Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is an adventure video game developed and published by Konami for the Family Computer Disk System and Nintendo Entertainment System video game consoles. It is the second installment in the Castlevania series and is set in the year 1698, seven years after the events of the first installment.

Once again assuming the role of vampire hunter Simon Belmont, players set out on a journey to undo a curse that has been placed on Simon by Dracula at the end of the original Castlevania. In order for Simon to break the curse he must collect Dracula’s body parts that were scattered by his minions after his defeat, resurrect him and kill him again.

From a gameplay perspective, Simon’s Quest is quite different from the original Castlevania combining side-scrolling action and platforming with role-playing elements. Instead of implementing the traditional linear style stages, Simon’s Quest allows players to freely roam the land of Transylvania. The objective of the game is to travel to the five mansions to find the body parts of Dracula’s corpse, and an item known as the Magic Cross. Finding all the required items will allow Simon to clear the blockade in front of Dracula’s castle. After defeating Dracula, there are three possible endings based on the time taken to complete the game. The best ending is achieved by beating the game in eight game days.

Simon’s Quest was designed by Hitoshi Akamatsu, who also directed the original Castlevania. The gameplay elements found in Simon’s Quest were influenced by Maze of Galious, another platform-adventure game by Konami that features puzzle solving. Originally released in Japan in 1987 for the Famicom Disk System, it was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System however due to hardware differences between the Famicom Disk System and Nintendo Entertainment System, changes were required between the versions.

The Famicom Disk System version of Simon’s Quest included a save system as the disk-based media supported the ability to write save states to the disk. The Nintendo Entertainment System version did not have this capability and a password mechanism was implemented for gamers to be able to continue playing later. The Famicom Disk System medium has a data storage limitation of 862 kilobits of slow access, where as the cartridge base media of the Nintendo Entertainment System allowed for much faster access to data. The game’s soundtrack was composed by Kenichi Matsubara, who used this to improve the music quality for the game, adding percussion samples and re-arranging the melodies to take advantage of the technology. The game contains an amazing soundtrack, most notable is “Bloody Tears” which has since became a recurring song in the Castlevania franchise.