Technically, I completed this within the Castlevania Collection on the Switch, but it's an NES faithful port, and the first time I ever beat it was on the NES, so we'll go with that?
You can't really rate Simon's Quest anymore, not this far in the future. It's not really fair to it, given how advanced it was for its time and how well it technically still plays (unlike, say, Dracula X, which was made AFTER some of the best Castlevania games and still managed to play worse than the first one).
It's so hard to imagine what this period in video game history was like. Video games didn't get sequels, you didn't really get MORE of them. Sometimes an arcade game would get one, but it was either a more challenging version of the original (see: Millipede or Stargate) or something 100% unlike the original (see: Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3).
What Nintendo/Konami did with Mario 2 (I know), Zelda 2, and Castlevania 2 was, in retrospect, courageous and fascinating. Each game has little to no connection to the one before. In Mario 2, you can't stomp, you pick things up and throw them, and there are no timers, Zelda 2 is a side-scroller, and Castlevania 2 is, well it's a proto-Symphony of the Night.
You are Simon, you start in a town, and you can go left and right. People talk to you and give you obtuse/poorly translated clues, and you figure them all out (or you don't).
There are five dungeons in the game, each one a more complex 1 to 2 screen maze that are actually fun to navigate, there are 7 towns, with people who sell you upgrades and tools, and there is an actual sense of progression to the game, ending in an actual ghost town outside Castlevania.
Judging it today, after who knows how many Castelvania games there have been, it's not great, on par with the original in difficulty (in exploration and progress rather than gameplay), movement, and overall experience, but in 1987? It was fucking fantastic. It took us all year to figure out, making progress through schoolyard whispers and Nintendo Power magazine (with the occasional phone call to their hotline (don't tell my mom)).
Today, armed with just an annotated world map, you'll be fine, can even finish it in just a few hours. It's not difficult to actually play, the world is actually small enough to traverse from one side to the other in under 10 minutes, and it has amazing music and a desperate, oppressive vibe. If Iga said that he had never played this game, I'd call him a goddamned liar.
You can't really rate Simon's Quest anymore, not this far in the future. It's not really fair to it, given how advanced it was for its time and how well it technically still plays (unlike, say, Dracula X, which was made AFTER some of the best Castlevania games and still managed to play worse than the first one).
It's so hard to imagine what this period in video game history was like. Video games didn't get sequels, you didn't really get MORE of them. Sometimes an arcade game would get one, but it was either a more challenging version of the original (see: Millipede or Stargate) or something 100% unlike the original (see: Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3).
What Nintendo/Konami did with Mario 2 (I know), Zelda 2, and Castlevania 2 was, in retrospect, courageous and fascinating. Each game has little to no connection to the one before. In Mario 2, you can't stomp, you pick things up and throw them, and there are no timers, Zelda 2 is a side-scroller, and Castlevania 2 is, well it's a proto-Symphony of the Night.
You are Simon, you start in a town, and you can go left and right. People talk to you and give you obtuse/poorly translated clues, and you figure them all out (or you don't).
There are five dungeons in the game, each one a more complex 1 to 2 screen maze that are actually fun to navigate, there are 7 towns, with people who sell you upgrades and tools, and there is an actual sense of progression to the game, ending in an actual ghost town outside Castlevania.
Judging it today, after who knows how many Castelvania games there have been, it's not great, on par with the original in difficulty (in exploration and progress rather than gameplay), movement, and overall experience, but in 1987? It was fucking fantastic. It took us all year to figure out, making progress through schoolyard whispers and Nintendo Power magazine (with the occasional phone call to their hotline (don't tell my mom)).
Today, armed with just an annotated world map, you'll be fine, can even finish it in just a few hours. It's not difficult to actually play, the world is actually small enough to traverse from one side to the other in under 10 minutes, and it has amazing music and a desperate, oppressive vibe. If Iga said that he had never played this game, I'd call him a goddamned liar.