Games of the Abstract: Castlevania - Bloodlines (1994)

 

a.k.a. Castlevania: The New Generation / Vampire Killer

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

One Player

Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) / PC / Switch /PS4 / Xbox One

 

This was my first Castlevania game, which marks an important signpost as a gamer. It comes with a weight to it, as this is a legendary franchise that began with 1986's Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and whilst Konami's messy legacy into the 2010s has caused huge problems with their licenses, Castlevania had at least the advantage of a Western animated series commissioned for Netflix, which began in 2017 and lasted for over four season by 2021. Konami's legacy has been sullied by many mistakes, but thankfully into the 2020s too, in the late 2010s, there was a considerable effort to preserve and re-release titles like this and Contra as franchise collections which has been successful. A lot of critical rebuilding would be needed by Konami from the mistakes made in that decade, but working with the likes of M2, the legendary Japanese developer who devote themselves to the best of video game preservation, they do themselves well with the likes of the 2019 Castlevania Collection. Best conversions met where even the Game Boy titles from the franchise to the mid-nineties, including Castlevania: Bloodlines, came back for people to play. The only reason the notorious arcade entry Haunted Castle (1987) was not in that collection is that it was placed in the Arcade Collection, another set of Konami games, whilst this collection even has Kid Dracula (1990), a Japanese exclusive cute platformer from the NES, and the Japanese versions of these games, which includes the original Vampire Killer version of Bloodlines. Only the likes of the PC-Engine games from this era, including the likes of Rondo of Blood (1993), were not included and that has had its own releases in the West multiple times over the decades.

My first game is atypical, beginning with the fact this is viewed as a "Gaiden", a term for "side story" or "tale", with Bloodlines being set in an entirely different timeline than other games. For those unaware of the series in general, with titles remaking the original 1986 version just among the timeline included in the Castlevania Collection, what is called Akumajō Dracula in Japan is about the history of one lineage, usually, called the Belmont family who have fought the vampire Dracula over centuries and all the monsters at his disposal. Bloodlines is still in this setting as, whilst set as far forward as 1917, one of the two playable characters, whilst called John Morris and from Texas, is from the lineage and inherited the Vampire Killer, the trademark of this franchise among many of a whip as a main weapon which can destroy even the undead. The second character of Eric Lecarde, from Spain, comes into this context with a spear, out for revenge for his female love being turned into a vampire, both in context dealing with how a figure named Elizabeth Bartley desires to resurrect Count Dracula and bring horrors to the world again. One aspect of Bloodlines just in these two is that, whilst it could have been expanded further, each do have occasional differences in how the levels will play out, divergent paths on at least two major occasions where Morris can swing across gaps like Indiana Jones, whilst Lecarde has a super jump, which could have had additional gameplay differences but works as a nice touch in what we get.

As my first Castlevania, there is also the fact this is a streamlined take on the franchise as it had been at this point. Whilst Konami worked the franchise over multiple formats - the arcade, the PC-Engine - they had mostly released games in the franchise for Nintendo consoles at this point. With the NES games too, they would be building the blocks with those releases with what, with Nintendo's own Metroid series, would be the "Metroidvania" genre of adventure-platformers with non-linear structures. Bloodlines is very linear in comparison, six stages divided up to at least eleven sections within each, which you play in order with limited lives and continues to an ending, the full one only available at harder difficulties. You only even occasionally move right-to-left across the screen for sections.

Whilst I did not grow up with a Mega Drive, and do not want to presume the following only from a few games in, I do however see this as fitting the tone of the console in terms of style and its arcade playability. It is a difficult game, where even on Easy mode, you will have a challenge, to the point I have no issue with admitting using save states as the Castlevania Collection version includes, but Bloodlines has a lot to it in terms of virtues to it including how this difficulty is with respect to the player. Konami, praise them, even back in the original version, alongside their trademark Konami code and others, included a password system which, if you had a pen and paper, lets you stay on the password screen as long as needed to write down the code you get for each new level when you beat the one before. The gameplay itself has a lot of virtues too once you get used  to it, even in helpful touches that you can hit projectiles and destroy them, or the trademark that you can find food hidden behind breakable pieces of walls, signposted whilst rarer here. Jump and attack have, if limited, the ability to send the whip/spear in multiple directions, and a lot of the game is memorisation but in a way that is not pointlessly difficult. There is also the special weapons, which is a franchise staple, usually in the games having hearts you need to collect to power them, red gems here instead. Barring a super fourth weapon you can find, you have the choice (and need to avoid accidentally collecting the less preferred weapon) of a boomerang (forwards attack, coming back for additional damage if thrown right), an axe (goes diagonally up in an arch, comes back down), and holy water (useless), with the addition for more gems you can execute a more powerful version.

Playing the game twice, for both characters, I was already learning and improving too, so modern releases of Bloodlines with save states have the advantage to allow one to get better and better, appreciating the aesthetic virtues of this game to the point one could try, with plays, for the eventual one credit run of the game on various difficulties. As a franchise, just from this atypical one, Castlevania is imagining cramming as many horror and folklore entities into one game as enemies as you can get. This game alone is impressive for a visual and audio production, pure gothic adventure with surreal touches and over the top. Going through level to level, across Europe to England, level one is in Transylvania, which only feels less memorable as, ironically whilst with the difficulty spikes onwards, the later levels as they get harder also become more memorable in the obstacles and the sights on hand. It does however, from the get-go, have a macabre nature, with bodies hanging off hooks and corpses which led to the original Europe releases having to be censored. This is beautiful 16 bit imagery to look at, and marks a moment as well as, for the soundtrack, this was the first game composer Michiru Yamane started on in this franchise. Working on Konami games before and after, she would work on countless Castlevania games with collaborators, including in the 32 bit era with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997), her music here for her first game in this franchise wonderfully atmospheric.

By Level 2, Greece, the difficult is upped with drowning hazards, but also with the fact that, alongside some learning - that you gain such as the dodge, and that fireballs do not beat whips - you also see the imagination on display. Fighting minotaurs and desecrating ancient statues, this leads to the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy and where the gameplay fully won me over with its creativity. You are no longer spanking mermen with the whip, but dealing with slanted stages, having to manoeuvre on auto scrolling stages, and challenges which at first can be a shock but are all with lush moody aesthetic. The technology of the era too, Mega Drive's graphical capabilities, do have to be talked about as they shown themselves across all the levels but more and more prominently by the middle levels, such as with Piza and the fourth level, a military factory in Germany. Alongside scaling perilous heights or dealing with helmet wearing skeletons, it is worth focusing on how this game was pushing the hardware in ways that could be taken for granted, such as the idea of levels having background and foreground layers, something which Germany as a level has with some of the best looking sections with elaborate moving cogs in and behind the stage. There is Germany's boss, a strange cog machine monster, who putters about in a cute but evil way if they do not turn into a buggy to run you over, who is depicted as a polygonal-like character, the many first attempts to make "3D" graphics which have a new strange aura around them but have to be appreciated for their innovations.

As the game raises the challenge, it is as if the production becomes more elaborate to compensate for this, the reward of accomplishing further along being greater aesthetic flourishes which is helped by how more idiosyncratic the later sections of levels become, from combat and/or platform sections to figure out. The gardens of Versailles in France, opening level 5, may have annoying swinging rose monsters, and giant flowers whose pollen reverse your controls, but those flowers can be destroyed, and the luscious sights here, even grim ones of a giant fountain overflowing with blood and forging un-destroyable red skeletons on you, are beautifully animated to look at. Fighting a maiden who turns into a giant moth leads to the final level, befittingly for Bram Stoker's Dracula set in England. Some of the more unconventional challenges come here, such as an actual optical illusion where the screen is refracted into three layers, having to watch where your feet are for the platforms and incoming Medusa heads, or the gravity being upside down the screen later. It does have a long boss run which would have been difficult on the original version, with a boss run hosted by the Grim Reaper with randomised choice, the Reaper himself, Elizabeth Bartley herself and three stages of Dracula, but by this point, over two plays, I fell for Bloodlines. It introduced me to this franchise, but contextually as well, as the game not like the others, this also worked in terms of winning me over more to Sega Mega Drive even further. A console from before I got into videogames, my tastes, as much from having a Sega Saturn and a Playstation, come for the 32 bit era, and also the strange curiosities of the period like FMV, but this emphasised the magic of the 16 sprite era just as much. This type of game is one I appreciate more for its spectacle, and in mind that this originates from a franchise with more entries, which are being made available, and this excites as much as I love Castlevania: Bloodlines as it is.