This is CastleVania 3, the third game in the extremely popular series. The game in general is very well done with great enemy placement and very good design. However, the jumping controls make this a very hard game to play. Why? Because you cannot steer Simon in midair! This isn't too bad in stages 1 to 4, but it starts to become a big issue (to me) from stage 5 on-wards, when enemies tend to do more damage to you. You have 16 HP to start off with and enemies take off 2 HP per hit. Pork chops help restore 6 HP and beating a stage restores all of your HP. However, a bit later in the game, enemies do 3 HP of damage to you, and then 4! This can become a nightmare because at first, you can take 8 hits, then 6, then 4! It doesn't help when the enemies become much more frequent and the platforming is trickier. Although, this is a really good NES game, it has it's flaws, like the difficulty at later stages. Thankfully, you can type 'HELP ME' at the beginning to have ten lives instead of three. The jumping is really stiff and will kill you if you're not careful. Overall though, this is a prime example of 'hard games don't make bad games.' It's a great platformer and will definitely curb your appetite for platformers.

Buy, Rent or Skip: Rent if you don't like hard games, but buy if you're a fan of them.