We have seen a lot of classic Castlevania love over the past decade. Beyond the classic ‘Vania compilation, there have been the Bloodstained Curse of the Moon games alongside Ritual of the Night’s classic mode and the recent Lords of Exile on PC and Switch. Now a new game emerges that aims to blend in some of what made the NES games such timeless gems while also boosting the pace. Normally, a game styled after a classic Castlevania game is going to have a slower, more lumbering pace across the board.
Platforming is clunkier, knock back is a risk for smaller platforms, and enemies can be frequent and unforgiving. With Crypt Stalker, players have a variety of modes to play alongside a couple of bonus adventures too. Within one package, you have the NES-style difficulty level with checkpoint saving. There’s also an easier casual mode that helps with the enemy difficulty, but it has to be played through in a single setting. Also included is a handheld mode that replicates an original Game Boy-style demake alongside a Lost Sequel that is essentially what it would be with a latter-day Konami-style of NES polish.
It’s a fascinating adventure to see because it nails so much of what makes the classic ‘Vania games so enjoyable, while also introducing self-inflicted wounds when it comes to controls. Now in the NES days, games generally had jump set to A and attack was B. It was a logical control scheme for the controller layout and the buttons were side-by-side and things felt logical with that layout. Here, however, you have B as jump and A attacks, resulting in an awkward control setup no matter what. The inability to manually change controls for the NSO emulators is wonky enough, but can be resolved with things like the Retro Fighters N64 pad making things more comfortable with a B-A main button setup. There’s no option, however, to change the controls around to even work there, let alone with a diamond face button setup where B jumps and Y attacks on Switch – which is odd. The Steam version is the same way in theory, but you may use Steam input to adjust controls as you want so the problem is at least correctable.
Still, it’s an outstanding value even with this flaw and well-worth the money to double-dip to get the best experience possible and then a nice portable experience too. Crypt Stalker is available now on the Nintendo SwitcheShopfor a massively-discounted $1.99 and onSteamfor $2.99. I grabbed the Steam version last night before it was put on the eShop that the game would be discounted at launch until April 12. At under $3, however, I don’t mind it and being able to switch up the control options with more customization makes it well-worth the extra dollar.
