SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV - Study No. 8

SCV4's seventh stage is, as I said at the end of the last article, one of my favorites from the game. It's a bit hard to say why, and that suggests to me that this personal preference comes from an interpretation of the stage's tonal qualities, expressed by the mixture of environmental details and music. Coming off of the sixth stage's drama and numerous development, stage seven seems all the more reserved, all the more an inward turn. Palettes are musty and dim; the stage goes through just one environmental shift; enemies take on a surreptitious character; the music is a peculiar, delicate critter springing about with fine notes in a triple time that feels vaguely irregular, describing both the quietness associated with a library and the creaky, shadowy oldness of the place in-game. As rich in visual suggestions as the setting is, there haven't been many library environments in the Castlevania series. Excepting SCV4, there have only been Symphony of the Night's Long Library, Aria of Sorrow's Study, Order of Ecclesia's Library, Lords of Shadow's Abbey Library, and Mirror of Fate's Library. It's a bit surprising to me that SCV4 remained unique in this regard until SotN. Still, despite the series enjoying the theme somewhat regularly later on, SCV4's expression stands on its own.

Stage 7 immediately introduces another carryover: the spear guard. Spear guards were in the first Castlevania, and patrolled a handful of paths in the second stage. They had no offensive capabilities (unless you're counting their somewhat erratic patrol movement), which certainly wasn't a problem in itself, but none of their positions were strategic; if they got too close to an attacking player, the player could retreat for safety and not expose themselves to any complicating factors. Simon's Quest brought them back for its mansion environments, and gave them a charging attack, but the mansions' level design was too haphazard to create strong relationships between the spaces and monsters. Unfortunately, the spear knights remain a misused enemy in SCV4. Despite their new ability to thrust their spears upward at Simon if he is a level above their route, the level design simply doesn't create any chances for this to be a legitimate threat, and so the spear knights come off much as they did in Castlevania: hardy mobile obstacles that the player must whip simply because they cannot be jumped over. The series would have to wait until Rondo of Blood for the first considerate design and application of this enemy type.

Konami was sure to add in a couple of animated details to enliven the place. Enormous books jostle about on their own in cases' shelves, and the eyes of avian-headed statues glow with yellow light. Although the lack of a ground floor in the background is a consequence of the floors' pits needing a visual reason for their fatal faculty, it's an interesting sight -- bookcases so tall that we can't see their bottoms. The windows in the back seem like a strange reduction of a Gothic window where an upper circular design is set above a pair of minor arches within an arched frame. I love the bright, almost viscous green that lines the stonework's sides.

In what appears to be a clear riff on Castlevania 3's extensive vertical rooms (in particular, those from block 5-0A), the library houses a long series of staircases haunted by gargoyle skeletons -- an interesting aerial enemy that flies from one side of the screen to the other in a sine wave that covers an increasing vertical space. Added to this are books that have taken to rebelling against being treated like books, and float in spots before shooting towards Simon. This is actually one of the game's best designed and most flawed rooms: there are ample and engaging threats to deal with as one descends, but it's also possible to drop down a bunch of flights and skip most of the route at the expense of perhaps a slap in the face by a fluttering tome. The only pit is at the bottom, and its placement right under a solid platform makes it nigh impossible to fall into. Weirdness going on in the background: a kind of suspended floor with simultaneous perspectives, and thickets of rectangular windows and recesses (empty bookcases?).

We're now on the third lower floor, and a couple of more thoughtful design challenges happen. In the first screenshot, Simon has to descend to the third platform while minding that either axe armor can throw axes towards both of the platforms facing them. The idea here, probably, was that the upper axe armor would instill self-consciousness about dropping down/descending, and the lower axe armor would need to be disposed to nullify the threat of its axe volleys knocking you into the pit. In my opinion, this could've been improved by squashing the vertical space and having a spear knight below so that the upper and lower platforms that lack axe armors would be less safe. On the upper platform, you'd have to worry about the spear knight's thrusts, and on the lower platform an axe armor to the immediate left would better contextualize the primary "heavy obstacle" function of the spear knight.

Screenshot #2 shows a slicker situation, wherein players alight upon zigzagging, floating books and contend with a couple of platforms along the way, each occupied by an indestructible but collapsible (with two hits) red skeleton. It's one of SCV4's rare resurrections of the first Castlevania's most identifiable and enjoyable design element: design that prompts constant forward movement while invoking tension through the consequential possibilities of pausing or readjusting. There's also an element of required punctuality between the floating platforms' shifting positions and the span of time a red skeleton remains collapsed.

Here, in the library's other even more dingy half, a gallery and armory, is where the stage really grabs my attention. No major design adjustments happen, but, for me, a special atmospheric character develops out of the surroundings' dingy-yet-colorful stillness and the craftier, weirder enemy selections. Minute animations in the painted (pretending to be painted, anyway) woman's face alert players to something being wrong. A whip to her obscured hand's region will make her unable to grab and detain Simon, who can then better deal with the clusters of bats, initially hanging from a frame (and fairly well camouflaged), which fly his way. Walls covered in checkerboard patterns recall stage 4, and we're treated to yet more purples and greens. The paths' stonework gets cruder, and the remotest backdrop has further abstracted.

It's possible that this portion serves as a catacombs, on top of its role as a gallery and armory, but it's hard to say for sure. Frames show within them skulls and limb bones, and some of the frames are comparable to loculi, yet the bones are much to big to be human (not exactly the strongest point to be made in such a videogame series, sure), and some frames, like the one in the above screenshot's upper right, look as though they are housing tattered canvases. Animalistic statues with menacingly glowing eyes, upholding stone spheres, suddenly and harmfully (if touched) crumble when approached. Just within block 7-2's first moments, a few happenings -- the living painting, obscured bats, and unstable statuary -- prompt a guarded response in the player. This greater dynamism and unpredictability in stage design is refreshing.

A skittering creature emerges beneath this path's carpeting and moves towards Simon as he's below a ceiling's row of spikes. It's harmless, but I am sure it was intended to make novices panic and, in their rush to get away from its advance and the spikes, run into a nearby cluster of bats (two are visible to the screenshot's far right) and have to make some split-second offensive decisions. Cool-headed or experienced players will crouch, letting the creature pass underneath without pushing Simon up into the spikes, and therefore have enough room and time to deal with the bats.

Be careful when ascending to this floor. A clubbing knight is hiding in the frame below, ready to strike. The clubbing knight, one of which is visible to the screenshot's upper left, is an unusual enemy -- it's stuck in one place, some position that allows it to retreat behind a kind of wall. This means that it's technically a non-mobile enemy, but its interaction within a given part of a stage deals in layers, and carries a three-dimensional aspect. Clubbing knights appear in four stages total, with stage 7 as the last. They're conceptually interesting as a destructible threat in the stage's makeup itself, but they're not utilized to their full effect. Konami could've instead fully hidden their bodies right up until players were about to pass their haunt, and also lengthened the time they wind up for a swing once they do appear. In this way, the knights would be both legitimate surprises and, thanks to the delay in their attack, have a wider use as a piece of tension-inducing level design. As it stands, their behavior is too erratic to be fair in tighter situations where you might be compelled to keep moving, and their premature visibility makes their horizontal stasis a little awkward. Still, their placement in the highlighted instance is more successful than the others, if only because seeing them pop out of frames is a more striking sight than them just being behind a wall.

The orange canine at the screenshot's top is a candle hunter. It's unique to this stage, and is one of the bestiary's oddest entries -- although basically the same as the zombie dog from stage 6, it leaps at candles during its patrol and knocks them down so that the player can't obtain their contents. The spot to the lower right with the overhanging block housed a double shot power-up, which lets Simon throw out two sub-weapons in quick succession.

This floating worm, known as a larva, has the distinction of being one of two enemies (the other is the dead mate) in the game that is only seen once. It crawls through the air in swirly, unforeseeable directions, and while it can be killed, it has a very high amount of health and its sole weak point is its head. The best strategy is to keep walking and, once you've reached the rightmost part of the room, wait for the larva's horrible, whirling, bubbling sound to disappear -- indicating that it's left the premises -- before continuing along the lower path to the left. The vivid and sudden sight of this immense, raucous creature creates a memorably unsettling moment, and builds on the motif of unpredictability.

The theming stresses the armory side of things in the block's penultimate room, with spears and axes hung on the walls and knights' suits set atop tables further back. A couple of axe armors guard the last hall, and are more interesting to deal with than they have been previously, since the player -- still bound to a staircase, and needing to ascend -- does not have convenient means of engagement. The axes of the one to the right can span most of the given distance, and the armor to the left is close enough to the staircase while being outside of easy vertical-diagonal reach of the whip that the player consciously needs to find an ideal spot to attack. This time around, I was struck by the thought that stage 7's boss might've come as a twist to some players: with block 7-2's skeletal details, empty picture frames, and prominent axe armors, one may have expected Death at its end.

Instead, players are met by a suit of armor that breaks out of its display case and attacks. In his first phase, Sir Grakul alternates between throwing his axe as an axe armor would (but only from his upper half, allowing players to duck under the axe if they're on the lowest level, or -- if they're on one of the platforms -- to avoid it with a precisely timed jump) and slamming it on the ground, causing two flames to crawl along the floor in either direction. After 3/4 of Grakul's health has been depleted, his axe shatters and he withdraws a sword, necessitating a retreat to the closest elevation from which the player can jump over his swipes. There is a bit of strangeness here reminiscent of Koranot's design, in that there is a symmetry to the room whose layout includes two strategically superior points (the elevations), and that the flame attack spreads out both ways, even though it's impossible to get to the right side without being hurt. That aside, this is a solid, exciting boss fight. Sir Grakul cuts an imposing figure, he ties into the armory theme, his voraciousness and adjacency to the player creates tension, and his attacks ensure that you will be making frequent choices on whether to whip or prepare to avoid an assault.

The floor gives way following Simon's victory, and he's swallowed by the resulting void. This echoes the transition in the original Castlevania between stage 3 and 4, wherein Simon falls down a shaft and lands in a subterranean zone. Likewise, next up is the dungeon, in my opinion SCV4's weakest place visually, but housing some of its strongest level design.

P.S. Please check out this great bass cover of the library's theme by YouTube user tiguilherman.