]

Stage twos theme sounds more like Stalker than Wicked Child and stage four is closer to Heart of Fire.

[@jasonking3182]

At least they got the suck out of their system and gave us the absolute banger of Castlevania 2 Belmonts Revenge.

[@j.r.shartzer]

Does any other Castlevania have that descending spiky ceiling of death? It always makes me think of the Mario games, but I wonder what the first game was to have that as an obstacle.

[@JeremyParish]

The full descending ceilings are unique to this Castlevania, I think, but the original game had smaller plunging spike traps that dropped from the ceiling in a couple of stages.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

I'm not sure if that knight boss's design was deliberately Obari-influenced or it just looks that way because of designing for GB.

[@robertlauncher]

Castlevania III also needed to be made even more stupid difficult to combat rentals.

[@rootbeer_666]

Hey. _Hey._ I will _not_ have you slag on Tetris Type B, which was a Hip Tanaka original and every bit as great as Korobeyniki. Also, Type C wasn’t a Russian folk song, it was an excerpt from a JS Bach piece.

[@philmason9653]

While I get that it's technically rough, I've never shared the negative opinion for this one. I've finished it multiple times over the years, the platforming is ok once you've dialed the layouts in. I'm ok with it being it's its own weird thing.

[@RussellB]

painful Electrocop dig

[@toastrave7820]

What turntable is that in the intro

[@JeremyParish]

A Fluance something-something, I don't remember.

[@miltiadiskoutsokeras9189]

This is the worst game I absolutely love and still play.

[@ArakDBlade]

I tried this game on yhe Classic Collection and was like "im not crazy for thinking this isnt fun, right?" I guess no series can be perfect.

[@rhombusx]

I'm a huge Castlevania fan and I absolutely despise Castlevania: The Adventure - it plays just slightly better than a Tiger electronics game. On the other hand, Adventure ReBirth is an absolutely fantastic game, and it's a double shame that 1) it only ever came out on WiiWare and 2) it's branded as some kind of remake, when really it's an entirely brand new game.

[@broy8172]

no way, i'm gonna have to flip that and say Haunted Castle is 2nd worst. The game with the debut of Bloody Tears can't be the worst...that's highly redeemable!

[@DrBeef216]

This game isn't as bad as people make it out to be when you take away revisionist history and people today crapping on it. We loved it back in kindergarten/first grade. It's slower, and it was tough, but it was also short & looked the part. And that soundtrack is phenomenal

[@JeremyParish]

Nah, like I said here, I loved Castlevania I & II at the time and found this to be a huge letdown.

[@SynthatronPrime]

I can never decide if this is worse than Castlevania Legends or not.

[@JeremyParish]

It is! Legends is not great and feels unbelievably rough for a 1998 release, but it does seem to have some ambition behind it.

[@natehaux7575]

Most early GB games have held up well or are forgivable as being products of their time/ability. This game, not so much. Still have it in my collection tho.

[@MAYOFORCE]

I went on a Castlevania kick this year and bought all three collections available on Steam and played through them all month. Castlevania the Adventure is the only one I would say I hated. There is some outright awful design going on with the levels here. Music is good though

[@wickedgrinaz]

I felt cheated when I got this game… the difficulty was too much.

[@TheVgrey]

Not a great game somehow i glad is on the collection i play ot from time to time

[@jamesmoss3424]

Castlevania: The Adventure still sucks.

[@MiguelPaulettePerez-bj8ml]

It's just so slow.... that's my only problem with it. I didn't have expectations about it being grand like a console release, that's bullshit dreaming that will never come true. They at least attempted to improve it with the sequel.

[@billcook4768]

I know the collective mindhive agrees with Jeremy, but I’ve always enjoyed Castlevania the Adventure. Once you get past “this doesn’t play like Castlevania” it’s a fun little game. Hard and requiring precision jumps, but I’ll take it over the stairs from hell and knock back deaths on the NES games. Seriously, who complains that the Gameboy version doesn’t have “Castlevania stairs”? Unfortunately, just about everybody.

[@JeremyParish]

There is no “collective mindhive,” man. It’s ok to have your own opinions without framing everyone else as some kind of mindless moron.

[@billcook4768]

@ Sorry - I meant nothing other than you agree with the majority. Anyone who watches your videos knows you don’t always follow the majority opinion.