Castlevania: The Social Retrospective

Celebrate All Hallows Eve with an off-the-cuff look back at the ultimate vampire-hunting franchise.

By: Jeremy Parish October 31, 2012

Like '60s intellectuals with LSD and college students with anonymous bi-curious sexual encounters, we at 1UP have been experimenting with social media of late. We all know dot-com websites like this one are sluggish dinosaurs struggling to remain alive in an ice age precipitated by smartphones and Facebook, so like everyone else with a shred of common sense, we're all dickering around with Twitter and wondering if having a high Klout score actually means anything.

As part of that venture, I've been throwing things at a Tumblr account over the past couple of months to see what sticks. For the most part, success on Tumblr appears to involve swiping other people's artwork or photography and reblogging it without credit, but the old-fashioned content-loving part of my brain has been curious to see if more traditional original and credited content will pan out. Turns out the answer is "no," but I've been enjoying it anyway. Over the past few weeks -- inspired by my recent interview with Symphony of the Night composer Michiru Yamane -- I've been focusing our Tumblr posts on the history of the Castlevania series.

The Vita's Challenge: A History of Portable Competition

To succeed, Sony's new handheld must escape the long shadow cast by two decades of Nintendo's domination.

By: Jeremy Parish February 21, 2012

Today marks the official U.S. launch of PlayStation Vita. It's a great system, but it has its work cut out for it. Nintendo's 3DS is making serious inroads after a soft launch, and Sony runs the very real risk of seeing history repeat itself. To date, Nintendo has triumphed against every handheld competitor to challenge it since the Game Boy launched 23 years ago. We can't predict how the Vita/3DS battle will turn out just yet, but we can certainly look to history to see how Nintendo has consistently triumphed over its impressive competitors.

The Game Boy Era

1UP's Game Music Thunderdome: Vote for the Greatest Music of All Time

64 tracks enter, one track leaves. Vote for your favorites every day!

By: 1UP Staff December 14, 2011

Be sure to read about and listen to the current contenders before voting!

Why Wario Land 4 Remains the Best Portable Mario Game

We're marking this overlooked spin-off's 10th anniversary by finally giving it its due.

By: Jeremy Parish November 19, 2011

With Super Mario 3D Land freshly delivered to the eager hands of gamers the world over, Nintendo's portable platformer legacy is at the front of many people's minds. Sure, 3D Land isn't as closely related to the old Super Mario Land games as its name would suggest, but that doesn't make it any less fun... even if it does err on the side of being a little too easy. Much as we've enjoyed 3D Land, though, it still isn't our favorite portable Mario game.

Admittedly, I'm using the royal "we" here, but I will cheerfully defend my claim that the best portable Mario game is the sublime Wario Land 4 for Game Boy Advance... which, by a handy coincidence, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this week. No, it doesn't star Mario, but it can trace its lineage directly to Super Mario Land, and that's good enough. Sadly, Wario Land 4 has never really commanded the loyal following and vocal praise it deserves. Launched in the early days of the GBA, it was generally overshadowed by Super Mario Advance and its sequel, despite the fact that (unlike those higher-profile titles) Wario's game was wholly original, built from the ground-up for the system. What better time than its decennial to right the wrongs of fickle gamers and properly canonize Wario Land 4? Chances are you overlooked this portable masterpiece when it was released. Well, here are 10 reasons you need to correct that mistake.

1. It defies platform gaming conventions

When Mega Man Ruled the World: An Anniversary Tribute

A look back at the games that saved Mega Man... at least, for a while.

By: Jeremy Parish October 9, 2011

When the original Mega Man hit the NES in 1987, it was a revelation: The slickest, most open-ended platform shooter ever made. With only ten stages, it was short compared to standards like Super Mario Bros. and Wonder Boy, but what it lacked in length it made up for with replayability... not to mention sheer challenge. Its sequel, 1989's Mega Man 2, was even more spectacular. Together, the two games defined a genre and became high-water marks for 8-bit game design.

Sadly, a decade later, Mega Man had practically become a mockery of itself. The old-school sprites of Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4 were comforting to gamers who weren't completely convinced that the PlayStation's chunky polygons should be an absolute replacement for classic game design; yet at the same time, the 2D Mega Man titles felt like relics, doing nothing to push the limits of technology or play mechanics. Mega Man had become iterative, where once he was innovative. Meanwhile, the Legends spin-off actually did introduce new ideas, including an early form of Zelda's Z-targeting and real-time story cutscenes with lip-synched facial animations, but it was largely dismissed by Mega Man fans and detractors alike: By the former for being too different from the older games, and by the latter for wearing the name "Mega Man."

The Mario Brother from Another Planet

Though he started as a mere clone of his sibling, Luigi's role has grown far more complex.

By: Francesco Dagostino October 5, 2011

Ah, the neverending struggle for video game heroes to keep abreast of the times. From their humble, pixel-based roots, these digital characters evolved into complex, emotional individuals -- seemingly, in the blink of an eye. After all, strengthening the connection between avatar and player became a necessity as the ever-changing medium of video games increased in complexity over the years.

And this process went well beyond mere design: appealing color palettes, fancy clothes and spikey hairstyles weren't enough to make a character stand out. And thus, some became tarnished by the pitiless course of time, some faded, while others survived and matured thanks to the skillfull planning of their creators -- and some even grew spontaneously, like ivy creeping its way up a damp stone wall.

Castlevania Chronicles: We've Been Killing Dracula for 25 Years

Looking back at a quarter-century of (mostly) greatness.

By: Jeremy Parish September 25, 2011

Twenty-five years ago, on September 26, 1986, Konami launched a brand new game in Japan that would go on to become one of the longest continuously running franchises in the medium's history. Akumajou Dracula -- roughly translating to "Demon Castle Dracula," which became "Castlevania" in the West in accordance with Konami's weird obsession with pun-laden localization in the '80s -- was actually two different games on two different platforms. The better-known of the two was a straight-up action platformer for Famicom Disk System, the rewritable NES add-on released only in Japan. On the MSX computer, on the other hand, Akumajou Dracula featured the same general play mechanics and aesthetics as its FDS counterpart but wrapped them in a more labyrinthine format, compensating for the MSX's lack of smooth video scrolling by turning its castle stages into self-contained mazes.

Castlevania was a different kind of game than players were accustomed to, especially on Famicom. Unlike so many of the other platformers that had followed in the wake of Super Mario Bros.' success (Mario having launched on Famicom almost a year to the day before Akumajou Dracula), Konami's game was slow-paced, methodical, and possessed a fairly realistic ambiance. The hero, Simon Belmondo (Belmont in the West), was proportioned like an actual human adult. Japanese games of the era tended to warp the proportions of characters to give their faces more real estate and allow for cute, visually expressive designs. Simon had a tiny four-pixel face with no details, his characterization instead coming through his determined gait and unique method of attack. The Vampire Killer whip was an uncommon choice for any video game protagonist outside of Indiana Jones, striking a middle-range balance between fists and guns. The game's unconventional look, pacing, and weaponry set it apart from its peers.