It’s a simple game by the franchise’s standards, but so much of the core gameplay is present that it barely matters. Simon can find some items such as throwing knives and holy water to help him, but his primary weapon is his trusty whip, a series mainstay.

Along the way, Simon must fight through several enemies, such as mummies and Frankenstein’s monster unlike later Castlevania games, which adopted a more baroque style, the original draws on old Universal monster movies for influence. Players control Simon Belmont and explore Dracula’s Castle in hopes of vanquishing the dark lord. What Castlevania classic does offer is one of the best platforming experiences on the NES. Unlike in later games, Castlevania does not feature large, interconnected areas to explore, nor an expansive variety of abilities and items to customize your style of play. Nowadays, you can play Maniac Mansion for free thanks to the Internet Archive’s browser-based emulator.įans of Castlevania games made post- Symphony of the Night may find the series’ original outing a bit barebones. As such, the NES version removed many of the more adult jokes in the game, though the overall sense of humor remains. Maniac Mansion was originally released for the PC, and that first version contained a great deal of suggestive humor that Nintendo did not consider acceptable. There are multiple endings depending on which characters survive, and it is possible for all of them to die.

Characters can die, in which case the player must choose from one of the remaining characters to continue.

The player has the ability to control five distinct characters, and they can easily fall victim to the perils of the mansion. The game is notably dark in spite of its humor. Players control a group of teenagers trying to rescue one of their own from the mansion of a mad scientist and his depraved family. Mansion is an homage to the teen horror movies of the 80s (think Friday the 13th). The torchbearer for this new wave of adventure games was Lucasfilm’s Maniac Mansion, the brainchild of renowned developer Ron Gilbert.

One of the high points for the genre was in the late ’80s/early ’90s when companies like LucasArts (then known as Lucasfilm Games) began to improve on the genre’s text-based origins by adding richly detailed environments the player could interact with. Adventure games, like the moon, have waxed and waned throughout video game history.

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