The Man Behind Super Castlevania IV

A surprising tale that was almost lost to history

Video games are an integral part of my life. It’s not just that I have been playing games since a young age (the first console I actually owned was a NES, which my parents bought in 1988 — I was five years old at the time), it’s also that so much of my childhood — perhaps even my identity — is tethered to them. There are many reasons for this, but one stands above all others: my father. In many ways, my dad is one of the most admirable men I’ve ever known; throughout my life, I’ve seen him overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges that emerged from his own troubled childhood. Today, as an adult in my mid-thirties, I enjoy a close relationship with him — but as a child, this wasn’t the case. We weren’t close, spent little time together, and more often than not, he a figure to be feared; in a sense, he loomed over my childhood like a long shadow. How does this relate to video games? Well, games — especially Nintendo — were a kind of refuge where we spent time together, just the two of us. I remember that we obsessively played Super Mario Bros. and I’ll never forget my excitement when we finally reached the Special Zone in Super Mario World. But there was one game we battled with more than any other: Super Castlevania IV.

Perhaps it’s true of all children, but it absolutely never occurred to me that actual people made video games. I was certainly aware of Shigeru Miyamoto well before my teenage years (because, after all, he is something of a deity), but in general, it wasn’t something I considered. Today, of course, game creators are more visible than ever, as are the often shocking working conditions they toil under. Much of the conversation occurring today, as I write this, revolves around the obvious need for game developers to unite in some formalised fashion — perhaps in the form of unionisation. As questionable as working conditions for game creators may be in 2019, though, it’s worth sparing a thought for the game developers of the past — especially those working at Konami in the ’80s and ’90s. Back then, the people who worked on games weren’t credited with their real names. It turns out that the man who directed (and largely programmed) Super Castlevania IV was credited under the name “Jun Furano”, but his actual name is Masahiro “Mitch” Ueno.

Masahiro “Mitch” Ueno.

At least Ueno-san was able to choose his own pseudonym. It was based on a Japanese TV series called Kita no Kunikara, which took place in the cosy ski-village of Furano in the northern Hokkaido Prefecture. Jun was a major character in the series, which itself was about the Kuroita family and their struggle to adjust to a new life in the country (totally random side note: until recently there was a whole “museum” for the show in Furano — you could check out the various sets they used in the show). Learning about Masahiro Ueno as an adult was a pleasure in itself, but it also helped to re-contextualise my relationship with Super Castlevania IV. In some slightly tenuous way, it reminds me of the way your relationship with your own parents completely changes as an adult — it’s almost like you meet them again, with a new perspective, and although they are still your parents, they can also be great friends whose company you enjoy in a delightfully new way. I’ve never met Masahiro Ueno, but revisiting his life’s work as an adult is something of a revelation — in part because his time at Konami was remarkable, but also because his career since then reads like the ultimate bucket list for any aspiring game creator. Despite the rather enormous influence Ueno has had on video games as a medium, he remains humble, pragmatic, and still seems deeply curious and fascinated by the industry to which he contributed so greatly.

Akumajo Dracula

Super Castlevania IV is one of my favourite games. It is generally considered to be one of the best SNES titles, and it rivals Symphony of the Night for best overall Castlevania title (there’s a still-live debate among fans as to which game should take the crown; my favourite is definitely Super Castlevania IV, although I love Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood almost as much). Known as Akumajo Dracula in Japan, Super Castlevania IV is stunning in part because it still feels modern today. If you play it in the right setting (I’d recommend nothing less than the original cartridge played on Analogue’s Super Nt), you’ll experience something that feels like a modern action platformer with suitably-retro pixel art and production value so high it smashed through its Kickstarter goal many times over.

So much of what this game offers — especially when compared to its contemporaries — is a combination of seemingly microscopic attention to detail and a careful focus on what we’d now call user experience. These elements contributed to a game that I distinctly remember feeling genuinely “next gen” when it was new, and which still hold up shockingly well today. These observations aren’t just important in the context of other action platformers released in the late ‘80s/early ’90s, but they are also notable when viewed solely in the context of Castlevania games themselves.

Several Castlevania games had launched prior to the arrival of Super Castlevania IV, including three “main” titles released on the Famicom/NES. The second and third iterations of the main series represented fairly bold attempts to experiment with the formula laid down by the first game. And although Masahiro Ueno doesn’t remember exactly when development on Super Castlevania IV started, he has pointed out that it was developed in parallel with Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. The two Konami teams who were furiously working away at both projects were actually collaborating with a shared audio team (who Ueno credits as being “the best” — when you listen to Super Castlevania IV’s audio design, you’ll find it difficult to disagree with that sentiment). Castlevania III was being developed by the “core team” — in other words, the group who had built the first two games. Super Castlevania IV was being engineered by a largely new team headed by Ueno. It was a small, highly cross-functional team. Ueno was the game’s director, but he was also responsible for programming the regular enemies and the bosses.

New Frontiers

More than anything else, I’ve always wanted to understand why Super Castlevania IV is so timeless — both forward-thinking and elegantly classical at the same time. I think the answer lies in the convergence of two important factors. One was the philosophy and approach that Ueno and his team took with the game, especially in terms of the major design goals they identified. The other was largely a timing question; both in terms of the game’s release relative to Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and the debut of the SNES hardware itself. Let’s take these in order.

We know that both Castlevania III and Super Castlevania IV were developed largely in parallel, with much of the development taking place in 1989. This fact alone is important, because, as Ueno reflects, if Castlevania III had been completed before work started on Super Castlevania IV, it’s very likely that the latter would have followed the template laid out by the former. As it happened, Ueno and his team didn’t feel particularly constrained by what had come before. Having said that, the team were determined to make Super Castlevania IV an action-focused game without any RPG elements. If any of the previous titles were to inspire this new entry, it would actually be the original Castlevania (remembering that Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest was a significant departure from the first game, and featured a much larger RPG focus).

The development team was small, which resulted in a flat structure; ideas for the game’s design could come from anywhere, including programmers. And although they had established a basic blueprint for the game’s overall design, many of the final elements in the game were a result of continuous experimentation in the code itself (elements would be built, tested, and often completely re-built until they felt right).

Mitsuru Yaida handled the programming for the player character, Simon Belmont. If you’ve played the game, it’ll come as no surprise to you that a huge focus for Yaida-san was Simon’s whip — apparently, the team invested significant energy into its mechanics (and when playing the game today, I still adore the way you can make Simon stand in place and fling his whip around at all angles — the physical act of doing this is itself pleasurable). The developers were keen to craft an experience that “gave players more control” — the idea was to reduce player frustration. Ueno paid special attention to areas that players had found frustrating in previous entries (for example, in Super Castlevania IV, you can more easily jump on and off stairs, and you can attack in multiple directions thanks to the new whip mechanics).