I like the Wii Virtual Console a lot. I’ve actually found myself playing more games that I’ve downloaded than the ones that I’ve purchased for the system (which is, for the record, only two: Super Paper Mario and Madden NFL 2008 [I also have Wii Sports and Wii Play but those are more demonstrations of the system and, while fun, not really full-fledged games). Part of it may be that they are primarily one-player games: I’ve never been a great cooperative gamer. I like the idea of sitting down by myself and solving a puzzle or other mystery. I like to think that I have a decent sense of deductive reasoning, and am always frustrated when I have to consult strategy guides to figure out how to get past something.
Anyhow, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest came out for the Virtual Console last week, and I’m happy to say that my frustrations with the game were actually NOT MY FAULT. For a long time I was really angry at the game for what amounted to asinine clues about how to get to certain places in the game. I found out that most of this was due to poor Engrish translation that made NO sense. For example, the title of this post is a quote from a villager in the game that is supposed to let you know that you have to kneel at an un-scalable cliff face with an item and let a tornado take you away. I spent DAYS jumping into the wall. DAYS. I have lost dozens of hours of my life because East is East and West is West and never the twains shall meet. Someone eventually told me what to do, which deflated me because I had no clue how they could have known how to do that from the clue.
The game more than made up for the frustration when I found out it had more than one ending. Much like I hope my life has.
WHEW! So glad I finally have an outlet for all the Simon’s Quest frustration I’ve had pent up inside me.
In other news, for the love of God, someone please help me make this goddamn blog look nice. It’s still a mess.
-MAL