Castlevania Bloodlines by Konami
Sega Genesis– March 1994
The obvious choice for this
face-off would involve Super
Castlevania IV, but that's like
comparing apples to wrecking
balls, so screw 'obvious.'
Bloodlines and Dracula X are
more evenly matched when it
comes to style, and that makes
for a more interesting contest.
Two different takes on one similar premise? We've got a lot of
work to do.
Storyline:
Dracula
X
introduces Richter Belmont,
Maria Renard, and her sister
Annet, who serves as the
'damsel in distress', to the Castlevania timeline.
Wicked
townsfolk from Transylvania,
possessed by the darkness of
Dracula's spirit, conspire to
return him from the grave via
arcane rituals.
And while
Simon Belmont has been dead
for hundreds of years, it
doesn't take the vampire king
long to decide Richter is a
suitable
target
for
his
vengeance.
Bloodlines tells a completely
different tale, set during World
War I, featuring two would-be
vampire killers in Eric Lecarde
and John Morris, and using the
real-world figure of Elizabeth
Bathory (renamed in the game
to Bartley) as a primary
antagonist to push the story,
even though it takes some
liberties with history. In this
case it's a tale of revenge in
reverse: Lecarde's out to
avenge his lady friend, who
became a vampire shortly after
Words by Michael Crisman
Bathory worked her dark ritual,
and John Morris has a bone to
pick
with
anybody
who
resurrects Sir Fangs-A-Lot for
more personal reasons, so it's
off to Romania for the first leg of
a mission that will take them all
over Europe.
Winner: Bloodlines.
While
Dracula X serves as the psuedoprelude to the piece of gaming
badassery that is Symphony of
the Night (see 'Did You Know...?'
for more on this) and the backstory is better than many of the
other games in the series,
Bloodlines' use of historical
events, ties to Bram Stoker's
novel, Countess Bathory/Bartley,
and a then-unique lack of
Belmonts gives it all the edges it
needs to win this fight.
Graphics:
Extremely tough
call. Both 16-bit systems push
the graphics envelope, with cinema-style
intros,
parallax
scrolling, and other bits and
bobs.
On the one hand,
Bloodlines seems to run a bit
smoother and it's uncensored so
there's
more
overall
grotesqueness to be seen when
destroying
your
enemies
(zombies
spill
their
guts
everywhere, bats burst into
flames as their skeletons fall to
the floor, and so forth). On the
other, the Genesis/Mega Drive
has to work hard to fake the
sorts of Mode 7 effects the
SNES pulls off without breaking
a sweat and Dracula X's sprites
rank slightly larger than those of
Bloodlines.