Like a lot of gamers in their late 30s, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the defining console of my childhood.
Sure, there were some family friends who had other older, and stranger, consoles in their earth-tone basement dens, such as the Atari 2600 or the odd Intellivision. But the NES was the real must-have system in terms of quantity and quality of games available.
The first time I played the console, I was probably about 4 or maybe 5 years old. I remember my parents rented one from the local video store and set it up in our living room.
I was immediately hooked.
I have a vague memory of being so into the console that I didn’t even bother getting dressed to play, just sat there in my underwear and t-shirt, transfixed at the device that would absorb a fair portion of my younger years.
That it came with the Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt paired cartridge certainly helped the little system cast its spell over me – two fantastic and accessible games that acted as gateway drugs to the wider offerings of the system.
I can only imagine what that first experience would have been like had the console come back with a different and altogether more difficult game…
There were certainly a handful of games on the NES that were real bastards. A few that come to mind, and which you could technically beat, included the likes of Ninja Gaiden 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mega Man 1 and Battletoads.
And then there’s Milon’s Secret Castle.
A game so batshit and nonsensically difficult that playing it probably irreparably damaged my psyche.
A game so gruelling that I’m pretty sure that if my parents brought home a NES with Milon’s Secret Castle, then my infatuation with gaming would have been short-lived
What is Milon’s Secret Castle?
Milon’s Secret Castle was a single player NES game developed by Hudson Soft that came out in 1988. Players take on the role of Milon, some elf hat wearing dude, as he navigates his way through the maze-like Castle Garland in a quest to rescue Queen Eliza from an evil wizard-type named Maharito (or something) and a bunch of demons he has as sidekicks.
What could have been a the premise for a straightforward sidescroller, not unlike Super Mario Bros. or its ilk, Milon’s Secret Castle‘s can be generously described as non-linear.
Or, maybe more accurately, purposely obfuscating and antagonistic – especially for younger players.
The reasons for this have not only to do with the way the levels are laid out – players can go to different ones in different order, and even backtrack as needed – but the way progression across the various floors of the castle is explained – or not at all.
Progressing involves first figuring out what the hell you need to do and where to do it. However, to get any grasp of that, you need to find hints – and they come as succinctly as the one below.
Then, once you sorta maybe decipher a hint, the next part is figuring out where to use it – or find the object it’s alluding to.
Unlike a lot of games where you either get one naturally across your journey or have to grind to purchase it, Milon’s Secret Castle has you do the platforming equivalent of pixel hunting.
Both everything and nothing is as it seems in this game. Any wall might not be a wall after you shoot it. Some blocks offer loot when you bump them below like in a Mario game. Others can be pushed for so long you think you made a mistake before it gives away and then an invisible door appears that you have to shoot to actually see.
That last bit is what’s going on above. You need to destroy some blocks, then push another block, then wait, then shoot and voila – a door to a secret shop for an item you need to progress.
Naturally, a game with this sort of psychotic, dream logic is exactly the kind of game very young me was waiting to play. Or not.
Experiencing Milon’s Secret Castle for the first time
It was probably late 1990 or early 1991 when I encountered Milon’s Secret Castle for the first time. Around that point, I was like 6 years old at that point since I remember it being summer.
Hardly into grade school, and I was already something of a cocky little shit when it came to NES games. I was one of those kids who assumed I was the best at everything because I could beat Mario 1 in a single life while my younger brother kept falling into the first pit.
In truth, at 6 years old, I probably did kick a lot of ass when it came to NES games. I do remember easily beating some games that I would later attempt at parties in my 20s and fail miserably.
Of course, a few trickier ones were still out of reach because I could barely read at that age, which was a requirement for understanding some such more RPG themed ones like Faxanadu and Star Tropics. But anything where I could just plug and play and not use my still developing brain to run around, jump, and smash stuff, was my bread and butter.
My first experience with Milon’s Secret Castle was after a friend of my father’s (who also owned a NES) heard that I was apparently pretty good at video games.
He came over one afternoon and more likely than not, I started by bragging about how good I was. We then started talking about the most difficult game he had ever played and how he had finally beaten it after months.
Hearing that it took an adult months of attempts to beat a game was like music to my ears. Up until that point, the longest it took me to clear a game was likely a weekend or two at most.
I probably told him that I could beat it faster than he, and in response, the look he gave me was one that pretty much said “son, you have no idea.”
Still, it didn’t dissuade me and surprise, surprise, he came back a few days later with the cartridge so that I could give it a shot.
So, while he went off to do adult things like sit on the porch and drink beer with my dad, I booted up Milon’s Secret Castle, convinced I would be able to whip my way through this game before he left later that day.
Boy was I wrong.
Playing Milon’s Secret Castle is hell
Milon’s Secret Castle starts simple, luring you in with a false sense of security.
The red brick background of the loading screen looks like it could have been taken from a Mario game.
Then, when you take control of Milon, you move around like a sluggish plumber and even your jump makes a similar springing noise. If you didn’t know better, you might think this was your average platformer.
Which, I most certainly did.
However, as soon as you move across the ground, you hit a wall and have to go back and try some of the doors there. This isn’t gonna be a mad rush from left to right like Mario, after all.
The first door on the left leads you to the first of the “levels.” Here, the stage is organize more vertically.
You can jump on platforms to climb around the stage and shoot bubbles to defeat your opponents. Along the way, you’ll notice some odd details, such as rooms and platforms which you can’t seem to reach.
In any event, even if Milon handles like a man with a bag of wrenches tied to his ass, you can explore the whole room and then, well, that’s it.
There’s no passage to the next room, no boss, nothing to suggest how it ends.
You’ll go around in circles a few more times and then, after finding some arbitrary number of items or killing enemies or maybe even time passing, you’ll find a key that you need to use to exist – only there’s no door in sight.
The door does eventually appear, but only if you got around shooting like a madman at every tile.
I don’t remember how long it took me to figure all that out, only that I did. And because I did, I certainly went to the next level feeling overconfident. Because if this was all there was to the game, I could easily clear it before supper time.
However, the second room is where the real misdirection begins.
You’re again presented with what looks like a twisting room, and which you can easily clear in the same manner as the first, but then, after that, you notice something.
Where’s level 3?
I certainly remember being confused about that as a child. In NES, when you cleared levels, the next one opened up, that was the social contract I was used to. But that’s not the case with Milon’s Secret Castle.
Convinced that I missed something, I went back and did the first two levels over again and again. Each time I went through them, I did more or less the same thing – kill everything in sight, and make it back outside.
There are other doors to enter, true, but one is a shop with a cryptic shopkeeper, and the other is this diddy:
It was only after about an hour of running in circles and dying a few times that I realized that there were a ton of secrets in the first two rooms.
Shoot a brick here and open a passage there. Bop a block there and get a bonus stage. Find an umbrella and shoot faster (naturally).
Aha! I told myself, I’ll just blast everything and that will solve it.
However, even after getting a couple of items, including a potion bottle, I was still stuck in the same boat.
By the time the family friend was ready to go, I hadn’t gotten to the first boss and was just desperately running around in circles.
Fortunately, and perhaps mischievously, he agreed to lend me the cartridge so that I could have a chance to beat it before he came to visit us the next time.
That, of course, didn’t happen.
Making Progress in Milon’s Secret Castle
As convinced as I was, running around and shooting everything wasn’t the solution for progressing in Milon’s Secret Castle.
I had gotten help from my parents to interpret and better read some hints that there were secrets I had to find, possibly some more items, but had little to go on when it came to finding them – like that saw.
Painfully, and inevitably, when that family friend returned some weeks or months later, I hadn’t made any more progress than I had in the first forty-five minutes of playing that game.
I distinctly remember coming home from school and booting it up multiple times a week, and each time getting stuck at the exact same place where I was.
Partially, it could have been bad luck. It could have been statistically possible for me to just make progress by chance through a random combination of button presses.
But nope. When the family friend returned and asked me how I was doing, all I could do was lower my head in shame. It was, if anything, a crushing defeat on my until then illustrious career at being a little punk who was good at video games.
He took back the game and it was the last I saw of it for some time. However, years later, when I was a teenager, he decided to give away all his old games from the NES era and I was the lucky recipient of the treasure trove.
While I inherited a couple of great titles that I didn’t previously own, such as Mario 2 and the sorta awesome Jaleco Baseball, the bundle also came with Milon’s Secret Castle.
Determined not to let my childhood memories of that game define me, I promised myself I would finally make progress.
So, 13-year old me then picked things right back up where 6-year old me failed.
I discovered, then, that the game was brutal but not as bad as I remembered. Yes, controlling Milon sucked. Yes, there are no invincibility frames (even when entering doors). But maybe there was some sense to all this madness.
For instance, as a teenager, I was finally able to piece together what went on in that empty room – it’s where the boss appeared. However, to make the bastard appear, you need to do a few things.
First, you need two items: a pair of shoes and a potion.
You could get the potion from the shopkeeper if you have the money to pay for it, which you can find by breaking bricks.
For the potion, since it’s pricey, you need more money. The best way to get the coins is in a mini game where you grab falling musical notes.
However, to get to the mini game, you need to read that hint about finding a box and then jump under the correct block to make the box appear.
Only when you finally have those, does the first boss appear – a big yellowish dragon that shoots fireballs without any shits to give about where they land.
Like everything else in this game, he sucks. He takes a ton of hits to drop and he shoots purple fire that seems completely random and without pattern. He can, however, be beaten, allowing you to progress.
So, in my case, it literally required that I grow up and my brain develop before I could make any headway into a game that had gotten me stuck since my childhood.
Unfortunately, and perhaps expectedly, getting past the first boss is by far the easiest portion of the game.
Seriously, it gets even more confusing, and difficult, after that point. In the coming zones you’ll get all manner of fun such as falling platforms, burning platforms, and even more precision jumping in a game where I barely understand how my character moves.
If I recall correctly, I killed the boss, went to the next stage, promptly died, and gave up.
I recall having fought with the game some more at that point, but I never had the will to finish the damn thing. Especially not since the N64 had recently been released and I then had to spend every waking moment playing GoldenEye64.
Milon’s Secret Castle Still Haunts Me
Since then, I’ve made major progress with the game, only without me doing the playing.
I’ve read FAQs that walked me through the game form start to finish. Read details about it in old Nintendo strategy guides. I’ve also watched folks with more patience than me complete the game from start to finish on YouTube.
I’ve also played it on emulator, since the cartridge seems now long lost (even if I have my console and a few other games — Milon’s has since disappeared. Guess I’ll have to decide how much I want to buy another copy off eBay… of course it’s possible I drunkenly lent it to a friend years back, passing on the same challenge that was given to me years earlier. Who knows).
Painfully, while booting it up and writing this review, I made it to the first boss and while I had the luck to kill him on the first attempt, one of his purple fireballs also managed to blast me at the last second, taking me out with him.
Maybe that’s as far as I need to go this time. It kinda sums up my whole experience with this game – make some progress, and then mutual self destruction.
In any event, for a game that did little more than kick my ass when I was young, the strangest thing is how much I still think about it.
Maybe it’s a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where I’ve fallen for the captor that punished me the worst. Or maybe it’s like my first breakup, a grueling experience that comes to define all grueling experiences like it afterwards.
Maybe it’s simply a game that I not only wanted to be good, but also to be good at.
I really don’t know, but I feel that there’s hardly a month that goes by where I don’t find myself remembering the droning, fairly obnoxious, and ultimately catchy music that played when you entered the castle for the first time, or the wonderful sound the doors made when you stepped through them.
In any case, Milon’s Secret Castle will always be a game that kicked my own obnoxious younger self’s ass over 30 years ago and somehow it still hurts.
