Something Missing from the Castlevania III review...

[Paul Campbell]

Dave, I REALLY think that the Castlevania III review needs at least a mention of the fact that you can play the game as boss characters you have defeated. This is, to me, one of the most brilliant aspects of the game, considering how much it effects gameplay, and the short review you already have there has room for the addition. I think it's a very important detail.

[mappy mouse pd]

I play through the whole game using just Trevor, because the other characters are there just there to make the game easier and find extra hearts, that's it. Alucard's little transformation trick is way too cheap and was poorly implemented. Playing as Grant is pointless, unless you want all the items and want to bypass some of the more difficult areas. I think the game is much better with just Trevor.

[sega saturn x]

I wish the password thing didnt suck so bad i mean god was thata bad idea. Tryig to erite thse things down sucked.

[Gunstarhero]

I agree, the 3 extra characters in this game enhance the replayability. They deserve a mention. I like using Sypha personally, she has the hardest route, and unlike Alucard and Grant, using Sypha actually makes the game more difficult. It's an awesome game all around anyway, one of the best games on the NES and my personal favorite Castlevania game period. Not really anything bad you can say about this game, you can only 'not' include good features.

The VideoGame Critic gets a pass on this review of Castlevania III however, because look at the date of review: 10/24/2000. Heck all his reviews were short and succinct back then. Maybe he'll do himself a favor and revisit this old classic one day, and maybe just maybe he'll grace us with a fresh review.

[Den1]

I think the "password thing" was an awesome idea and still do.  Just draw a graph and write A for axe, F for firebomb, whatever.  It's better than writing down some random string of case-sensitive letters and numbers like uwA0O0je2Ks92 IS92jD90SkP3jAsd.

[Gunstarhero]

Heh...thats exactly why I can't play River City Ransom...because I always manage to screw up one of the 33 characters in the password.

[VideoGameCritic]

Speaking of annoying passwords, I remember Road Rash for the Genesis had a really long one, and you know how blurry that Genesis video can be. It was really hard to tell O's from zeros and 8's from B's. What a pain!

Even worse are the games that use artistic symbols instead of letters. When you have to draw these fancy symbols on a piece of paper it takes forever.

Dave

[Robert Johnson]

One game I remember having to input a very long password is "MLBPA '94" for the Super NES.

[Dennis]

Here's a funny story that sorta has to do with passwords:

There was a SNES game called "Hole-in-One Golf" that I loved when I was in high school.  However I never bought it, I just rented it over and over. 

The maker, HAL, had a contest - if you got a hole in one on a certain hole, send in the password and they'd send you a new Ping putter.  Awesome.  After many tries, I got the hole in one and the password.  But you also had to send in the UPC code from the game box. 

So I took a pair of scissors into a video store and hung around the games, waiting for about 30 minutes for the clerk to go in the back or something... no such luck.  I had to leave empty-handed. 

As it turned out, the offer had expired by the time I got the hole in one anyway.  D'oh.

[VideoGameCritic]

Dennis,

That's a hilarious story. I don't think it would have been easy to explain to the clerk if you got caught.

Another thing that's funny is the names that people come up with when they save their records to cartridge. A lot of my Genesis/SNES sports games are used with battery backups, and when I play them for the first time I always see records with names like "Harry Ballz", and that's a tame example! It doesn't surprise me because half the time my friends input obscene names - usually when I'm not looking. Bastards.

Dave