Castlevania

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North American box art.

Castlevania is an action platformer by Konami released on the Famicom Disk System in 1986 and later ported to many other platforms. It is the first game in the Castlevania series.

I don't remember when I first played this game, but I'm pretty sure I played Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse first, and then this game after, and found it a bit lacking in comparison. As a classic Castlevania game, I want to be good at it, but the game has some serious flaws that make it unlikely I'll ever try to beat it.

Status

I own this game on the NES, but I have never even come close to beating it.

Review

  • Overall: 4/10
  • Best Version: NES

Good

  • The designers made good use of all the common horror tropes.
  • The game has a good soundtrack composed by Kinuyo Yamashita and Satoe Terashima.
  • I like that Simon's weapon is a whip; kind of a unique choice.
  • For such an early game, it has a pretty good amount of variation between enemies, stages, and bosses.
  • The artists did a great job with the background scene approaching the final boss.
  • The Japanese manual is really informative.
  • The game has great box art.

Bad

  • Simon is extremely vulnerable on stairs because he moves so slowly on them and can't jump off. Unfortunately, you spend a lot of the game on them.
  • The background graphics lack definition and are a bit off. They look as though they were drawn for a different resolution and then resized without being fixed.
  • Several enemies are really annoying to deal with because the player's attack and movement is so slow. The medusa heads and fleamen are particularly obnoxious.
  • The game has unnecessary arcade mechanics like points and time, even though they have no real bearing on the game.

Ugly

  • The game is annoyingly difficult to the point where I don't feel like ever trying to get good at it.
  • The game has terrible player control. Attacking is sluggish, jumping is difficult to control, and getting hit knocks you back, often killing you.

Media

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Videos

Titles

Language Native Transliteration Translation
English Castlevania
Japanese 悪魔城ドラキュラ Akumajo Dorakyura Devil's Castle Dracula

Links