CASTLEVANIA II: SIMON'S QUEST

GAME INFO: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is a direct sequel to Castlevania, wherein vampire hunter Simon Belmont successfully destroyed the corporeal body of Dracula at a terrible cost. In 1698 CE, seven years after the events of Castlevania, Simon discovers that Dracula placed a curse upon him during his dying throes, and he has seven days to collect five relics associated with Dracula's dismembered body (Dracula's nail, eyeball, rib bone, family ring, and heart), use them to resurrect Dracula in his tomb, and destroy him again lest Dracula's curse end Simon's life. Unlike Castlevania while also expanding upon the exploratory elements of Vampire Killer, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is almost entirely non-linear, urging players to traverse a large map of Transylvania to find Dracula's relics based on clues provided by townsfolk in several villages, who may or may not be telling Simon the truth. Additionally, Simon can purchase items from shopkeepers or recover health in each village barring the final, doomed settlement outside of Dracula's tomb. Rather infamously, this game has a day-and-night cycle indicated by the phrases "What a terrible night to have a curse" at nightfall and "The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night" at daybreak. Simon can only interact with wandering townsfolk during the day, as tougher monsters assail Simon at night even within the percieved safety of the villages.

SETTING: The game occupies the same fictionalized version of Transylvania, albeit with a non-linear map that sprawls across several environments such as forest, swamps, cities, caverns, castles, and most importantly graveyards. Players are expected to explore such areas inbetween each city in order to find Dracula's tomb. Many of the same types of monster from the first game assail the player, drawn from horror films, folklore, and Classical mythology with stronger variations emerging at nightfall. Of these, floating eyeballs and skeletal phantoms inhabit the graveyards.

FUNERARY IMAGERY: There are two graveyards in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Carmilla Cemetery to the right of the town of Alijiba, and Vlad Graveyard inbetween the ruined town of Ghulash and a long bridge leading to the ruins of Dracula's Castle. Each area has a unique backdrop, both of which portray old graveyard with upright headstones and crosses, all choked by verdant overgrowth resembling European churchyards and cemeteries that nature overtook in the wake of neglect. These tombstones closely resemble the kinds seen throughout Europe after the seventeenth century, when individual burials were given permanent burial markers contrasting those used in medieval graveyards. Prior to this change in funerary traditions, graveyards were typically used on a temporary basis to denote the body's placement for subsequent exhumation, at which point the parishioner's remains would be interred elsewhere (typically in charnel houses and ossuaries, or placed throughout the church grounds). Only particularly noteworthy burials were given horizontal grave slabs to mark a permanent grave, memorial plaques, or ornate monuments in the interior of the church. Coincidentally, the tombstone of Dracula is seen during the game's ending, with Simon being present depending on how swiftly the player completes the game. It is an ornate headstone topped with a cross and containing an engraving of a cloaked figure that may or may not represent Dracula, and lists his lifespan spanning from 1431 to 1476.

ANALYSIS: Much of Castlevania's association with graveyards comes from Simon's Quest, since it is the first entry in the series that develops the graveyard as an isolated stage. All three of the graveyards in this game are desolate landscapes neglected by society, where supernatural creatures plague the player, who seems to be the only living being brave enough to enter. The headstones are historically accurate considering the fictionalized representation of seventeeth-century Transylvania, as regional variations are sure to exist in reality compared to the funerary sculpture commonly associated in Western Europe and North America. Moreover, the concept of a haunted graveyard closely resembles that of West Highgate Cemetery in London, which is not only overgrown to the point of closure to public viewing, but was also the location of highly publicized vampire sightings in 1970s. Similarly, graveyards resembling these have been a feature of early horror cinema, including Todd Browning's vampire films in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the Hammer Horror movies of the 1960s. Given the game's limited ability to convey textual information, the visal presentation becomes a crucial element in creating an atmosphere of gothic horror. Thus, graveyards bolster the supernatural horror of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest by presenting viewers with a familiar image from horror media, all the while strengthening associations between burial grounds and the supernatural dead.

Thematically, the tombstone of Dracula himself forms an important locus for the millennia-spanning conflict between him and the Belmonts. If Simon defeats Dracula within seven days, he abolishes the curse placed upon him but Dracula yet persists beyond the grave, exhibited by the ground shaking and the vampire's hand bursting grom the ground before his tombstone. Should Simon take between eight and fourteen days, Simon succumbs to the curse and/or mortal wounds incurred during his battle with Dracula, leaving no one in the Belmont clan to fight future iterations of Dracula whenever he resurrects. Taking more than fifteen days to defeat Dracula reveals that Simon perished alongside Dracula, yet rids Transylvania of Dracula's influence by succumbing to the cursed placed upon him. The fact that Simon visits Dracula's grave in the scenario in which he survives the ordeal implies that the Belmonts seem to exhibit some form of respect for their ancestral foe, demonstrated by Simon kneeling and bowing his head before the vampire's headstone. Perhaps this is in reverence of a worthy foe, or showing a form of relief that Dracula is entombed, and that the mortal curse has been consequently lifted. Further still, the contact with Dracula's grave may indicate a metaphysically symbiotic relationship between Dracula and the Belmonts in which the existence of either entity wholly depends upon the other, for without Dracula the Belmonts have no purpose and, in some cases, are established as outcases in Transylvanian society, only proving useful when a vampire needs to be killed. Simon demonstrates a certain command over the resurrection process in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest by reassembling Dracula in a perversion of the Catholic reverence for reliquaries, collecting Dracula's dismembered anatomy to restore un-life to the figure in apparent mockery of Christ and Lazarus. Ultimately, the lack of clear information allows players to derive their own conclusion.

Regardless, the epigraph displaying Dracula's lifespan as 1431 to 1476 suggests that either the tombstone was already there prior to Simon's visitation or that this information was available to Simon or to whomever carved the tombstone. In Castlevania's original timeline, before producer Koji Igarashi assumed control over the series in 1997, Trevor Belmont destroyed Dracula in 1476, an in-game historical facet rendered fact by this very tombstone. Tombstones in this form would be uncommon, if not entirely absent, in the context of fifteenth century Europe, particularly in the Byzantine-influenced cultural landscape of Transylvania that avoided the gothic aesthetics of Western Catholicism. Taken strictly at face value, and given the release history of games in this series, the Western funerary aesthetics of Dracula's tombstone imply that the monument was carved in Simon's lifetime, as the form would fit with contemporaneous funerary traditions that may have emigrated into Eastern Europe by the late seventeenth century.

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