At the stroke of midnight, all candy will go on clearance and the curse of the Hallmark Channel will usher in a Christmas with no winter. Before the pumpkin spice vanishes from your latte and Mariah Carey stages a hostile takeover of the airwaves, make some last sacrifices to the Pumpkin King:
Boktai & Lunar Knights
In a frontier dominated by bloodsucking Immortals, vampire hunters wield Solar Guns against the undead hordes. The Galaxy Universe, Dark, wills that all living things perish. The spirits of the sun and earth fight back in a centuries-long war for all life, lending aid to the Solar and Lunar Clans.
The original Boktai games all use an ultraviolet sensor to detect different levels of sunlight, affecting the light available to recharge the Solar Gun, bank energy, and power the Pile Driver. Defeated bosses are captured in coffins, and the player drags them back through their lairs to purify them in the Pile Driver. Normally this makes the games challenging to play in October, but in the modern day we have access to patches that manipulate the sunlight level with a button command. Their Nintendo DS successor Lunar Knights instead has an in-game weather system and day/night cycle, so it can be played at any time of day and year.
The setting owes a lot to Vampire Hunter D with its mix of futuristic high technology and apocalyptic sensibilities, but the gameplay is rooted in stealth action. The player can muffle their footsteps with special items, knock on walls to draw enemies, and stagger them by attacking from behind. The first game was a spiritual successor to Metal Gear: Ghost Babel emphasizing stealth and surprise, while Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django was a melee-driven action RPG doing a lot with equipment crafting and elemental weaknesses. Boktai 3: Sabata's Counterattack is the best of all worlds.
Lunar Knights builds on Boktai 3 with two playable characters, fleshing out Django and Sabata's archetypes into unique transformations, weapon types, and accessories. Instead of using the Pile Driver, you fly the boss coffins into outer space and nuke them with a satellite solar laser. Taking place in a near-future alternate timeline to the original trilogy, it's a great entry point that didn't get the recognition it needed at launch. Many characters have connections back to Boktai 3 specifically, like its lead villain being the successor to that game's Lord of Destruction, but the English localization attempted to scrub these—most infamously, renaming Master Otenko "Toasty."
None of the games have been reissued in the ~20 years since their release, and I'm not exactly holding my breath for it to happen...but Haunted Castle got a remake, so sometimes pigs do fly.
Gunbarich
A festive variant on Breakout, with shoot-'em-up elements and pinball flippers to angle the ball. With both a colossal vine haunted by a pumpkin king and a gingerbread house ruled by a teddy bear in a santa suit, the variety of stages make it the perfect bridge game to play in the holiday season.
Cereza and the Lost Demon
Lost in Avalon Forest, the apprentice witch Cereza comes under attack by the faeries and hastily conjures a demon into her stuffy Cheshire to protect herself. However, she didn't get far enough in her training to know how to unsummon it, and Cheshire can't harm or leave her without harming himself. The pair are forced to work together to acquire enough power for Cereza to rescue her imprisoned mother, and send Cheshire home to the Inferno.
Cereza and the Lost Demon plays like a long-lost classic Zelda, using Cereza and Cheshire's developing powers to solve puzzles opening locked doors and revealing hidden Pieces of Heart Vitality Petals. The border between dungeon and field is less distinct than in Zelda, with the forest proper blending into its sub-areas. The Tir Na Nogs sprinkled around the forest are more conventional cordoned-off puzzle spaces, most of them optional.
Like in the 3D Zeldas, enemies generally serve as obstacles blocking off access to puzzles rather than as puzzles themselves. The combat is where the game stands apart, with both characters controlled simultaneously using separate halves of the gamepad: Cereza moves with the left stick and Cheshire with the right, Cereza's context-sensitive actions are on the L bumper and Cheshire's are on R, and Cereza's magic spells are on the ZL trigger while Cheshire's attacks are on ZR. Cereza's actions are based around control, disruption, and support roles, while Cheshire acts as her muscle. With all the offensive power concentrated in her partner, Cereza herself is quite fragile.
Presented as a storybook and narrated like a fairytale, Cereza and the Lost Demon doesn't shy away from the grim or uncanny. The faeries feast on the souls of children, trapping them in Avalon after death and tormenting them to feed on pain and fear. The watercolor-inspired presentation softens these darker elements, but doesn't wash them away entirely.
Oh and it's like also a Bayonetta origin story or something.
Darkstalkers
This Monster Mash brings together vampires, mummies, mermen, demons, catgirls, Jiāngshī, and dozens of other oddballs in zany 1-on-1 battles animated at the zenith of Capcom's pixel art. The original run is technically five games released between 1994 and 1997, but the third is what you really want. Vampire Savior has all the fan-favorites, and characters are the real heart of a fighter.
Darkstalkers is sadly overlooked but surprisingly accessible; all five games are in the 2022 Capcom Fighting Collection, while The Night Warriors and Darkstalkers' Revenge are also available in Capcom Arcade Stadium 2nd as downloadables. Whether you're just fooling around with friends on Halloween night or tournament grinding, it's a very robust fighting game.
The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang
A late Super Nintendo action RPG in the style of Illusion of Gaia and A Link to the Past, starring a tomato-munching vampire prince taking on an army of invading zombies and walking garlic cloves. The level design isn't anywhere near as clever as its contemporaries, and Spike doesn't have enough interesting actions to make for great encounters, but it's a fun four-hour romp.
Generally, the stages are easy while the bosses are skewed against the player. The game can be played cooperatively, though the companion character is totally invincible. The level curve was severely padded out for the international localization to prevent the rental marketing from killing it, but it's still just around four to five hours long.
Luigi's Mansion
Winning a mansion that shouldn't exist in a lottery he never entered, Luigi arrives at his new vacation home to find it haunted and his brother kidnapped. Armed with a flashlight and ghost-gulping vacuum, he sets off to capture the spooks hiding in the walls and rescue Mario. The moment-to-moment gameplay involves capturing all the fodder ghosts in each chamber to find the key to the next locked door, clearing out the mansion room-by-room until the player can take on each of the boss ghosts in an area. The treasure the ghosts drop contributes to Luigi's score for each area, which is totaled towards an overall ranking at the end of its 5-hour runtime.
Having started as a Nintendo 64 project, Luigi's Mansion has a lot of stylistic artifacts left over from the late 90s; there are Toads hiding everywhere like in Super Mario 64, door-opening animations to mask load times like in Resident Evil, and an arcade sensibility that rewards perfecting the player's score in each area. (Which serve as discrete stages, despite the mansion itself being more open.) Like in classic Zelda, Luigi's Mansion also has a Second Quest in the form of the "Hidden Mansion"—it's actually called the Ura-Yashiki in Japanese, after the Ura-Zelda name used for both the Second Quest and the Master Quest expansion to Ocarina of Time.
Similar to Master Quest, the Hidden Mansion mirrors the mansion horizontally and revises enemy behavior, placement, and rewards, raising the difficulty and score ceiling. However, the Hidden Mansio differs across regions; what I just described is the last GameCube revision, the European version, while the Japanese and North America editions don't mirror the mansion at all. The 3DS remake keeps the other Hidden Mansion updates, but not the mirroring.
All three entries in the series are worth playing, but the second is more explicitly stage-based with multiple separate mansions. The third game is closer to the original in spirit, but lacks a Hidden Mansion mode or any kind of alternative difficulty levels, and has optional cooperative multiplayer with player 2 controlling Luigi's gooey doppelganger, Gooigi.
Spirits & Spells
Also published in different regions as Castleween and Magic Pumpkin: Anne and Greg's Great Adventure, there are two incarnations of Spirits & Spells. The console version is a linear 3D platformer heavily inspired by Crash Bandicoot: the player can stack up to three fairies that function like the damage-absorbing Aku-Aku masks in Crash, the 24 levels have a corridor-like progression with a fixed camera, and the torches dividing up levels work just like Crash's checkpoint crates.
Instead of collecting apples Wumpa Fruits the player picks up magic crystals, with every 30 generating a charge that can be consumed to toggle between its two playable characters Alicia and Greg. Because of their costumes, witches won't attack Alicia and imps won't attack Greg. The "magic pumpkins" referenced in the Japanese title are blue- and red-marked pumpkin switches; Alicia uses the blue ones to freeze water into ice, and Greg uses the red ones to light fires. In turn, Alicia is immune to freezing while Greg can't be damaged by fire.
The crystals are the most glaring flaw, compelling the player to double back over certain areas to farm charges for whatever puzzle they're on. The level designers seem to have figured this out, as certain puzzle zones have multiple free-floating high-value crystals to rack up charges quickly—they just didn't realize switching between Alicia and Greg needed to be a free action. The platforming is fairly close to Crash's physics, with all the same benefits and pitfalls.
Every region has its own inaccurate box art. The horrifying CGI renders on the European box, the airbrushed direct-to-VHS look of the American box, and the cute anime characters on the Japanese box, are all at odds with the in-game models. It's a fun but forgettable two hours with appropriately spooky tunes, contending with Spike McFang for the most average game on this list.
The handheld version is a strange amalgam of different 2D platformer ideas: crystals are used as a one-hit damage shield like in Sonic the Hedgehog, enemies have to be dispatched with melee attacks like in Castlevania, and Greg can do a downstab like in The Adventure of Link. Alicia and Greg switch at specific checkpoints for free, but that's the only improvement. The platforming is strangely unforgiving, and extra lives aren't as abundant as in the 3D version. It also uses a gross digitized style of animation similar to Donkey Kong Country, baking the models from the 3D game down into sprites and color-reducing them to fit the hardware.
Castlevania
This is the lowest-hanging fruit of Halloween, so I'll just empty the pumpkin now and say everyone should try Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, and Portrait of Ruin at least once in their lives. If you take to any of those, you'll end up playing all the Igarashi games anyway.
Of the Classicvanias, Bloodlines is the best entry point. Konami spent about 25 years pretending it didn't exist, but today it's readily available in the Anniversary Collection alongside other high points like Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Rondo of Blood is another good gateway, and a high-water mark for the series. Chronicles on PlayStation is an oft-overlooked reimagining of the first Castlevania, with some unique vertically-arranged levels and clever bosses concepts.
Kid Dracula
A Mega Man-like spinoff of Castlevania amping up the franchise's silly side. Rather than the methodical platforming of the main games, Kid Dracula features more forgiving physics and projectile-based spells that unlock as you clear stages. You can change your direction mid-jump rather than commit to it, and Kid eventually gets spells to fly temporarily or walk on the ceiling.
Don't argue if this game is canon or not. You know in your soul it doesn't matter.
Vampire Hunter D
Though often mislabeled survival horror, Vampire Hunter D is secretly an antecedent to Devil May Cry. The game is played with tank controls in a prerendered castle evocative of Resident Evil's Spencer Mansion, but the similarities to RE end there; D is actionized with combo strings, parries and jumps, and the distribution of resources is grossly skewed in the player's favor. Cutting down every enemy in the game many times over isn't just possible, it's expected.
Tapping the triangle button draws or sheathes D's sword, toggling between search and combat modes to change D's available actions. The more the player hits enemies the more their Vampire Points rise, increasing the damage they do, while getting hit decreases VP, rewarding gradual systems mastery. The core sword-swinging action is supplemented by consumable subweapons, like the wooden throwing darts that can be used to stake enemies at a distance. This all results in a game that feels less like classic PlayStation horror and more like a proper 3D Castlevania.
Vampire Hunter D follows the titular Dhampir to rescue the kidnapped human Charlotte from the vampire noble Meier Link, who suddenly abducted her despite advocating coexistence between humans and vampires. As D navigates the labyrinthean Castle Chaythe with the assistance of his talking parasite Left Hand, he unravels the mystery behind both Meier Link and the castle's previous master, the deceased vampire queen Carmilla. The vertical elements of combat serve to peel back the surface 2D layer of prerenders, reminding the player they're navigating a fully 3D space from fixed perspectives; the game rewards precisely-timed backjumps, leaping combos, and learning to quickdraw D's sword to come in fast at enemies. Loosely based on the contemporary movie Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, the game goes in its own direction with multiple endings.
I can't emphasize enough that while D's world is horrific, his game isn't a horror game, much less a survival horror game. You will overwhelm the enemies once you know the controls. Weakened foes can be absorbed with Left Hand's ability to restore your magic, which can then be spent on healing. Enemies thus replenish your resources, making them your prey—they are trapped in here with you.
Kōmajō Densetsu
A pair of Castlevania-inspired Touhou fangames featuring portraits and illustrations by Banpai Akira (a pun on banpaia kirā "Vampire Killer") developed and published by Frontier Aja in 2009 and 2011. The second game, Stranger's Requiem, is the real standout; Frontier Aja was a little too inexperienced with the original's level design, but the sequel is a tight platforming experience with some brutal bosses that incorporate bullet hell elements into a side-scrolling platformer.
Like in the actual Touhou games, the bullet patterns in boss fights appear intricate but most are not actually aimed at the player. Many of them serve as barriers limiting your access to the boss, controlling what points of a fight they're completely vulnerable in and which weapons connect. This creates something visually interesting, but which only a specific portion of is actually interactive.
The games control like Metroidvanias but are structured like Classicvanias, with each stage broken up into a linear sequence of rooms that serve as checkpoints. Magic regenerates rapidly and coexists with souls, souls being spent on subweapons and magic on special actions. While Reimu in Scarlet Symphony has a forward slide kick, Sakuya in Stranger's Requiem instead starts with a strong backdash. Both have fairly small hitboxes that can be used in combination with movement tech to evade through boss patterns, for example by facing away from bullets and backdashing into them.
Mastering each game's movement quirks is key to surviving and scoring highly in their stages. Particularly in Requiem, as you get accustomed to Sakuya's options you discover how breezy the levels are. Not every enemy needs to be engaged directly; many can be bypassed with a clever mix of jumps, dives, backdashes, and short stretches of flight. Flying is slow and consumes magic, but can save you from certain hazards and helps with evading damage...assuming you're doing it on purpose.
As of 2023 these have commercial versions on Steam and consoles, published by CFK as Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony and Koumajou Remilia Ⅱ: Stranger's Requiem. The forced sprite filtering and steep pricing puts a lot of people off compared to the original doujin releases.
Devil May Cry
Another game that did 3D Castlevania better than Castlevania, and did it while laying a foundation for a new style of 3D action. The original Devil May Cry wears its origins as a Resident Evil concept openly, with Dante finding keys, solving puzzles, and untangling Mallet Island's castle room-by-room, but abandons prerenders in favor of real-time environments with fixed camera angles. While the opening minutes are spent on atmosphere instead of combat, the meat of the game is experimenting with and working out how its combos and ranking system fit together. It's relatively short but replayable, expecting you to rank as low as possible your first time through. As the big picture of how Dante's moves connect finally clicks, tasks that felt impossible become trivial.
Some aspects of play still feel subversive. Dante's guns never run out and never reload, but they're also incredibly weak—in most action games a gun would outshine all other options, while here they're tools for keeping a combo going, stalling an enemy, or dropping its guard. Today we're accustomed to sending floes flying with every button, but Dante has just a handful of launchers, and their value is in how they temporarily neutralize a target so you can you manage other threats. There are few legitimate "popcorn" enemies, as even the weakest foes can be disruptive.
Dante's real bread-and-butter is the Devil Trigger, a limited-time power up that greatly enhances his damage but has to be recharged by landing hits and rank. Maintaining combos both for survival and a good ranking thus hinges on getting into Devil Trigger state often, and prioritizing its meter.
Despite being divided into missions, the entire castle is interconnected—spiritually similar to how Luigi's Mansion divides its titular abode into areas. Devil May Cry 3 is closer to what the series is known for now with its nonstop action and over-the-top antics, but it's not as haunting. The mix of foreboding melodies and ambient sounds, seemingly from nearby rooms you never quite find, creates a uniquely moody world. (And then a marionette drops from the ceiling and you rock out.)
We don't talk about 2.
The future: Bye Sweet Carole & Mina the Hollower
You can't play these games...yet. Bye Sweet Carole is a gorgeous traditionally-animated survival horror in the style of Clock Tower, emulating the look of Disney's pre-xerox ink-and-paint films like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Meanwhile Mina the Hollower is a top-down action-adventure with a Game Boy Color aesthetic, inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons. It's the newest IP out of Yacht Club Games, following up on the success of Shovel Knight.
Although Bye Sweet Carole was originally dated for 2024, it's since been pushed forward into next year. With any luck, we'll be playing both Bye Sweet Carole and Mina the Hollower next Halloween.
