SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV - Study No. 2.5

Incoming mini-post because there were several things I'd forgotten to mention in Study No. 2 that I want to touch on before I forget (okay, I wouldn't forget, but it's easier to formulate a new post knowing that I've gotten these bits out of the way, or at least approached them).

#1: Although I'd mentioned that stage 1's block 1-1 presented the skeleton enemy in its most primitive state, I did not mention that block 1-2 supplies several fully developed (let's call them aggressive) skeletons that throw bones and jump. Another comparison with previous games must be made. Aggressive skeletons in Castlevania and Castlevania 3 were the closest thing that Simon and Trevor had to doppelgangers. If you tried to outrun such a skeleton, it chased after your avatar at an equal speed; yet if you tried to confront this skeleton, it would retreat. All the while, the skeleton would be tirelessly throwing one bone at a time in your direction with very little pause after a throw so that it could continue along its advance or retreat with little downtime. Consequently, the best trick to defeating skeletons was to bring them towards you by retreating and then striking either at the moment that the skeleton's brief offensive action made it immobile, or, provided you were close enough, striking in the midst of its advance. Of course, you also had the options that the subweapons afforded, such as throwing a splash of holy water on the ground between yourself and the skeleton, retreating, and letting the skeleton take itself out by advancing over the water.

SCV4 removes that sort of inversely-mirrored behaviorism from its aggressive skeletons. Instead, they erratically walk to the left and right while facing you. Their movement is slightly slower than Simon, and, barring rarities, if they do jump to close a space between themselves and Simon, they'll only do it once. After they've landed, they're stuck to that surface. On top of this is their new bone-throwing pattern: like their patrolling movements, they don't really have a pattern. They'll throw a bone when they want to. What all of this means is that SCV4's aggressive skeletons aren't so aggressive, and their erratic behavioral elements aren't enough on their own to create sufficient tension. Stage 9 has a memorable moment with a hardier skeleton, but outside of that case, whose difficulty is bound to its unique spatial conditions, there's not a lot else. We should also remember that Simon can whip upwards in three directions. Ordinarily, if a skeleton were on a level above one's avatar, the player would need to reach that level to deal with that skeleton (a classic example is the first room of Castlevania's fifth stage), or utilize the axe subweapon if they had it. However, if a skeleton is on an upper level in SCV4, a player can whip above themselves and deal with the skeleton in a way that the skeleton can't respond to with matching competence.

#2: Simon can now adjust himself in midair following a jump. Previously, a jump in a direction meant that your avatar was unalterably going in that direction. It was a commitment, and like the left-or-right whipping it was a mechanical restriction that gave the games their peculiar challenge (unlike the restriction on whipping directions, the limit on jumping had some realistic basis -- unusual for action-platformer games of the time (and still somewhat unusual!)). Now, with all of these comparative criticisms it's important to clarify that SCV4's edits to the repertoire aren't problematic because they're disrupting "the way things should be." If the series had forever and exactly stood by the model of the NES games, there would have been stagnation (and it is arguable that some of that stagnation can be felt in parts of CV3, even during parts of apparent novelty). SCV4's mechanics are being criticized for their undermining of level design. It is also important to clarify that we're hardly to the point of a game like Symphony of the Night, a game whose bestiary is partially taken from that of a preceding game (Rondo of Blood), despite the level design having changed from an action emphasis to one of exploration, and despite the character being the opposite of the mechanical archetype of the Belmont. And it is lastly important to clarify that these criticisms -- either of SCV4 or SotN -- do not necessarily lead to wholesale damnation of the targets. It will be part of my task, in this tour of SCV4, to bring up positive points that make a case for the game's value, because I do believe that it is valuable. This will be a difficult task: SCV4's value, I think, lies beyond a hard analysis of how a given stage "works." Rather, it lies in the real-time act of playing, of absorbing its converging and accumulating atmospherics. This is a value that, in a sense, lies beyond words and beyond defense.

~

#3: This is a preemptive comment, since the material being used for it comes in part from SCV4's second stage. ActRaiser was released for the SNES on December 16, 1990. SCV4 was released on October 31 of 1991. Two screenshots from the former can be seen above two of the latter.  I use ActRaiser as a comparison for its stages' similar thematic emphases and the small span of time between it and SCV4 (true, a year in the 90s meant more for videogames than it does in the 2010s (this is not to say that it took a year for SCV4 to be developed; more likely, it was half of that), but not to the extent that the comparison can be undermined). I'd like readers to look at ActRaiser's screens and notice several things: 1) the binary division between a foreground and background, 2) the simple manner in which the grounds' features are layered, 3) the minor number of discrete details, and 4) the foreground's "literal" colors ("brown things" are brown; "green" things are green). This forest's landscape can be quickly understood: a grounding dirt path, occasionally capped by short grass, its cross-sectioned side pure black; bushes and tall grass lining the side of the path furthest from us with little done to mask where the tiles end, giving their lines a domesticated appearance; the bold bodies of trees rising up from these bushes or tall grasses, each of whose crown of foliage is often individualized from others'; and lastly, the background as a single scrolling unit that, to embolden the foreground, devotes its real estate to minimal details and a limited palette of pale greens and dark blues.

And then we have SCV4. Curious, almost animalistic clumps of dirt lead the foreground; behind them are straight shots of grass that are a mixture of green, reddish-brown, and ocher. This vegetation more resembles a lane of tightly packed, ribbed virescence. The path has a central tread of spotty dirt lining it with breaks in between of grass. Behind this is what appears to be an elevation of dirt supporting yet more, and messier, grass. From here, trees with purplish trunks rise up. Their leaves aren't so different from those of ActRaiser's, but it's hard to tell them apart from the (bluer) leaves of the trees behind them, and their masses are interwoven. Also note the reddish, unexplainable diagonals embedded among the leaves. Deciduous trees' purple trunks behind the first row sport bulbous forms that make each resemble a baring of internal organs. Between them and the frontal trees are periodic orange masses that must be mounds of dirt and rock. Most distantly is a row of coniferous trees. All of this detail is confined to two layers (meanwhile, above, four layers of storm clouds roll on by). The second screenshot of SCV4 has been included just to show what the foreground, and those "animalistic clumps of dirt," become once Simon has walked far enough: a subterranean cross-section that seems more akin to the bumpy, scaly hide of some creature.

If there is another Super Nintendo game that matches the oddness, "tasteless" density, and knobby grotesqueness of what's just been shown and described of SCV4, I'm not aware of it.  I have, now and then, seen its visuals written off as ugly. What I want to propose here is that that isn't an adequate dismissal. SCV4 has moments that I would call beautiful; it also has moments that I would call ugly. There is no part of me that wants to re-brand these ugly moments as "beautiful" for justification, because their ugliness, similar to a painting by Francis Bacon or Philip Guston, is their justification. To me, SCV4's look is representative of an enthusiasm for the new, powerful technology of the SNES, an enthusiasm that wasn't so concerned about checking itself or being levelheaded, and which was filtered through the artists' interpretation of what Castlevania was, or could be. There is a baroque fecundity in this ugliness, and it is found in no other Castlevania game.