MomoCon related: to all like two new visitors I may have of people looking for pictures of themselves, I’m currently in the midst of editing photos when I’m not writing about nonsensical stuff like this. I didn’t take that many pictures at the convention, so check back later on this week, and they’ll all likely be up no later than week’s end.
Anyway, over the weekend, I found myself watching the tail end of Harry Potter: The Half-Blood Prince on television, and I had this amazing revelation, when Dumbledore was telling Harry the general idea of how Voldemort had immortalized himself by use of horcruxes. And how all seven of them had to be located (and destroyed) so that Voldemort could be made mortal again, so that he could be vanquished once and for all.
Granted, I’ve seen the film before long before this past weekend, but I never thought about it until recently; but the revelation was that I had heard this exact plot before, and it was literally almost two full decades before Half-Blood Prince had even been released. It’s basically the exact same concept as Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.
Short and dirty, the plot of the game was that Dracula had put a curse on the land of wherever it is that Castlevania takes place, before he was defeated by Simon Belmont, and in order to lift the curse, Simon must resurrect Dracula, and kill him again (in an unspecified window of time, otherwise you get the bad ending, but that’s besides the point). The problem is that when Dracula was defeated in the past, his body was chopped up into five pieces, and in order to resurrect him, you guessed it, you have to go to these well-spread out mansions and collect them.
So, replace Simon Belmont with Harry Potter and replace parts of Dracula with horcruxes, and in the end it’s basically the exact same plot.
J.K. Rowling can claim concepting the idea as long ago as she wants, but the reality is that Castlevania II was released in Japan back in 1987, who who knows how much longer ago it was actually concepted, much less released. I’m pretty sure that whomever at Konami came up with the plot to Castlevania II will have Rowling beat here.
Either way, it’s amusing to me that in spite of the rabid popularity of Harry Potter throughout the history of storytelling, that it’s most climactic and integral plot to the resolution of the series ultimately was one that seems like it was basically lifted from a video game, widely considered the biggest flop of the franchise, and more or less a mediocre title.
