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Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Konami
Initial release: Jul 12, 1991 (Japan)
Platform: Nintendo Game Boy (with Game Boy Color re-release)
Alternate title: The Legend of Dracula II (Japan)
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| images c/o Mobygames |
The Nintendo Game Boy was no stranger to shovelware, hacked-down ports, and weird spinoffs for popular franchises. It wouldn't be a Nintendo platform without it. But sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes a company learns from their previous mistakes and makes something better. After the dull, frustrating mush that was Castlevania: the Adventure, you could be forgiven for not expecting much of the sequel. But you would be wrong: Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge (no relation to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest -- don't worry, we're getting to that one) is an improvement over the original in every way.
Let's get the plot out of the way, since there's not much of it. Other than definitively confirming that Castlevania: the Adventure was an interquel between Castlevania III and Castlevania I for the NES, Belmont's Revenge doesn't really mess around much. It's fifteen years since Christopher's bogus Adventure, and he apparently got married and had a kid. His son Soleiyu was about to have his coming-of-age ceremony, but Dracula has him kidnapped and uses Soleiyu's magical powers to resurrect himself, or something like that. Point is, there's four castles to explore before you can kick Drac's ass and rescue your kid.
Right away you can see the difference between this and the previous game. There's multiple quality of life improvements: Christopher moves a little
faster and jumps better, his whip doesn’t downgrade when he gets hit
anymore (except by a certain enemy,) there’s subweapons (only 2 tho) and
the game looks and sounds better. You
can actually pick the order in which you visit the castles, Mega
Man-style, and there’s no real advantage in picking one over the other
as they’re all about even in terms of difficulty. They have a couple of different themes too, like forest or rock. After you’re done, you
do a few levels of Dracula’s castle and that’s it. The level design isn’t as aggressively unfair as Adventure;
if you’re careful, most of the game won’t present a tremendous
challenge. Even the bosses can be handled with ease, especially if
you’re not playing the American version which replaces the cross subweapon with the axe.
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| Konami GB Collection vol. 4 (EU version) |
Like Adventure, Belmont’s Revenge has a re-release as part of Konami’s GB Collection series, which were only released in Japan and later in Europe, with the European versions including Game Boy Color features. Which one depends on whether you're going for the European version or not -- the European releases moved some of the collections around, so the Japanese version has it on GB Collection Volume 3, but the Euro release is GB Collection Volume 4. It's worth tracking down the Euro version with its Game Boy Color features, as the game looks great in color, especially the otherwise fairly dull Rock Castle.
In any case, Adventure can be forgiven for being released very early in the Game Boy’s lifespan; Belmont’s Revenge is by far a superior title, and if you’re really interested in seeing what handheld Castlevania looked like before Koji Igarashi took control of the franchise, this is your best bet for a good experience. Let's just pretend Legends never happened.