Castlevania

aka: Akumajō Dracula, Arcade Archives: Vs. Castlevania, Castle Vania, Vs. Castlevania
Moby ID: 2062
NES Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/18 8:40 PM )
Conversion (official) See Also

Description official descriptions

Every hundred years, the dark vampire known as Dracula resurrects and terrorizes the land. A vampire hunter named Simon Belmont bravely ventures into the Count's mansion in order to defeat him. Along the way he'll have to defeat skeletons, bats, fishmen, medusa heads and other evil creatures.

Castlevania is a side-scrolling platform action game. The player takes the role of Simon Belmont, who is able to jump and crack his whip directly in front of him. Power-ups can be obtained by defeating enemies or by whipping candles that appear in the castle. One such power-up increases the power and length of Simon's whip. Different weapons can be gathered which consume hearts when used, these hearts can also be collected from monsters and candles. Additionally, some walls will hide secrets such as the health-restorative turkey or the Double and Triple shot abilities for the weapons Simon has collected. At the end of each section of the castle is a boss, which must be defeated. Progression through the castle eventually leads to a confrontation with Count Dracula himself.

Spellings

  • アーケードアーカイブス VS. キャッスルヴァニア - Japanese Nintendo Switch / PS4 spelling
  • 悪魔城ドラキュラ - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (NES version)

17 People

Produced By
  • Konami
Directed By
Screenplay by
Music by
Dracula
  • Christopher Bee
Death
  • Belo Lugosi
Frankenstein
  • Boris Karloffice
Mummy Man
  • Love Chaney Jr.
Medusa
  • Barber Sherry
Vampire Bat
  • Mix Schrecks
Hunch Back
  • Love Chaney
Fish Man
  • Green Stranger
Armor
  • Cafebar Read
Skeleton
  • Andre Moral
Zombie
  • Jone Candies
The Hero
  • Simon Belmondo

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 45 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 233 ratings with 9 reviews)

An okay, if a somewhat shoddy conversion

The Good
Once you survive the not so pleasant first impressions, you have to realize there is nothing majorly wrong with it, and it's actually quite playable.

Technical wise, it works well. It has smooth scrolling and movements, good sprite action, manageable joystick controls, and simultaneous musics and sound effects. Also included a savegame feature which allows to record your progress onto the floppy at checkpoints - this comes very handy!

The Bad
The graphics and sound quality is the biggest let down of this conversion. The contrast is aching if you come to here straight after looking at the NES version. The graphics is very blocky. The music sounds raw. It could be so much better. They tried too hard to copy the Nintendo-ness instead of adapt it to the quirks of the system.

Other things to complain about like sprite flickering when the screen is crowded, 1 button joystick controls, respawning enemies, disk read/write is slow, no possibility to load the saved game unless you are at the title screen and such.

The difficulty can get sadistic! And falling back when getting hurt feature is a pain the every organ.

The Bottom Line
The original Castlevania still shines thru. The backgrounds are not dull, they make the place "alive" as much as they can. There is a good sense of progress. Beside bashing monsters, there is a looting system, upgrades to your whip, and different secondary weapons, which also may appear randomly from some slain enemies. The foes are memorable and each require different tactics. Extremely tight level design with some random hazards too. Secrets. Thrilling music. The intro and outro animation also stayed intact.

Commodore 64 · by 1xWertzui (1135) · 2017

Hurts So Good

The Good
Ahh, the 80's - when we wanted our games to HURT us. Make us bleed and sweat and cry and throw the controller across the room. No saving every five seconds, no health packs around every corner, a great early-generation platformer like CASTLEVANIA punished failure, clumsiness, inattentiveness, hell, they even punished SUCCESS by ratcheting up the difficulty yet another agonizing notch every step you progressed. And here you've got six levels of beautiful raggedy-Gothic 8-Bit visuals and palm-sweating jumps, capped by boss fights that demanded the best (at the time) in pattern recognition and twitch-timing. The continues, sending you to the beginning of the level, gave you just enough reason to hope you could learn from your mistakes and take that boss down this time. But you had to earn your way back.

The CASTLEVANIA franchise has always thrived on theatrical atmosphere, colorful monsters, and stirring musical themes - and that formula arrived here fully intact. Given how few colors and patterns the designers had to work with, the pacing and foreboding sense of place they managed to coax out of the old Famicom is a marvel, one that pointed the way towards a more mature breed of gaming.

The Bad
The clunky controls have been voluminously documented in more comprehensive forums than this, and the Medusas and Hunchbacks put up a good fight against the birds from NINJA GAIDEN as "Most Annoying 80's Game Scrub Monster Ever". But you could argue that without these agonies, the triumph wouldn't taste so sweet.

The Bottom Line
The doesn't-need-to-be-humble start to one of the greatest franchises in video games, and a masterful artifact of the time when platform games were designed to take on in one brutal sitting.

NES · by TheoryOfChaos (23) · 2006

Whip it good, this is an excellent action/adventure(?) game for the NES!

The Good
More of an action game, this is the game that made me as a kid, want to go out and buy a bullwhip. And I did, thats no joke. I was in love with this game from the time it was released in the coin-op version. It later became my first NES game I purchased.

You start out at the castle gates and work your way through the levels until you are finally at the top of the castle where the vampire is waiting. The levels all end with a mini-boss. Some pretty cool weapons can be found along the way including a stop watch that stops time. The mini-bosses are pretty fun to fight which were a big black bat, Medusa, Two Mummies, Frankenstein & Hunchback, The Grim Reaper and then the final boss is the Vampire. There might have been one more but they're pretty fun to kill.

The difficulty was enough to give you plenty of game play time, it took me awhile to be able to win the game. Pretty good "Translyvanian" kind of music, perfect for the haunted castle theme.

The Bad
Controlling your guy was pretty sluggish and difficult.

Everytime you get hit, you fly backwards which can be extremely annoying when you are standing on ledges fighting off enemies. Actually, it was annoying at any point in time.

There was also no way to save, one could argue the game wasn't long enough to need a save method. I think it might have been. There were continues though.

The Bottom Line
Some pretty sweet whip crackin' action, definitely one of the classics of the 8bit era and definitely my favorite series from Konami.

NES · by OlSkool_Gamer (88) · 2004

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Also released May 2019, part of Anniversary Collection, including a Windows version Andrew Fisher (697) Jun 23, 2023

Trivia

Game Boy Advance version

The Game Boy Advance version of the game has some different names for certain items and characters. For instance: * Count Dracula is now simply called "The Count". * The Holy Water item called "Fire Bomb" in the manual. * The Vampire Killer (Simon's whip) is now called a "Magic Whip". * Even though the game takes place in Transylvania, there is no mention of this anywhere in the game or the manual. * There is also no mention of the hero's name, Simon Belmont.

Remake

This game was remade a decade after, but this time for PSX, known as Castlevania Chronicles.

References

Beat the game once and head to the second part of level two. Climb the stairs, get to the top of the screen and jump on the first moving platform. A blinking treasure will come out of the ground. If you examine it closely, it's a Moai head! Devoted Konami fans will recognize this Easter Island statue from the Gradius series, which seems to be obsessed with them for some odd reason.

Translations

Akumajo Dracula means "Demon Castle of Dracula".

Unused sprites

There are a number of unused sprites found in the NES Castlevania ROM, most notably a cross, a cupcake, and a love letter, and a basket with kittens inside(?!).

Version differences

The Famicom version has an optional easy mode which is neither present in the original Disk System release nor the international releases. It features several differences in game balance, for example no knockback and less received damage.

Awards

  • Game Informer
    • August 20012 (Issue #100) – #48 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll

Information also contributed by CaptainCanuck, Foxhack and MAT

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Castlevania Chronicles
Released 2001 on PlayStation, 2008 on PSP, PlayStation 3...
Super Castlevania IV
Released 1991 on SNES, 2006 on Wii, 2013 on Wii U
Haunted Castle
Released 1988 on Arcade, 2017 on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Released 2001 on Game Boy Advance, 2014 on Wii U
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
Released 2010 on Xbox 360, 2011 on PlayStation 3, 2019 on Xbox One
Castlevania: Dracula X
Released 1995 on SNES, 2014 on Wii U, New Nintendo 3DS
Castlevania: Anniversary Collection
Released 2019 on Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One...
Vampire Killer
Released 1986 on MSX, 2014 on Wii U

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 2062
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Luiz Pacheco.

NES added by PCGamer77. Arcade added by Michael Cassidy. Nintendo 3DS added by CrankyStorming. PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. J2ME added by chirinea. Wii U added by is_that_rain_or_tears. Wii, Game Boy Advance added by gamewarrior. Amiga, Commodore 64 added by Katakis | カタキス.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, PCGamer77, Satoshi Kunsai, Jeanne, Guy Chapman, chirinea, monkeyislandgirl, LepricahnsGold, Zaibatsu, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, Rik Hideto.

Game added July 23, 2001. Last modified March 3, 2024.