Originally Posted by
Dire 51
This will probably do it for me, and if anyone has a better title suggestion, please let me know.
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Never Judge a Game by its Screenshots
by Rob "Dire 51" Strangman
By the time 1989 rolled around, I was 14 and determined to get an NES, as were my brother Ryan and my sister Sharon. Our parents didn't have a lot of cash at the time, but then fortune smiled on us, as they decided to sell our land in Connecticut and move to Florida. The land sold for a great price, and on a trip to Florida that May to find a house, our parents surprised us by going to Toys 'R Us and getting us the object of our desire: an NES Action Set.
Our parents loved the first house we looked at and bought it on the spot. With that business done, we headed back to Connecticut to start preparing for the move. During the next month and a half, we managed to find the time to go rent some games for our new NES in between packing. While looking at the games for rent in a local video store one day, I stumbled across two games. The covers looked intriguing, and they were part of a series, so I decided to pick them up and check them out. They were entitled Castlevania and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.
I looked at the screenshots on the back of the boxes and shook my head. Man, did these look stupid. I put them back down and moved on.
In mid-August, we had completed our move and were now starting all of the humdrum stuff: first and foremost getting Ryan and I registered for school (not Sharon though, as she had already graduated). September rolled around, and we officially started school. In order to help ease the transition, our parents agreed to buy us each a new game. Ryan was going with them to the store, but I had chores to do, so I was staying home. I gave my parents a list with my top four choices on it.
Now here's the odd part: I put Castlevania and Simon's Quest on the list. To this day, I don't know why, especially since I hadn't seen them since looking at the boxes in the video store in Connecticut, nor had I read much about them. It puzzles me to this day as to why I did that (and for those keeping score, the other two games I listed were 1942 and 1943: The Battle of Midway).
A couple of hours later, my parents were back. Ryan came into the room with his new game, The Adventures of Lolo, held high, and immediately demanded that he try it first. I had completed my chores and was in the middle of writing something, so I just nodded. My father came in then and handed me the game they'd bought me: Castlevania. I thanked him, then looked at it as he left the room. I rolled my eyes as I realized what game I'd asked for and sighed. Then I put some books on top of it and went back to what I was doing.
An hour later, my brother was still playing Lolo. I stopped writing to watch for a minute, then picked up my stack of books next to me. There sat Castlevania, which I had completely forgotten about. Hmmm, I guess I'll give it a shot. I asked Ryan to turn off his game so I could play, but he whined about how far he was getting and how he didn't want to turn it off yet. So I rolled my eyes again, and went to ask Sharon if I could use her NES (which she had gotten a month or so previously so she wouldn't have to share with us). Luckily for me, she wasn't using it at the time. So I popped in Castlevania and hit the power button. The title screen came up and I pressed start.
Five minutes into it, I was thinking "hey, this isn't bad."
When I had finished off the first boss, I was starting to grin.
By the time I was halfway through stage 2, I had fallen in love with it.
Mentally I kicked myself for not giving it a chance earlier. This was awesome, probably the best game I had ever played. It's been nearly eighteen years since that day, and you know what? I still feel exactly the same way about it. And to think, I almost ended up with 1942 instead...
Never Judge a Game by its Screenshots
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Seems that titles stump me more often than not. I didn't have a title for "StubborNES" until Len suggested it to me. Yes, I still talk to Len after all these years (despite losing touch for most of the '90s), and he still plays videogames too. In fact, I sold him on Axelay and Gradius III the last time I went to visit him, a couple years back.
