#120 - Castle of Dragon

The appropriate response to this cover is to pick it apart. Why does the princess look like a man? Why is the castle drawn so poorly? Why does the dragon look terrified to be alive?

Killer Croc guest stars.

Spoiler alert: this game's getting an “F.” What's with my negative attitude towards games as of late, you ask? The real question is, what's with games that suck getting in the way of good games? If I could, I would prance down the road, stopping to smell and caress the chrysanthemums, before continuing to prance along my merry way. Every game would get an “A” because life is so wonderful, how could anything be bad? Unfortunately, we live in trying times, and in trying times, it gets harder and harder to put smiles on our faces. Perhaps at a different time, in a different place, Castle of Dragon would have gotten a “D.” Perhaps, on a good day, I could overlook the game's raging flaws and say, “Well, Castle of Dragon, God bless it, is trying its best.” After playing through crap after crap after crap, I'm ready for a break. Castle of Dragon spits on my break. I spit on Castle of Dragon.

If Altered Beast and Castlevania had a mutated lovechild, I'd like to think Castle of Dragon would be its name. The backgrounds, the characters, the enemies all remind me of Castlevania, but the overblown sprites (which, admittedly, look pretty good for an NES game) and the clunky swordplay seem stolen directly from that arcade/Genesis “classic.” As with ninety-five percent of all NES games, it's a side-scroller and you play a big sword-swinging beefcake whose trying to rescue the princess. Wield your sword against bats, skeletons, zombies, and any number of Universal monsters that don't seem to respond to the cold edge of a blade. It's simple gameplay, in theory, but things get difficult when you try to use your shield. Your shield bounces the enemies back, but this means you can't swing at them right away. You then have a choice: take an obscene amount of damage while trying to hack your enemy to bits, or block their attacks and watch them bounce around all day. There are power-ups you can get for both your weapon and your armor. If you acquire the blue suit of armor, you have twice as much life, but since the enemies get more difficult as you progress, you can't really survive without it. You can get flame projectiles, among others, for your sword, but after you use them a few times, they're completely depleted. Oh, and you only have one life and no continues.

In Japan, this game is called Dragon Unit. While it's still a stupid name, why would Seta retitle it Castle of Dragon for the United States? For once, Japan was able to put two English words together better than native English speakers. At this point, I'm just complaining to complain, but there really is no reason this game couldn't have been titled Dragon Castle. The title would have looked nicer, probably resulting in more sales and I wouldn't have had to play it until I got to the “D”s. Everybody wins!

F

#119 - Castle of Deceit

Don't worry - this cover is for a completely different game.

A sad day for Little Nemo...

After looking at the cover for Castle of Deceit, you'd be forgiven in thinking that you're either going to play as a vampire that shoots light rays out of it's hands or a vampire hunter who kills said vampires that shoot light rays out of their hands. DON'T BE “DECEIVED!” You actually play as a magician whose apparel of choice happens to be a pink robe, garnished with cut-out yellow stars (according to the game's developers, moons would have taken too much time to draw and glitter, well, don't get them started on how expensive glitter is!). For those who will never play this game – and that better be every single person reading this – yes, your character sprite looks like a six-year-old with his dad's robe on. You shoot stuff out of your wand, get the key, open the door, get the other key, open the other door, get frustrated constantly with terrible controls and cheap enemies, fight surprisingly decent boss battles, and... that's it!

For those of you getting a game design degree who want to write their masters' theses on why unlicensed games are bad for the industry, look no further than Castle of Deceit. Unless Frank Cifaldi, historian of all things retro over on 1Up, can discover why this game wasn't licensed, the only reason I can find is that the game is just awful... or the developers didn't have enough money to pay the licensing fees. But, for argument's sake, I'm running with awful. Much like Duncan Meech and his abomination Castelian, Castle of Deceit's developers Judye Pistole and A.R. Henderson (let's give blame where blame is due) have never held a Nintendo controller in their lives. Jump is programmed to the “B” button, not the “A” button. It's not a huge pain, but you do feel like you're playing backwards sometimes. The magician's movements are slippery, too, as if the terrain was just slathered with Crisco. Hate your life while playing? You bet! Crappy controls are complemented by the cheap enemies, whose patterns and movements have zero rhyme or reason. White stingrays sometimes float up and down, and other times, they come right for you, attacking you with reckless abandon. Most enemies take three hits to kill, but the AI is so “good,” the enemies are constantly dodging your blows. It's so bad, it can take up to twenty seconds to kill one enemy. In twenty seconds, I could have beaten the majority of Contra's first stage. That's a long time to focus on one enemy for an NES title!

After struggling through the first level, I was surprised to find the boss battle was incredibly well done. Every battle is in first-person where you face the boss head on, avoiding his projectiles and hitting him with your own. It feels like some of Contra's battles to some extent, but they're such a nice break from the collect keys, enter doors, try not to upset your grandma with your swearing that the rest of the game gives to you, that it almost feels like a different game.

After trying to beat the second level for what felt like hours, I gave up on Castle of Deceit. All I had to do was run to the right of the stage, climb to a higher level, go back across to the other end of the stage, and enter a door. What stood in my way of this simple task were moth creatures that constantly regenerated every time I beat them. They fly around you, up next to you – basically, they're “all up in your grill” and it's hard to get any shots off of them. They'd knock me off of the top level every time, so I'd walk all the way back to the other side of the stage over and over again. In the end, the moths won. I turned off the game after spending far too much time on it. Don't be like me. Don't play this game.

F

#118 - Castelian

 

  

Yup, that looks about right.

 

 This is the first screen of the game. I died several times here. I wish I was joking.

What's a Castelian, you ask? At first I thought it sounded like a top-secret Italian dish; like, if you were Italian, you would enter into a restaurant, pull the waiter down to your ear, whisper "Casteliano." He would nod, a grim, knowing look on his face. Twenty minutes later, he would present said Italian with the best Italian food you've never heard of. If only Castelian was a succulent secret and not an attempt at making a game. After having engaged myself in Castelian's world for more than twenty minutes, I've decided that it is not a game. It is a cartridge-shaped mass that contains all of the known and unknown evil in the world, programmed by one man, Duncan Meech. Whether Mr. Meech knew what he was creating or whether the project got out of hand and overpowered him, is unknown. It doesn't matter. May God have mercy on the souls who have played this game, and of those who have yet to venture unknowingly down its nightmarish path.

You play a frog-ish creature whose goal is to progress up several flights of stairs. You avoid eyeballs, bouncing balls – any manner of ball that you can think of, really. Once you ascend as many flights of stairs as Duncan Meech thinks you should, you enter a door and progress to the next tower where, yes, several more flights of stairs await for you to climb them. Remember those old RPGs where you ascend insanely large towers with hundreds of floors, grind until your eyes bleed, acquire cool items and weaponry, only to die and have to start all the way back at the beginning? I think Castelian was trying to go for that style of gameplay in an action format. It's not a bad idea, in theory, but the incentive for progression just doesn't exist like it does in an RPG.

Let's get to why I, and several others like me, believe this game is an abomination from the pit: the controls. When I first started playing, I noticed that the "A" button shot out white pellets from my frog-ish creature's mouth. I pressed the "B" button and nothing happened. My conclusion from this was that the developers made a game that didn't require a jump function. I moved forward and when I ran into my first eyeball enemy, I tried shooting white pellets at him. It didn't seem to be hurting him, but I continued to move forward and hit him. As I did, I jumped into him, effectively killing myself. I did this several times without knowing why, until I discovered that pressing left or right and the "A" button at the same time makes you jump. Unfortunately, jumping is essential to moving forward in this game. You need to make precise jumps to land on elevators or to move up flights of stairs. One misstep (and there will be more than one) and you could land all the way back at the beginning. This will make you hate your own life, the "game," and/or Duncan Meech.

This is the end of the first level. I never made it here nor did I want to after twenty minutes of soul-sucking madness


In all my months of reviewing NES games, never have I encountered a game where I died several times on the first two screens. Even in other terrible games like Beetlejuice, or my favorite, Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, I've been able to move forward even if I didn't want to. Castelian's problem is that it hides behind the facade of cuteness and simplicity. In truth, if you wanted to make a friend think they suck at video games, you could recommend Castelian by saying, "Yeah, you play this cute frog and all you have to do is get to the top of the tower in every level. Pretty simple stuff, really." Set up a hidden camera in their room and laugh as they try to tackle one diabolical level after the next. Once you realize that you're a voyeuristic psychopath who wants to harm his own friends, it is already too late: the evil of Castelian has entered you.

F-