CASTLEVANIA FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Admittedly I couldn't get a single SNES emulator to work, they just kept crashing when I tried to load up a game. So I just used fan ports of SNES games into a Gameboy Emulator because that's what works for me.

Castlevania doesn't have much of an introduction, just throwing you in to test buttons to see what they do.

Welcome to the game "Player." You don't even get a name. Just ambiguous male character equipped with a whip to vanquish evil. Actually your character's name is Simon Belmont, but you only learn that from the instruction manual you were supposed to read and receive with the psychical copy of the game. No in game 'guide' like in most modern video games to tell you that "hey, this is who you are, this is your objective, and you have a weapon!" No, you don't get that. You were supposed to sit down, and read the manual like you'd read one to construct your Lego masterpieces.

Okay, so I get that early on video game controls were still getting their footing, should the up joystick command be for jumping, up screen movement or jumping? Like how in Megaman it was for jumping, but for some games with  top overhead views like Legend of Zelda up would be upscreen motion

but WHY would you dedicate the up joystick command to solely going up stairs?

I know in later games they gave you the option for an upwards whip motion, but in this game as far as I have played, the up command is solely for going up stairs. At least the down joystick command lets you crouch as well as descend stairs, but otherwise a whole 1/2 of your joystick movement is dedicated to up and down stair traversing. How strange.

Pitfalls leave no room for error, pretty unforgiving game. You also auto-lose all your whip upgrades and secondary items upon death. Your attack also has a few frames of delay, resulting in some mildly frustrating game play and forces you to plan out your movements more carefully beyond 'if you see the thing push the hurt-y button' because you have to approach with caution so you can see and prepare for an enemy attack long before it gets into hurting range, I played only up to the second stage, by which time I was getting tired of the pitfall precision jumping. So I loaded up Legend of Zelda instead, feeling that I had sufficiently experienced the basics of Castlevania's game play design.