Game anniversaries have the uncanny ability to make us feel debilitatingly old while simultaneously reminding us just how amazing the classics of our medium were and still are. This week marked the 15th anniversary of
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's PSX release in Japan. Accordingly, we here at 1UP want to celebrate the game's Quinceanera by sharing why it was so amazing in 1997, and why it continues it astound us with every passing year.
In a game packed tight with unforgettable battles, locations and moments, the one that stands out to me as being indicative of the game's overall quality is the reveal that occurs after what many assumed to be the end of the game. If you're anything like me, your first playthrough of SotN ended on a savagely somber tone. Not knowing what the hell the Holy Glasses were, I was forced to endure a melancholy finale that left Richter dead and Alucard still desperately far from the revenge he craved. As the credits rolled and a somber tune filled the air, I was left feeling confused and wanting more.
Time has not been kind to my memory, so I can't quite recall how I found out about the existence of the Holy Glasses. My time spent online was miniscule at best, so I must've heard first hand about the concept of there being
more to SotN than I had already experienced. Little did I know just how much more the game had to offer beyond what I thought was the end. One of the great things about this reveal was how easily it could be missed. I have to imagine that a large group of players missed the Rings and the Holy Glasses their first time through, thus being forced to kill Richter and endure the bad ending.
For me, the revelation of the Inverted Castle is the proto-Shyamalan twist of video games. I honestly feel that a reveal of this caliber could not be kept secret in today's world of leaks and spoilers that get caught in an echo chamber and end up blasting out via headlines, message boards and Tweets. But back in 1997, the average gamer's range of communication was far shorter. Sure, some were tech-savvy enough to find a GeoCities neighborhood and communicate with other equally passionate fans, but that was a very select group of people. Most of us got our news from monthly magazines and uncles who worked at Nintendo, so the chances of something like this being spoiled were fairly miniscule.
It helps that the reveal is intertwined with one of the great moments in
Castlevania history; reaching the location of the prologue and being forced to do battle with Richter was nothing short of epic. But once you donned the Holy Glasses, you realized that the former hero was under the spell of Shaft, and you now spotted the means of breaking this curse. Saving Richter after many of us had been forced to kill him was a great victory, but what came next proved to be the most impressive moment in a game filled with unforgettable beats. A short scene with fantastic music shows the sky opening up and a mirror image of the castle appearing high above your current location. It's at this point that we realize that our journey was far from over.
To reach what we thought was the climax of an amazing adventure, only to discover that we had just reached its midpoint was an amazing revelation. It's like making it to the bottom of a bottle of 25-year-old Macallan, only to find another completely full bottle hiding underneath it...alright, so the logistics there don't make a whole lot of sense, but you get what I mean. The best games leave us wanting more, and SotN managed to deliver just that. The rest of your journey through the Inverted Castle proved to far more challenging than what preceded it, and having the chance to revisit flipped versions of familiar areas on your search for the pieces of Vlad was an event that few would forget. Top it all off with the fact that
wearing glasses was the catalyst for the second half of the adventure made it the perfect moment for a nearly-blind kid from Wisconsin. 15 years is a long time, and not all games are able to age gracefully. Some games considered to be revolutionary in the late '90s have proven to be unplayable today, but like all great classics, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night continues to stand the test of time.
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