Topic: Your very first Castlevania experience

[Successor The Cruel]

I played Castlevania 1 waaaaaaaaaay back in the day. I grew up owning and loving it. I didn't beat it until I was 15, though. That's when I started to seriously become a fanatic, and seriously get into various vampire things.

[Zuljaras]

My first Castlevania was Castlevania II Simon's Quest. I was probably 11 or 12. This game made me look for the others is the series and the obsession began!!!

[Laina]

My brother's wife bought Castlevania 1 for him back in 89'. I remember being 4 & my brother explaining the game to me as I watched him play. I was leaning on the edge of my bed, ready to pop like a tightly wound coil as I hung on his every word. As soon as he was done, I yelled for my mother to bring me my favorite red silk covered plastic head band (I had Shirley Temple hair in the day, bangs were always in my eyes), my Muppet Babies necklace (for luck) & some blue raspberry Kool-Aid because shit was about to get real as I marched into Castlevania. I died like 10 million times of course, but I was hooked.

[Abnormal Freak]

Simon's Quest is the only other Castlevania game besides IV that I played when I was really little. It wasn't until Castlevania for the N64 that I got really crazy into the series. Dunno why, since I'd played Symphony of the Night like a million times since it came out, and I certainly love(d) that game a lot more than CV64. Yet, CV64 is the game that made me decide to play beyond SOTN and CV4.

I really should expand upon this. There IS a reason why CV64 got me obsessed with the series as a whole.

It all comes down to money.

Prior to 1998 or so, I was at the mercy of my mom to get me video games, mostly only one or two for Christmas. (Though in a sense I got more a year because my brother got just as many, and even sometimes we'd get one or two "shared ownership" games in addition to that.)

'98, I was 12 and started working for my dad for $7 an hour, roughly 20 hours a week. I wanted my first purchases to be rad so I saved up for a few weeks. I saw Castlevania 64 being played on a GXTV at a Best Buy. I knew I had to have them.

So with all my dough saved up, I bought an N64 (Episode I Racer bundle, woo!), a GXTV, and CV64. Plugged all that sheet up in my room and I got to immerse myself into gaming in a whole new way: privately, in my room, just me and the screen, and CV64 had a profound effect on me with its heavy atmosphere.

After playing that game a lot, I wanted more Castlevania beyond 64, IV, and SOTN, so I bought the NES games (along with the Contras) and a little later saw a Genesis 3 and Bloodlines for cheap and got those. Been kind of a fanatic since, although sadly the best games had already come out by that point (IMO).

[KaZudra]

the First Castlevania, Wicked child was stuck in my head for the longest time.

[Inccubus]

CV3. Couldn't put it down. And hungered after 1 & 2 as soon as tasted 3.

[GuyStarwind]

I recall my brother play CV64 and my first though was "Who would use a whip to fight vampires?" However, I didn't get into CV until I watched the same brother play LoI and fight Walter and The Forgotten One. It just spiraled from there. Now I'm like "Only way to kill a vampire is with a whip!"

[BushidoViking]

My first experience was with the NES. Ghosts N goblins was the first NES game I ever played and I enjoyed it A lot. But was wayyyy to hard for me. I soon saw Castlevania at Funcoland. (Which is now EB games/Gamestop) I played A demo of it and it reminded me A great deal of Ghosts N Goblins. Castlevania was easier..but still kicked my ass haha. Castlevania had way more level design in my opinion. But those two games will always remind me of one another. But to this day I prefer Castlevania.

[Hellhammer]

My very first CV experience was when I was probably about 5 years old, way back in 1988. My neighbor who was the same age as me, had an older brother who bought himself a Reggie's Entertainment System (here in South Africa we never got the NES - in fact Nintendo was never officially distributed here until the first Wii came out - instead we ended up with "Famiclones" and pirated cartridges from China, and this was probably the most popular of the lot, branded by our only national toy store at the time, Reggie's). With it, he'd also gotten two games: B-Wings and the first Castlevania. We'd already arranged a sleepover at the neighbor's house that same evening but of of course the older brother wouldn't let me play the game so I sat the entire night and watched him play Castlevania. I have been a huge fan of horror and monsters for as long as I can remember and naturally I thought this was the coolest thing ever!! I loved the horror theme, particularly the haunted castle/creepy dungeon backdrops and the music was (and still is) totally amazing!!

My parents wouldn't buy me a console until Xmas a year or three later but I can tell you that during that time I obsessed about Castlevania day and night, nonstop. I even tried to make myself Castlevania-themed board games to play. By the time I finally got my own console, there were no Castlevania cartridges to be found, anywhere. I think I finally got the game when I was about 9 or 10 years old when a kid from school agreed to trade his copy for my Double Dragon cart. Good times!!!

I recently went through a huge period of nostalgia and have rediscovered all of my favourite games from childhood, got myself a PS3 just to play Lords Of Shadow, finished the PSOne, N64, Gameboy, Genesis and SNES Castlevanias and also finally got to play and finish Simon's Quest and Dracula's Curse on the NES but still to this day, NOTHING compares to that mighty first game in the series.

[TheCruelAngel]

My first CV experience...it all started many moons ago when bright neon colors were cool and I think a couple of young kids were trying to convince a nation of kids that wearing your clothes backward was cool.

Up to this point I didn't really have any video games to play (other than what my dad had for his Apple II GS or DOS machines, sh*t was cash!) so I used to hang out at my neighbor's house. Their boys were older than me by a few years, but they were really nice and let a little dorky kid hang out with them (I introduced them to DBZ via my JP connections) and one day they wanted to show me this really funny scene in a game. So they booted up their NES and lo' and behold it's some CV1!

Well, I sat next to them and watched them run through the game, the music was pretty rocking and they made it seem super easy, killing all these monsters with this whip thing. Then they got to the infamous scene...down the trap to Frankie's lair! They started busting up laughing at the implausibility of falling from that height unscathed, especially since pitfalls kill you. I chuckled, not really understanding, but knew that I just witnessed a pretty sweet game.

I actually didn't get to play a CV game until my parents got themselves a SNES (no, seriously, it was originally for them) and I borrowed CVIV from my previously mentioned neighbors (they let me borrow a ton of games for keeping their DBZ crack flowing) and man was I in for a treat! I never beat it, but I just loved playing it, listening to the music and soaking in the atmosphere. Truly a masterpiece in gaming.

[JoshuaKadmon]

In the fall of 1987, my family had a garage sale just before we moved to a farmhouse outside of town, and my brother and I decided to sell what was left of the Commodore64 so we could buy the NES instead.  The system came with SMB and Duck Hunt, of course, but we decided to rent a couple games from Crazy Jake's (a local video store) so we would have more selection for the weekend.  The two we picked were The Legend of Zelda and the original Castlevania.  We played the crap out of both, but CV must've stuck with me more, since I purchased every single release after that rental.

Neither one of us managed to beat Castlevania on the first rental.  I think both of us got stuck on Stage 10 or so.  Since then, I've managed to reach Dracula five or six times and have only beaten him once.  That's a tough-as-nails game, but I still love playing it.

[Lashen]

My friend received a handed-down copy of "Castlevania: The Adventure" from his cousin and I played it for a while. (I think he stumbled upon it while cleaning a couple of days before I saw it in his room, but my memory gets hazy that far back.)

He never became a fan of Castlevania, or even the vampire genre.

[Profbeanburrito]

I feel bad for kids these days, not getting to experience the magic of the NES when it was new...

[BushidoViking]

I feel bad for kids these days, not getting to experience the magic of the NES when it was new...

You said it! Oh my the magic of 8-bit and that simple, yet perfect square of A controller.

[RichterB]

I really don't remember my first experience. Growing up, I know I saw a family member play Castlevania 1-4, and I remember dabbling with them all myself, especially 2-4. I thought they were interesting, but I sort of took them for granted as big titles. I don't remember the order of events of when I became a big fan, but I know that Dracula X SNES, Castlevania 64, The Adventure, and Legends played significant roles, IIRC. Dracula X SNES was a revelation, because it had the over-the-top item crashes and a very creative art style different than 4. Castlevania 64 was the series graduating and going toe-to-toe with its NES breathern, Mario 64 and Zelda: OoT, and while not perfect, it did a lot better than people give it credit for and made an impact on me. (In retrospect, it at LoD are the best 3D efforts by a large margin). The Adventure was a portable title with a different direction in its set of enemies and such that felt like it was expanding the lore. Legends was exciting at the time because it was a new Castlevania coming out after becoming more self-aware of the series. I went on to have a fun time with LoD; very memorable experiences with CoM, SotN, and LoI; a middling experience with HoD; an exciting experience with AoS, Belmont's Revenge, and Bloodlines...and after that, it was more or less middling (outside of The Adventure Rebirth, which was excellent for a small download title).