Maldita Castilla

The Good
Locomalito is a Spanish guy that makes great games with the look and feel of those classic arcade titles from the Eighties. The first I heard of him was when I read an article on Indie Retro News about Maldita Castilla, an excellent game that is a throwback to classic arcade games of the Eighties. To play most of the indie titles out there, you have to fork over a certain amount of money. But Locomalito has been generous enough to not only provide this game for free on their website, but he is also giving you the option of downloading two different versions of the game.

In the game, you play Don Ramiro, a knight ordered by the king to travel to Tolomera to rid the evil that plagues the kingdom of Castilla. Much of the game is spent traveling from location to location, defeating a variety of monsters using weapons that Ramiro collects, and fighting a boss who guards the entrance to the next scene. All the monsters you meet in the game are based on myths from Spain and other parts of Europe. The only one familiar to me was a reference to Don Quixote in the third level. You start the game with three lives, with an opportunity to get more throughout the game.

Maldita Castilla mimics the inner workings of the arcade machines. Upon starting the game, you are greeted with a RAM and ROM check, as well as a gridded, black-and-white test pattern. In addition, the game uses a limited color palette and emulates the YM2203 sound chip thanks to Gryzor87. As a result, the quality is on par with Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Gameplay-wise, all the elements are there, including the world map shown before the start of the level and the extreme difficulty.

Speaking of difficulty, you will die many times in this game unless you are an experienced player. Having said that, it pays to complete each level more than once so that you know where certain dangers, and by doing so, you will have no trouble completing the level again after a few times. If you lose one of your lives, you will also lose whatever weapon you were carrying at the time, making it difficult to defeat some of the bigger enemies. You have unlimited continues, but you will be punished for using more than four.

The game has four endings, and what ending you view depends on your performance throughout the game. You also have to find all the tears in each level (including the one cleverly hidden in level five) and don't use more than four continues. If you don't collect all five, you don't go to level six and will experience one of the bad endings because of it. Of course, Maldita Castilla is replayable just to experience all the endings.


The Bad
Some of the levels seem to take forever to get through, even if you have a better weapon.

The Bottom Line
Maldita Castilla is an excellent platform game from Locomalito and it is the first game that I played from him. It captures the look and feel of those classic games from the Eighties, especially the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, and all the elements are there, apart from the multiple endings and unlimited continues. I recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the two Capcom arcade titles. There is an extended version of the game called Maldita Castilla Ex, that features new levels and several modifications to the gameplay. It is worth forking out ten dollars, even if you complete this game, just to support the developers.