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I Actually Like Simon’s Quest, and Here’s Why

That’s it, that’s the name of my TED talk. Thanks for coming, everyone.

Yes, Simon’s Quest, the black sheep of the Castlevania franchise.[1] It’s practically a meme in the retrogaming community — people love to shit on Simon’s Quest, and not for invalid reasons, but I’m here to dispute the common consensus.[2] I won’t disagree with the fact that Castlevania I and III were objectively better, but Simon’s Quest has its own unique charms.

Unlike the games that came before and after it, Simon’s Quest isn’t just a platformer — it’s actually one of the earliest[3] “open-world” games, where you have the freedom to venture to most locations at any point, though there’s a generally correct fixed order to progression. It even has some light RPG elements, such as collecting currency to acquire better weapons, and even levelling up.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. First I’ll go over the basic facts, then you — my captive audience — can hear my reasoning for why Simon’s Quest isn’t the worst game of all time — it’s Pretty Good, Actually.

 

The Facts

Simon’s Quest is an open-world, action-adventure platformer. You play the eponymous Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter on a mission to take down the evil Count Dracula. To do so, you must travel the world, defeating monsters and collecting equipment, which you’ll use to brave five mansions — which contain parts of Dracula,[4] — before tackling Dracula’s Castle to battle the lord of the vampires himself.

The gameplay is very similar to the first Castlevania, which is to say, it’s a scrolling platformer. The difference comes in the form of the “open-world” design, where you can travel freely between many of the towns and mansions, though you may require certain magical items to proceed through some areas. Numerous enemies roam the land, all typical Castlevania fare — skeletons, werewolves, floating eyeballs, bats, spiders, and so on. Spooky stuff, in other words.

Defeated enemies often drop hearts, which — unlike in other Castlevania games — serve a dual purpose here. Collecting enough hearts will increase your level (making you take less damage from enemy attacks), but hearts also serve as a currency, used to buy magical items, weapons, and whip upgrades from townsfolk.

Speaking of townsfolk, there’s seven distinct towns spread throughout the game world. Here you can rest and restore health at the church, purchase various items from merchants, and acquire… “useful” information from the other villagers. This is sometimes ambiguous, confusing, or in some cases, an outright lie — ostensibly because some of the peasants are afraid of (or are secretly working for) Dracula, I guess. Or they’re just dicks.

Simon starts with 3 lives, and upon losing them all, it’s game over — but you can continue an unlimited number of times. Unfortunately, while retaining your items, levels and other progress, continuing restarts you at your last checkpoint (generally the last church you visited), and wipes out your stock of hearts. There’s also a password system to continue in a later session, but no battery-backed save files.

Finally, and this is one of the most loathed aspects of the game — there’s a real-time day/night cycle, where at sunset, the game immediately pauses and (rather slowly) informs you that it’s a horrible night to have a curse.[5] During the night, the enemies have twice as much health, deal twice as much damage — but also drop twice as many hearts. In the towns, the villagers become zombies,[6] and you can’t visit the church.

So the gameplay involves exploring the lands, acquiring magical items and weapons, collecting pieces of Dracula, and defeating his minions before confronting the dark lord himself. Those are the objective facts; now, back to the delightful realm of opinions.

 

The Opinions

So why do people hate this game? Aside from it being not exactly like the original, you have to bear in mind, this was an era when game developers were trying all sorts of new things. There was a lot of experimental “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks”, and Simon’s Quest is absolutely no exception to that rule. But okay, there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?

The game is cryptic and unclear at best — many of the “hints” given by the townspeople are confusing at best and misleading at worst, some of the progression is downright cryptic (using the Red Crystal by kneeling at the edge of a cliff), and some of the gameplay can be unfair (losing all your hearts when you continue from a Game Over). The difficulty curve is weird, it doesn’t hold your hand at all, and you can waste huge amounts of time by missing a key plot item that was hidden or unclear.

But here’s the thing: NES games were made to last. It was a different time back then. You weren’t supposed to beat this game in an afternoon, and the actual mechanical difficulty level of the game — the combat and such — is lower than both Castlevania I and III. Hell, if you follow a modern internet walkthrough, you could beat this game — start to finish — in 2 to 4 hours!

Besides, Nintendo Power was a thing back then, walkthrough and strategy guides were a thing back then — it wasn’t even considered cheap or cheating, everyone looked up maps or puzzles for their favourite games in video-game magazines of the time. You’d learn the most cryptic parts of the game from guides, or by sharing discoveries with your friends. The game was an adventure in the truest sense, and very much a relic of its time.

Besides, do you know what else is an unforgiving open-world game with almost no direction, cryptic-at-best clues, NPCs that lie to you, harsh punishments for death, bullshit unfair deaths if you go to the wrong place too early, and some weird mechanics that you’d never figure out without the internet’s help? That’s right. Fucking Dark Souls, and everyone loves those games.

Case fucking closed.

 

The Good Parts

Visually, this game is a treat. Yes, it’s hampered by the NES’s limited hardware, but for a NES game, I think it looks excellent. Everywhere you go, there’s a sinister vibe to the world — from the crumbling walls of the towns to the shadowy forests and dingy caves. The Castlevania vibe is just as strong here as in the first game, and as annoying as the day-night cycle can be, the palette shifts at night-time enhance the sinister mood.

The music is even more of a treat for the ears — this is some of my favourite music on the NES, hands down. Bloody Tears steals the show here as one might expect, though The Silence of Daylight isn’t far behind. There’s only a handful of different music tracks used in this game — again, NES limitations — but it makes absolutely fantastic use of all of them. Say what you will about the rest of the game, this is classic Castlevania music through and through.

The general moment-to-moment gameplay is also fairly decent, though may feel clunky and limiting when compared to more modern games (or even some of its NES contemporaries). I’m still of the belief that the controls are an important, nay, integral part of early Castlevania — the necessity to carefully evaluate every jump or swing of the whip, heightening the tension as the odds are constantly stacked against our hero. With that said, I’m still willing to concede that they can feel stiff and clunky.

If you’re willing to use a walkthrough — or have the patience to puzzle it out yourself — this is an enjoyable and fairly unique romp, giving some pleasant insight into the earliest beginnings of the Metroidvania genre (even if Simon’s Quest doesn’t quite count as a Metroidvania in itself).

Is it perfect? No, but it’s nowhere close to the bottom-of-the-barrel knave that the internet would have you believe it is. Give it a try sometime — you might just be surprised![7]

 

The Verdict

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Footnotes

[1] We don't talk about Castlevania 64.
[2] There's going to be some weird nerd who digs this up, so I'm gonna say it right now: yes, I once wrote
a blog post shitting on Simon's Quest. That was about a decade or two ago, on a different website. I was
dumb and wrong. Let's move on.
[3] Yes, I know about Adventure on the Atari 2600 and other older open-world games. Still, Simon's
Quest played a large part in building the genre, so let's not split hairs.
[4] Dracula's Rib, Heart, Eyeball, Nail, and Ring. I guess he just really liked that ring.
[5] THE CURSE IS PLAYING THIS GAME! HA HA FUNNY AND ORIGINAL JOKE! Nobody's ever said that one
before.
[6] Or they hide in their houses when the zombies come out, kinda like Minecraft villagers?
[7] Or you might hate it anyway, and come back here to yell at me. C'est la vie.