Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is one of the infamous mainline NES sequels, alongside Super Mario Bros. 2 and Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. All three were expanded titles created for the Famicom Disk System that got smooshed down to cartridge form for their Western release. All thee changed their gameplay significantly from their popular first outing, to much confusion and derision, in the States at least. All three quickly course-corrected back to their roots for their third game.

For Castlevania and Zelda specifically, the sequels tried a direction closer to a computer RPG. CRPGs were gaining some real popularity in Japan in the late 80s, and arguably in Europe as well, but landed on a totally unfamiliar audience here in the States. We were used to platform games on the NES and similar – left to right, find 1ups,  jump on heads to defeat enemies – nothing particularly complex. So these sequels were oddities we didn’t really know what to make of.

Both also feature stilted or rushed English translations that failed to get key gameplay messages across. While it was more comical for Zelda, II, translation issues have the reputation of ruining Simon Belmont’s own second Quest. Internet lore argues that the game is truly unplayable without a walkthrough, and because I’m not very bright, I decided to put that to the test.

For Halloween 2024, I tried to beat the U.S. version of Castlevania II with just the information on the cart and the accompanying manual. Do the complaints just come from people who tried it when they were children in the 80s? Will my decades of game experience – and recently acquired skill with old RPGs – make short work of this challenge? Am I smarter than every other person who’s tried?

No, of course not. If you’re reading to see if you too can beat Simon’s Quest without help, the answer is “sort of” with a huge asterisk. Castlevania II neglects to tell you some critical information. I liken it to not being told there’s a “jump” button in similar platform games. Maybe you’ll figure it out by literally trying everything, but it’s not the way the game should be presented. Regardless, I didn’t know this when I started – so let’s follow my ignorant journey in nearly real-time.

 

Preparation

As I write this, I have yet to play the game and my expectations are low. I’m sure I’ve watched Angry Video Game Nerd’s inaugural episode on the game, I’m sure I’ve read bits and pieces through the years, but nothing recent and very little has stuck. Beyond, of course, that shoddy translations make the game unplayable without a walkthrough or the infamous nightmare-inducing edition of Nintendo Power. I wouldn’t say I’m going in blind, but… reduced vision? Glasses dependent? Look, you wouldn’t want me driving.

To summarize, here’s the facts as I know them/remember them at this point:

– The translation is awful and doesn’t make sense.
– You need a map. There’s one in the Japanese manual, but not in the U.S.
– Townsfolk give you clues, but some are lying because they’re in league with Dracula / don’t like you / are just assholes.

That’s pretty much it, beyond some obvious points like it’s a side-scroller and has RPG elements. As stated in the setup, I’m allowing myself the U.S. manual. I know there’s a useful map in the Japanese one, but that wouldn’t have been available on release in the 80s. I’m also going to assume this was purchased, not rented, so the manual is preset and intact.

That manual is a breezy 10 pages. The backstory tells us Castlevania II picks up right after the events of the first. Simon has whipped Dracula into shape, whipped him good. The fight has taken a toll on his spirit, however, and he’s growing weak. A ghostly maiden appears and tells him he’s been cursed. The only way to break the curse is to collect five of Dracula’s remains, hidden in mansions around the land, then bring them back to his castle and burn them on a secret altar. Right then.

From the manual, we also learn the following:

– You need a magic cross before entering the final castle.
– It confirms that some townsfolk lie to you. Splendid.
– The wooden stake is needed to collect Dracula’s parts.

Also, wait a minute. 60s movie references? Useless puns instead of actual information? Oh no! It’s my nemesis, the Ultra U.S. manual writer! I guess he was wasting everyone’s time with official Konami manuals too.

 

First Attempt

Starting up the game, you’re dropped into a town with NPCs milling about. Most doors are shut, but a few lead to robed men willing to sell you a single item each. People on the streets can be chased down and talked to with the B button. Their dialogue is, indeed, not great.

But not incomprehensible! By reputation, I half expected this to be gibberish. Instead, there’s some pretty clear direction. The first NPC you talk to tells you, “FIRST THING TO DO IN THIS TOWN IS BUY A WHITE CRYSTAL.” Well, you can’t get much clearer than that. Ahead on some stairs is another NPC selling a white crystal for exactly how much cash I have in my pocket. It’s looking good so far.

The town is a couple of screens wide and three levels high. Everyone outside is on the move, so it can be a little tricky to make sure you haven’t missed talking to anyone. So far, everyone has had something to say. We’re told to meet “a friend” in the town of Aldra. We’re told 13 clues exist to solve “Dracula’s riddle.” There’s a Thorn Whip and Holy Water for sale that are both listed in the manual and seem useful. We’ve got some places to go and some specific goals to earn money for. We got this, man! We got this by the ass!

As I was wrapping up exploring the town, I ran afoul of the day/night cycle. I vaguely remember complaints about this. A text box comes up declaring it “A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE,” followed by the screen fading and coming up to a blue-tinted version of itself. I’m reminded of the awake/dreaming mechanic in Nightmare on Elm Street, which does seem to play out similarly here. Night brings out tougher versions of the foes you’ve been fighting, while townsfolk hide and are replaced by roaming green ghouls.

Enemies are tougher at night, but also worth more. Whipped enemies drop hearts – same as the original Castlevania, these have nothing to do with your life. Here, they are currency, powering both some of your special weapons and traded at shops for items. The Thorn Whip costs 100 hearts, and I was able to get pretty close to that in one night’s worth of gathering. Night lasts about 3 minutes. Since shops close at night, the intent seems clear – explore and stock up during the day, hunt at night. Since you can still travel and earn hearts, this doesn’t feel like a huge inconvenience yet.

Heading left out of town finds us facing two charging beasts that spit fireballs and cause uncomfortable amounts of damage. I’m thinking we’re not supposed to go that way yet. Right out of town brings us to some slow-moving skeletons and wolfmen that are pretty easily dispatched. A combination of fighting in these woods and whipping night ghouls gives me enough hearts to buy out everything in town. I also start drawing my own map, and here we hit our first problem.

A sign somewhere in each town tells you what’s through the left exit and what’s through the right. In the case of the first town, Belasco Marsh on the left and Jova Woods on the right. But the sign never tells you where you are. I’m assuming that the Jova Woods are going to be next to the town called Jova, and name it so on my map. It ultimately wouldn’t matter what you name each location, except that clues specifically call them out. We’re told “A FLAME IS ON TOP OF THE 6TH TREE IN DENIS WOODS.” Well, I’ve got guesses where this might be, but no confirmation.

This becomes a real issue as I map the area and write down clues. I feel reasonably confident about guessing the names of towns, but the caves and forests in between are anyone’s guess. I figure that the first mansion in Berkeley Mansion, specifically because having the white crystal equipped made a floating block appear – just as we were told. But where’s the town of Alba? Where’s the 6th grave at the graveyard? Are these the lies I’ve been warned about?

By the second town, I’ve figured out the Holy Water. A clue in the first tells you that “A MAGIC POTION WILL DESTROY THE WALL OF EVIL.” Not very clear, but the manual comes through again, stating that it “disintegrates walls and floors which conceal weapons and items.” The shops in the second town (Veros?) are empty rooms. Well, that doesn’t seem right, so it’s time to start watering. By holding Up when hitting B, you use whatever item is equipped. With Holy Water selected, a vial is tossed out in an arc. Unlike the first game, it doesn’t cost hearts. Cue me tossing Holy Water at every block – making a digital crashing sound each time that’s designed to infuriate anyone in house with you – until floor blocks disappear to reveal a hidden path.

Every time you find an empty store, there’s only three possible layouts. These fake blocks exist in exactly the same places, sometimes hiding clues, so it’s pretty easy to check for secret spots. Unfortunately, it seems like every time you bust through a wall and find a hidden merchant, they’re just selling something mundane like garlic. The real goal are the 13 “clues.” NPCs can lie, but the books always tell the useful truth – cryptic and poorly-translated as it may be.

Fighting through the woods and caves between towns is not particularly challenging. You have a generous health meter and the ability to extend it by collecting enough XP. By the end of the game I was only level 4, but still had enough health to comfortably take on all challengers. The biggest issue is knockback – same as the first game, you will uncontrollably fly backward a few blocks if hit, often into the previous screen. This makes enemies respawn, leading to longer fights. Sometimes (usually the fish men on bridges) will even knock you into water for an instant death. This is definitely annoying, but death overall is surprisingly manageable.

You have three lives per continue and unlimited continues. You can always keep playing. You’ll actually have to die to see the current password. Death resets your accumulating XP (you never lose health/a “level”) and your stock of hearts – but hearts aren’t that difficult to grind out. You’ll even reappear at least on the same screen, if not very close to the block where you died. In terms of combat and mechanics, this a much easier game than the first.

By this point I’ve done some extensive exploration. I’ve cleared one mansion and earned Dracula’s rib – equipping it gives you a shield that reflects fireballs. This lets me head to the left from the first town, where I discover the ferryman. The manual makes reference that the ferryman takes you to different places based on what Dracula parts you have, and with the rib, it’s to another section of towns. I’ve found a good stash of hidden clues in the towns, traded my white crystal for a blue one, then a red one, and bought everything available in the all the towns I have access to.

I am now, also, quite stuck. The furthest to the right I can go is blocked by a river. The furthest to the left I can go is blocked by a giant wall, which I assume to be Deborah Cliff. None of the (admittedly shitty) hints mentioning the cliff are doing any good. There are branching paths that lead to graveyards, both with a smaller ledge that I can’t jump to. Will one of Drac’s parts let me float up and access it? Does that even matter if I can’t find another mansion where I am?

This is where I start going back through my clues, and wondering if the translation wasn’t as obvious as it seemed. I found the Sacred Flame item, and it wasn’t in the woods, so was that guy a liar? Or does “A FLAME IS ON TOP OF THE 6TH TREE” mean I’m supposed to use the flame to burn the tree? I still don’t know where Denis Woods is exactly, but nothing’s happening when I try in wooded areas. Besides, the 6th tree counting from the right or the left? Here, I also start throwing Holy Water on every screen as I walk, which so far, does nothing.

I’m pretty confident I’ve identified which statements are bullshit. The ones about “bum deals in town” and that “the ferryman loves garlic” seem useless – I place garlic on the dock and he does not care. There’s a town called Sadam(?) populated by women that all seem to want to jump Simon’s Belmont. “I’LL SEE YOU AT MIDNIGHT ON THE RIVER BANK.” and “I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR A GOOD LOOKING GUY LIKE YOU” don’t seem like statements I can kill Dracula with. But am I wrong? Is the guy telling me to put laurels in my soup actually helping, but the translation is so shot that I can’t make sense of it? Is this what the warnings were about?

One mansion down, five towns discovered, and I’m pretty sure I’m lost. I can’t make any forward progress, so this challenge has already failed. Given that there’s five more mansions to go – somewhere – based on the total number of Dracula parts, it seems that Simon’s Quest cannot be beaten without a walkthrough. But what if we had access to the map that was present in the Japanese version? Would that make a difference?

 

Second Attempt

Well, the map is in Japanese, so no. BUT, there was a map in the Simon’s Quest guide within the second issue of Nintendo Power. It’s a two-page beautiful pull-out one, like the kinds that would later be included as posters in the game boxes. What if Konami had done this for the North American release?

This attempt assumes that they did, or I otherwise had access to the map. I am only allowing myself to review the map from Nintendo Power – nothing from the rest of the guide – and seeing what secrets it reveals. Let’s see how close the map I’ve been drawing is.

Pretty close, actually. I was not correct that towns would always take their names from the nearby woods, so Sadam is actually Alba and the South Bridge connects Veros and Jova. This clears up some missing towns on those “A SECRET LIES IN XXX” messages, though it looks like I’ve already found clues in these locations anyway.

The map also isn’t that easy to read. They tried to make it resemble an actual regional map, which doesn’t quite jive with a game world that only goes left or right. You can see relationships though, such as bridges or what lies to either side of a town. This helps me understand that the big rock wall is indeed Deborah Cliff, while the river is actually Yuba Lake. I can also tackle Denis Woods and now feel pretty confident that the guy talking about the 6th tree was full of shit.

What this doesn’t do is help me get any further. It confirms I’ve been everywhere I’ve thought I’ve been. I don’t have any clues that help me get past Deborah Cliff or Yuba Lake, where the remaining mansions definitely lie beyond. I try “giving” the ferryman different items, but it’s not working. It seems I am foiled again. I think the best thing at this point is to read the rest of the Nintendo Power guide.

 

Third Attempt

The guide confirms nearly everything I’ve already done. Like most Nintendo Power guides of the time, it only gives a walkthrough for about half of the game. There’s information on towns and mansions upcoming, but nothing about how to get to them. Am I going to have to go to GameFAQs next? But then… wait! What’s this, down at the bottom of page 30?

The top of the page informs us “Enroute, stop at the Yuba Lake. If you do something special here at lakeside, a secret underground passage will open.” I can even see a little peek of ledge under the water that I missed before. I try crouching, like in the photo. It doesn’t do anything. You can’t crouch and walk in the game, so I can’t duck walk into the lake. I throw in some Holy Water to no effect. There’s not many other options here.

Then I realize that you can select the item you’re holding independent of the secondary weapon you have equipped. Ever since the first mansion, I’ve held Drac’s rib and its useful shield. I noticed when leaving the mansion that the magic platform had disappeared, but assumed it was because I’d beaten the mansion and the platform was no longer needed. Nope. It’s because the White Crystal was no longer equipped.

By now it’s a Red Crystal, but hopefully that doesn’t matter. Swap the shield out for the crystal. Crouch. Bingo.

So that’s the big secret. Make sure you’re “holding” a magic orb and crouch to make a path open. I looked back over the manual to confirm I didn’t miss anything – I didn’t. No discussion of crouching beyond ducking under attacks. I looked back over my clues and didn’t miss anything either. At this point, I’m pretty convinced that you are never told this information, which would suggest you indeed cannot beat Simon’s Quest without outside help.

Now that I know you can crouch with an orb, this opens up Deborah Cliff as well. Squat there and a magic tornado takes you past it. Yuma Lake only holds Lauber Mansion (which I later learn is a misprint on the Nintendo Power map – it’s actually “Rover” Mansion in the game’s clues), but going past Deborah Cliff gives you the rest of the map. 

With both directions now opened, it’s smooth sailing for the rest of the game. Enemies don’t get much tougher, or at least, your whip scales in power to match. Some enemies with annoying patterns show up – namely slimes and spiders – but again, death isn’t much of a concern here. Bosses don’t put up much of challenge. You can even run past them to get the Dracula part they’re “guarding.” The final bridge to Drac’s castle was on a short cliff too high for me to reach, but once I had all the parts, I was able to whip some blocks to make stairs. Is this what the cross does? Is it just because I had collected everything?

There’s no enemies in Drac’s castle, just a pensive stroll through areas that somewhat resemble ruins of the first level of the first Castlevania. I don’t think it’s a real spoiler to say that burning the parts somehow triggers a final battle with Dracula, and I even naturally used the Golden Knife to kill him most efficiently. It was the last weapon I got, so I figured it was the most powerful. Apparently it is. Killing Dracula gives you some text screens that seem to put the series to bed.

It turns out that there’s actually three endings, based on how quickly you beat the game. There’s evidence that they mixed up text for two of the endings, but it seems like you’re supposed to get the best ending for finishing in under seven game hours. This will require some focus and pre-knowledge, but sees Simon live to fight another day.

 

Conclusion

Once I finished the game, I looked at online info and realized I missed a clue hidden in the Aijiba Woods: “TO REPLENISH EARTH ,KNEEL BY THE LAKE WITH THE BLUE CRYSTAL.”

Even with the questionable translation, that would have made the big secret kinda clear. So where is it located? Why, in a random block on the forest floor.

Couple of things here. There’s a number of NPC statements that tell you “a clue is located in the ____ woods.” Looking over my notes, Aijiba isn’t one of them. This is a mistake – the NPC sends you to Veros Woods instead, which then looks like another lie. And as said, every clue book up to this point has been in a mansion or a town. Equipping Dracula’s eye lets you see hidden items like this, but you wouldn’t get the eye until after you’ve already figured out the trick to unlock this path. Likewise, Dracula’s nail lets you whip open secret blocks, but you wouldn’t have that until later either – and it wouldn’t help you hit the floor.

This means you would have to get to the point that you were throwing Holy Water at every single block in the game until you found this one – a needle in a stack of needles. I started doing this earlier, but clearly gave up on it. I’m not ruling out that you might follow through, I’m just saying it’s pretty stinkin’ unlikely. This really feels like a clue that should have been placed more prominently. Maybe swap it for a clue in one of the early towns.

There’s a later clue for Deborah Cliff that’s in even rougher translation shape than this and doesn’t specifically tell you to kneel. It’s hidden in a mansion you wouldn’t have access to yet anyway, though I didn’t need a clue for Deborah Cliff once I knew kneeling with an orb did something. This means the clue about kneeling by the lake becomes the lynchpin in being able to beat the game. So yeah, maybe don’t squirrel that one away in a random block that’s hard to hit with arcing Holy Water anyway.

So ends this little experiment, which just confirms what many, many people have discovered before. I will say that it’s not the fundamentally broken game I thought it was by reputation. It’s a bit easy, a bit different, but I enjoyed my time with it. Its major faults are a lack of map and a translation likely done by someone with no context of how the lines appear in the game. Both do – for all but the most obsessively dedicated – make the game unplayable without outside information.

From a modern perspective, you don’t have to deal with this. There are so many hacks that set out to “fix” the game, from removing false clues, to altering the day/night cycle, to patching a few annoying jumps where you’d bonk your head. I think the best one is probably Bisquit’s Retranslation + Map. It remains faithful to the original experience, while giving you access to the missing information you need. It even tells you to look for a clue in Aijiba Woods instead of Veros, helping you find the bit about kneeling by the lake. If I wasn’t stubbornly writing old retrospectives, I would have used this hack instead.

As for the original release, it looks great, plays well, and has a pretty bangin’ soundtrack. It’s just a shame Konami spent very little effort on the translation. A bit of quality control and a translator free to look at context within the game would have helped immensely – but those things really weren’t in place yet in the 80s. We’re probably lucky it got converted off the Japan-exclusive Disk System at all. Definitely not the black sheep it’s made out to be, but troubled enough that the “original experience” is probably not one you’re going to want to take.

 

The Good

Looks and plays similar to the original, with some new RPG elements. Much more forgiving than the first. Day/night cycle and a multi-town map are interesting additions.

 

The Bad

Mostly, the translation. It’s not unintelligible, but it mixes up locations and gets key information wrong. This makes things much more cryptic than they’re meant to be. Lack of a map also doesn’t help when clues directly reference locations, but you don’ t know where they are.

 

GET A SILK BAG FROM THE GRAVEYARD DUCK TO LIVE LONGER” — Lady in Aldra