Happy Halloween! Yes, it's that yearly excuse for little kids (and not-so-little kids) to dress up like loonies, go door to door, steal people's candy, bring it home, and pig out on sugar for the next two weeks. For a society that's so conscious about eating healthy, it's amazing that we allow this annual binge to take place. Outrageous, I say!

Huh? Oh, right ... three more Virtual Console games. It looks like Nintendo has followed the theme this week by releasing some spooky games, Castlevania II being the best fit. But are these games scary for the wrong reasons? Check out our recommendations below. And remember: don't eat your candy until you take it home and inspect the loot! Stay safe out there, trick-or-treaters!

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The second Castlevania game has Simon returning to Transylvania to break the curse on his body. How? By packing up Dracula's body parts and resurrecting him, so you can kill him once and for all. The body parts have been strewn across the map and conveniently tucked away in five separate dungeons; Simon must gather clues from the villagers in order to find where to go and how to complete his quest. Unfortunately, the game has an infamously terrible translation, making the villagers useless and the quest much more difficult than it ought to be.

Simon's Quest was many firsts for the Castlevania series, from experience points and equipable weapons to a day/night cycle and a consistent world with no level divisions (it's Metroidvania, if that means anything to you). It's hefty for an NES game, and quite challenging too. Progressing through the world with little to no direction is a bit masochistic by today's standards, so nostalgia is a strong factor in revisiting the quest. For classic adventuring in the mode of Adventure of Link, Simon's Quest is recommended.

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Upon booting up and starting to play Samurai-Ghost for the first time, I immediately saw something fishy. I saw what looked like a lady holding a broadsword as the main character. First of all, samurai don't usually carry broadswords. And, if you'll pardon my chauvinism, I don't equate samurai to be female. That sort of kills the first half of the game's title. As for the "ghost" part, there are some spooky things to kill. I saw trolls, flying hands, firespawns, spiders, skeletons, and a lot of other nasty stuff. Some of them have swords of their own, making it tricky to get past their defenses and take them out without taking too much damage yourself. The boss characters are quite tough, tough enough where you barely make it past them with a little life remaining. You do get some back for the start of the next level, though.

The animation of your character is surprisingly fluid, and the jumping action works great, but ultimately Samurai-Ghost is nothing worth playing. One problem lies in the timing of the sword strikes. Your mind sees the full motion of the sword and thinks you need to swing early to compensate, but most of the time you'll whiff at a diving attacker and take some damage. The game camera looks ahead more than it does behind you, which is good when you're moving forward in one direction only. However, if you become surrounded with enemies (which happens often), you won't be able to see what's behind you without turning around. Even when you do that, the camera will shift all the way across the screen, leaving you slightly blind on the other side. Samurai-Ghost isn't worth dealing with these annoyances, if you ask me.

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Magician Lord is an arcade-style platformer in which you control a young wizard who is looking for eight books to save the world. It plays like an early Castlevania game, but instead of a whip, you shoot magical projectiles horizontally or vertically. Your character walks very slowly but can jump slightly faster, making the movement controls feel rather awkward. The game's best feature, besides the impressive and colorful 16-bit graphics, is that you can transform into six other forms by collecting different combinations of orbs. However, you don't really have control over the orb combinations, because orbs are quite rare and the colors are not random. So basically, you will be whatever form the game designers have chosen for that section of that particular level.

This is a brutal action game that ranks among the most difficult I've ever played in twenty years of gaming. Unfortunately, the difficulty comes not from challenging level design but rather from cheap shots delivered by enemies who are often out of sight. There are also many environmental hazards that you could not possibly avoid by skill alone. The game is full of ladders, and you are completely helpless while climbing up or down. Magician Lord was clearly designed to be played by rote memorization of level designs and enemy patterns, causing cheap deaths in order to extract more quarters from some poor arcade fan. Magician Lord is poorly designed and not fun. It's unfathomable that this game could ever be sold for $200; even nine bucks seems criminal.

Thanks to VG Museum for the non-Nintendo game screenshots.