Game

If you weren’t around during the NES era, let me explain what it was like for me. I was there at the end of the NES era, where the games were cheaper and more easily gotten for the poorer families. Also, games passed around in the neighborhood, being traded and whatnot. I have a lot of games with my childhood neighbor’s names on them. That is to say, I have no idea where any of these games really came from. Nowadays, if you’re a kid and you get a game, you probably actively wanted it and asked for it, heard about it for ages. But back then, I swear these games just spawned. This is one of those games. No one was excited for Castlequest, but we all owned it anyway. I actually own two copies. Yeah, two. I SERIOUSLY have no idea where they came from.

Castlequest was originally developed by ASCII for Japanese computers in the mid 80s. ASCII were most well known for creating the MSX computers in the 80s, and then later for making RPG Maker. This is a sequel to an earlier game, The Castle, though they’re quite similar, this one is just bigger in scope. You play as a foppish prince who looks like a frog on the victory screen, and you need to rescue “Princess Margarita” from Groken Castle. She’s hidden somewhere in there, so all you need to do is unlock the doors she’s behind, and then touch her to beat the game. Simple, right?

Game

Nope. It might be easier to go out and rescue a princess in real life. Your prince is made of paper, and will die if he touches anything. He’s got a dinky little sword to protect himself, which has TERRIBLE range, and also doesn’t work against every enemy. It’s all about trial and error. You can kill the knights with it, sure, if they don’t arrow you first, but you can’t kill that green parrot-man up there.

You go through this castle, which is a giant 10x10 grid, and solve basic platforming challenges in order to obtain keys. These keys are color coded, and can be used to unlock doors of the same color. Once a door is open, it’s open forever. The strategy of the game then is to find a loop, basically. A loop where you’ll be moving forward, making progress, and also finding enough keys to MAKE more progress so you can loop back and create a safe escape route. Because it is very, VERY easy to softlock yourself in this game. I knew exactly where I was going, I knew the PERFECT route, and I still softlocked myself twice by messing up inputs. The controls are kinda weird, you can jump and hover for a bit, based on how long you hold the button, and you’re gonna need to do some C-bending around corners to get into tight spaces.

Also, let’s talk the music. It’s not that bad. I kinda like it… for a bit. But it’s the only thing that plays in the entire game, and when you leave a room, it resets. So you’ll hear the first several notes of that song over and over. It’s also just a short loop all together. By the end of the 30 minutes, if you’re following the perfect route and not just wandering to your death, you will be driven NUTS by this song.

You’ve got 50 lives in the US version, and only 3 in the JP version. So uh, play the US version? Though the JP version actually has a continue screen, so play the JP version instead? Though frankly, you’ll NEVER run through those 50 lives organically, the more likely thing is you’ll get stuck somewhere and then you’d need to reset anyway. So fuck it, don’t play it at all.

Game

I’ve now beaten this game twice. I beat it once back in the late 2000s. I used to make let’s plays and stuff on Youtube, and this was actually my first real review. I’m not going to share it. It’s bad. But my opinions on this game haven’t really changed. This game kinda blows, though it’s nostalgic and hits my soul in a way few games do. But it’s really REALLY hard to get into, today.

Notably, this is the highest retro ratio I have on the site so far. A retro ratio is a number calculated based on how many people have played the set versus how many achievements have been earned. Most games hover around the 1.5-3 range. The ratio isn’t perfect, because super hard games no one play can have low ratios, cause the only people playing them are people who know how to beat them, like Kaizo mario hacks. My previous highest mastery was Three Dirty Dwarves, whcih only I have mastered, and 34 other people have tried to play it in hardcore (but fallen off of quickly). Castlequest has had three people master it out of 177. That is a rather low ratio, and thus it gets a retro ratio of 19.04. It was actually like 20 before I got to it, but y’know. Despite that, it’s really not a hard game. If you look up a speedrun route, you’ll beat this game in 30 minutes, honestly. The reason so few people mastered it isn’t just cause it’s hard, it’s cause it’s really not that fun to play. They play it for two minutes to see if maybe they wanna check it out, pick up the key at the start to unlock an achievement, die to the knight, and turn it off immediately. I don’t blame them.