Those of you who have been reading this site for a while may have realised that I'm a huge, huge Castlevania fan. Konami's vampire-hunting series is, without a doubt, my favourite of all time, and I consider several Castlevania titles to be among my favourite games of all time.
However, despite this intense level of affection, my love affair with Castlevania didn't start at the beginning. The first game in the franchise I played was Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge on the Game Boy, and while I loved it (it's probably my favourite Game Boy title), it wasn't the entry which turned me into a committed 'vania fan – that distinction belongs to the sublime Super Castlevania IV (plain old Akumajō Dracula in Japan).
I encountered this game almost by accident. Back in the early '90s, I considered myself to be fairly well-travelled; I owned an Atari ST, Mega Drive / Genesis and, by June 1992, a SNES. Thanks to my dad, who was (and still is) a seasoned follower of interactive entertainment, I was lucky enough to be exposed to a broader selection of games than most kids my age, but even so, it was impossible for me to try everything that was available, and Super Castlevania IV, for one reason or another, simply wasn't on my radar – until I had a sleepover at a friend's house.
He also owned a shiny new SNES, and had picked up some of the usual suspects – I dimly recall helping him complete Zelda: A Link to the Past during the visit. He also owned Super Castlevania IV, and we naturally booted it up during my stay. To say it was a life-changing moment might seem like hyperbole, but that's exactly what it feels like it was, looking back today, over 30 years later.
Even now, I can't quite articulate why Super Castlevania IV made such an impact on my young brain; as was noted by magazines like CVG and Mean Machines at the time of release, the game's famously slow opening level was hardly a showcase for the SNES' abilities – and in more recent times, it has come under fire for lacking the intense difficulty level that made its 8-bit predecessors so popular. Oddly, the less stressful introduction might be why I connected with it so swiftly.
The gothic visuals are detailed yet understated, while the sprites look almost realistic when compared to the anime-infused look that the series would embrace soon afterwards. And that music; Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo are geniuses, in my opinion. Many reviewers commented that the soundtrack was CD-quality at the time of release, and the years have done nothing to dent that impression. It's perhaps my favourite video game soundtrack, behind the equally impressive Symphony of the Night.
Another, rather unusual reason I think I gravitated towards the game was the fact that Francis Ford Coppola's Hollywood adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel hit cinemas at around this time. In fact, I can vividly recall standing in my friend's kitchen (perhaps even during the same sleepover where I played Super Castlevania IV for the first time) and there being a segment on the TV in which a presenter was asking if Gary Oldman was "handsome enough" to play Vlad, given the film's focus on the love story behind his character and Winona Ryder. It's odd how seemingly unrelated (yet thematically matched) events can collide together in this way, but, in my memory, there's a link between the 1992 movie and Castlevania's 16-bit debut.
Super Castlevania IV was my personal gateway to the rest of the series. Castlevania: Bloodlines was an insta-buy the moment it launched on the Mega Drive / Genesis in 1993, and I picked up the NES trilogy cheaply in the middle of the '90s – a time when it was possible to obtain such games for practically nothing, as eBay was yet to appear and prices were low. Symphony of the Night came along in 1997 and completely blew my mind; it was the Castlevania formula fused with Super Metroid and a dash of RPG action, and it remains my favourite game of all time.
However, without Super Castlevania IV, I might have passed on Symphony of the Night – and the many subsequent instalments that have provided me with so many hours of entertainment. The SNES title has stood the test of time, too; revisiting it as part of Castlevania Anniversary Collection has been a delight, and reminded me that there are certain games which are utterly timeless; Super Castlevania IV's muted graphics are, at times, as eye-catching as a painting, while its music boasts a level of maturity and beauty that didn't seem to exist back in 1991, at least to my still-developing ears.
Today, the Castlevania series is perhaps more famous than it has ever been, but ironically, this has more to do with the Netflix animated series than the video games themselves. Hopefully, Konami will see fit to resurrect the video game side of things sooner rather than later; as ever, I'll be the first in line when that happens – and I have a stone-cold 1991 SNES classic to thank for that.