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.

SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV - Study No. 7

Replacing the map of the surrounding landscape is one of Dracula's castle, somewhat abstractly showing what the order of business will be, and accompanied by a turbulent keyboard (harpsichord or piano?) tune. Each large tile at the end of a path designates a boss, but the route in fact extends to the clocktower, bridge, and pinnacles to the upper right -- something that may have surprised a few players back when. Stage 6 is the classic entry halls, seen in the NES trilogy (albeit in a reduced form for CV2), most recognizable for their large gray columns and red tattered curtains. CV4 opts for discontinuing the pattern of having "Vampire Killer" play in this setting, and instead inserts an original courtly composition for organ and strings, bereft of any percussion or motor rhythms.

These entry halls retain a couple of the details from CV3's (block 8) -- sculptures of robed women set upon pedestals in arched recesses, and frame-like moldings with angled edges (not appearing until block 6-2). Returning, too, are the shuffling groups of zombies and bats, which now hang from upper walls and wait for Simon to get close enough before swooping down. A couple of zombie canines are also present, possibly as a stand-in for CV1's panthers. They'll crumple to the floor from a whip hit, but right themselves a few seconds later and continue running about. Simon's sprite here is taller relative to the surroundings than it is in CV1/3, but there is still a sense of scale gained from the retention of the columns whose capitals are obscured, making you wonder how far up they go.

The lower shot is from the Japanese version, and shows that the sculptures were partly nude before being made "decent" for the American/European versions. You can see differences between the HUDs, too: the Japanese version's text and numbers are darker and more dimensional. There are several other changes, like the game's logo, the Japanese version of which is shown crowning the map in this post's two first images. I prefer it to the English logo. The blood-dripping characters have a weapon-like malice, the purple-to-red color scheme is closer to evoking SCV4's weird palettes, and the castle silhouette is a sort of redundant touch, and funner for its excess than the plaque.

 

Axe Knights didn't show up until CV1's fifth and penultimate stage, and were rightfully treated as a higher level enemy for their resilience and ability to attack with projectile axes that could be thrown higher or lower, and returned, in magical-boomerang-like fashion, to their owners after a couple of seconds. Although they were still formidable in CV3, the Knights appeared earlier on in the adventure and in more than one stage, and their presence (not quantitatively) was somewhat lessened. One of these stages was the entry halls, and that's perhaps why the Knights are in SCV4's variant. They're certainly more interesting than most other carried-over enemies, just by virtue of intrinsically having more complexity than the typical Castlevania enemy, yet in many cases they're missing the particular challenges their patterns can bring. Simon can, as he could with the Bone Pillars, dangle the whip and nullify their axes; and, of course, he can attack from below structures. So, Axe Knights can't really function by themselves or even with architecture that, traditionally, might've been suited to the Knights' behavior -- to function, they need other enemies to come into the picture and complicate things. To the game's credit, it does attempt to do this with a smattering of platforms (atypically without supports) that limit ease of movement near the first two Knights and several adjacent bats. This would be a more exciting introduction if SCV4 had kept the classic steady stream of bats, fluttering in from either side of the screen, and not made them one-time threats.

Up a flight of steps, assumedly at the halls' upper limits, Simon needs to utilize massive swinging chandeliers and small (again unsupported) platforms to progress to the left, over a deadly drop. The void-like background hums between black and a dark red, and the candles' flames flicker and bend to match the chandeliers' swaying. Even if the hardest work to be done is some timed jumps to get across the chandeliers, it's a memorable section for its sparse but strange imagery and the way that this imagery introduces and augments the drama of the stage's spiny second theme.

On to a sort of grand hall, patrolled first of all by more Axe Knights, with shadowy aisles on the side for ghostly dining. Not for the first time do we see the game's love affair with purples and greens (for some reason, in this instance, I'm reminded of a few rooms from Aria of Sorrow's Castle Corridor). I'm fond of the columns' and walls' craggy, irregular textures; they're a neat contrast against the relatively elegant affects of the chandeliers, dining tables, candelabras, and the floor's trim stonework. You'll want to mind the chandeliers, since they fall when Simon is underneath them. This is an idea that would return for a segment of Bloodlines' fifth stage, the Palace of Versailles. One of the game's two most well hidden secrets is after the first two chandeliers, and I can't imagine anyone discovering it thanks to anything aside from sheer luck. To access it, you need to whip (no, none of the relics will do) a part of the floor that crumbles and reveals a staircase leading down.

Below we find a candle-lined chamber holding a bounty of items, including every relic and a potroast. What makes this spot exceptional is that it was used by the developers as an opportunity to flesh out the world, and is, as far as I can tell, the first example of a Castlevania game using one of its secrets to take some sort of narrative and atmospheric liberty. On top of having its own lengthy theme, by far the most lighthearted piece of the soundtrack, the room is patrolled by the ghosts of a man and his dog, which runs along the lower floor and weirdly rebounds off of its walls in arcing leaps. The only way to safely get to the bottom half is to attack the dog, since it hurts Simon -- but, once struck, the dog falls to the ground, prompting its owner to run to its side, kneel and sob with a hand to his face, and fade away. It's interesting to see the game attempt to foster a little empathic moment -- another case of an ostensibly kitschy action game deviating from expectations. Dawn of Sorrow brought the man and dog back as a persistent enemy called the Dead Mate in its Silenced Ruins area. This wasn't so memorable, aside from the novelty of seeing an obscurity resurrected.

If we're to return to the main path, Ectoplasms, flashing a variety of colors, intrude on the scene with "screensaver object" behavior -- bouncing off of the edges of the screen while adhering to a diagonal course -- and a group of reclining dead noblewomen take to the air, hovering about and homing in with surprising speed. Both of these enemies call upon the whip's new capabilities, or the axe subweapon, and their combined efforts make for a welcome and interestingly messy scuffle. I've always felt that the nobelwomen/men had a sort of unsettling appearance (as much as a sprite from a 90s videogame can be unsettling) for their lack of facial features, even if Simon is similarly lacking.

Messing up the quickness of your jumps in the first screenshot either means needing to repeat a part of the stage or death, since the spikes underlining the platforms are instant-killers. On the third floor, players are met with another nice moment of tension due to good, simple enemy placement: a skeleton advances towards Simon, right next to a pit of deadly spikes. Brave or Grave.

Right after, we have our first encounter with a possessed coffin. It stands upright and shudders, giving us reason to worry, but it can't be attacked -- not until it's passed by, at which point it will give chase at such a speed that turning around to retaliate is ill-advised, unless you're holding the cross subweapon and preemptively use its boomerang behavior to hit the coffin twice. This chase scene is very short, but it does make players contend with skeletons to get ahead unharmed. You'll notice that the screenshot is of the Japanese version; this is to show that the coffins have a cross symbol on their covers that was removed in the EU/USA versions. Konami's occidental division was apparently deathly afraid of any outrage from Christian denominations regarding imagery. But the game is so very full of potentially objectionable elements, such as promoting the lifestyle of skeletons, that the imagined battle could never have been won without revamping the game on a fundamental artistic level. The aforementioned mouldings from CV3's entry halls can also be seen here.

Red skeletons make their return in this hallway, felled by a snap of the whip but rising again soon after to resume their patrol. To avoid getting pincered by them and whip skeletons, you'll want to keep moving. Mostly I've included a screenshot of this section because I think it looks great, especially with those scrolled capitals, the gray wall's shading that bolsters the foreground arches' presence, and the recesses holding bony remains. The foreground is its own separately scrolling layer.

A thunderstorm can be seen illuminating the clouds outside windows on the fourth floor. This could be the strangest example of level design in the game. Ghoulish hands reach out of the wall, flexing their fingers, and each one is coupled with frozen, flickering skeletal knight. The idea here is that getting grabbed by the hands causes a knight to come to life and attack. This can be dealt with either by whipping the knight before its sword's strike can land or by crouch-walking under the hands, thus circumventing getting grabbed. To me this is strange because the interactive terms are very vaguely expressed, most of all because you don't know what's going on with the skeletal knights when you first see them -- why aren't they moving? will they hurt me if I touch them? is the game glitching? I assume most players will crouch-walk their way through.

A rotating circle of coffins (note that the cross symbol is replaced by a rectangular impression) show the developers having a bit of fun, sort of in the same vein as stage 4's rotating room. The fifth floor is where the stage's most exciting action happens. I suppose it's meant to be a mishmash of a dining and dance hall. Details from the entrance return with new accents and inclusions that make for a more grandiose effect, like the coffered ceiling and the closer columns that appear to have detached shafts. As Simon advances, ghostly couples materialize and dance around the chamber -- a vivid concept (with apparently a lot of appeal, judging by fan projects) that wouldn't reappear until Aria of Sorrow. Simultaneously, possessed dining tables obstruct Simon's way, but they can be destroyed before they flip out if they're whipped from a certain distance. The trick here is to balance a need to keep walking, dodging, and attacking with having to occasionally stop to get the tables out of the way.

It's fairly doable to not get hit by the stage's boss, the Dancing Spectres, but this is, in my opinion, actually one of the game's most successful bosses. Besides serving as a kind of climax to the theme of waltzing spirits, the Spectres' behavior -- twirling about, thrusting forward with a rapier, and causing a trio of possessed arrows to appear -- necessitates full use of the arena. They flash in and out of sight, making the tracking of their movement more difficult than it would otherwise be. This fight is as much about getting your hits in as it is about staying a step ahead via the platforms (and after several prior cases of floating platforms, it's cool to see these blocks so nicely contextualized). Of course, the cross subweapon, as usual, is -- if you have it -- a tool of destruction, but I find it hard to get worked up about What-Ifs when the fight in this case is so fundamentally sound and thematically germane.

Next time, we'll be exploring a favorite stage of mine, the Unliving Quarters, or library.

SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV - Study No. 6

Here it is: the last outdoor stage. At its end waits Dracula's castle. True to what may be expected by now by readers and players, SCV4's castle lead-up is dramatically downplayed. Another traditionally designed title such as Rondo of Blood might see the player trudging under the mantle of a thunder storm and engaging in mini-boxing matches with axe armors to the lively tune of "Vampire Killer"; but SCV4 erects minimal resistance and continues its gray-headed sort of (as an acquaintance observed) "Slough of Despond" theme with a fertile yet depressed setting, and an initial musical piece that subsists on tromping drums and unadorned, premonitory woodwind/brass melodies.

Stage 5 has you first ascend several tiers of paths, away from the ground level of a swamp. The first monsters you're bound to run into are a claw (a floating, disembodied arm premiering in stage 2 that latches onto Simon and drains his hearts), a couple of gargoyles zooming down from an upper corner, and several bone pillars -- all obstacles in the most basic sense. A blue trail lined on one side by spiny tufts of animated grass and, on the other, by muck-green accretions leads the way. Around the middle/upper-middle of the stage's height is a large stone wall with recesses holding red, pulsing lights, neither flames nor explicitly supernatural. SCV4 has sporadic issues in a couple of stages with enemies disappearing if you retreat from a spot and then return, and stage 5 is such a stage. For example, the bone pillar in the above screenshot might be absent depending on how your navigation controls the screen-space.

Making this weirder is that stage 5 is where harpies carrying fleamen (a reference to Castlevania's fourth stage, although the carriers there were large birds) make their first and only appearance, and have the possibility of appearing not at all (their emergence seems to depend on slow and/or halting player-movement). Curiously, the fleaman sprite in all versions of SCV4 was drawn to reflect the appearance -- that of a vampiric rabbit -- of fleamen in the Japanese version of CV3. You can defeat the harpies and, as SCV4 calls them, gremlins at once if you whip the harpies before their unloading.

At the upper level, the overall route flattens out and becomes several straight paths punctuated by pits and platforms, which are nicely still contextualized by being attached to wooden rods. Like the rest of the stage's design, the platforming is more of a formality than a reflexive challenge, even with the couple of gargoyles and bone pillars in your way. Golden-brown leaves adorning the screen's top reinforce the autumnal flavor that's been hovering about in other stages. The harpies/gremlins can still appear, but, as before, they can pretty reliably be avoided by not stalling. A few of stage 2's details -- the purple-trunked trees, grass, and strata -- reappear in the background.

The soundtrack does something interesting in block two: it plays the opening to the prologue's, in fact Dracula's, theme, and then hooks it into the minimal piece that plays at stage 1's intro, allowing that to play until the timer runs out. This is a clever narrative move -- the replay of a fragment of Dracula's theme signals impending entry into the castle, while the stage 1 motif marks this stage as a sort of new journey and suggests that Simon, as a force for good, ultimately will override Dracula.

Whip skeletons, among the now-familiar bats and a skeletal knight, are introduced here. They're behaviorally identical to the skeletal knights, except that their whip has a longer reach. Aside from the music, block 5-2's most noteworthy assets are its environmental details, beginning with artificial and natural masses of stone veiled by gray, twitching ivy with purple, glowing pods at its extremities. Thick roots trail down from above, alongside brick columns, as the path shifts to a staircase. There's an air of discomfort, even grotesquery, in these details' denseness that's complemented by the snippet of Dracula's theme.

A line of robed statues atop pedestals leads the way following the staircase's end and our arrival onto the entry lane, free of enemies. Simon treks under the portico's hood, upheld by bizarre columns, and we see that the entrance's huge, wooden door is open -- as much an invitation as a challenge.

Despite being fairly uninteresting to write about, and one of the least demanding places in the game, stage 5's mood and tonal development, contrary to the usual fare and defined on its own glum terms, make it a respectable part of the experience. It's one of SCV4's moments that especially needs to be played, with the context of prior stages, because it is so dependent on its atmosphere's invocations. The deliberate, motivic use of music and the nonviolent stage's end make as good of a case as anything else might in the game that SCV4's developers were striving for a special, subdued sort of drama, and one that is worthy of acclaim, despite the mechanical and hard-design mismanagement.