My childhood experiences with Castlevania: Bloodlines is pretty limited, mostly due to the fact that I was on the Nintendo side of the 16 bit wars. That didn’t stop me from occasionally swapping systems with friends from time to time to see what exactly Genesis could do better then my beloved Super Nintendo. On one of those occasions, I rented Bloodlines and was a little taken back by it, especially considering what a graphical power house Super Castlevania IV was. It certainly had it interesting points, like having two different characters to select from the start; but for whatever reason the game didn’t really impress me back then. Maybe I rented some other games along with it, but my memories of playing it back then become pretty faded at that point.

A decade or so later, my taste in games and consoles matured and I didn’t give a damn what system a game was on; as long as it was good. Doing so allowed me to revisit various games that I either never experienced before or didn’t give a fair chance and Bloodlines is one of those titles I revisited. Playing it again, I realized that the game is certainly worthy of the Castlevania name and provided plenty of challenge for me. I then kicked myself later for being so closed off from wanting to experience other consoles in my younger age. What a shame!

This weekend, I took the opportunity to fire it up again and beat the game as Vampire Killer wielding Johnathan Morris. After a few hours of playing, I became victorious! On normal mode, it least…