Super Castlevania IV is, story-wise, a remake of the first game in the series. Set in the year 1691, the game casts the player in the role of Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter armed with a powerful whip, on a quest to defeat the evil Count Dracula in his castle. Despite the identical plot, the six castle stages have different layouts and themes; also, five initial stages that depict Simon's advancement towards the castle through various environments have been added.

The gameplay consists of traversing timed, linear platform stages, defeating enemies with the whip or sub-weapons that require collecting hearts and can be found by destroying parts of the scenery. Simon's stand-out ability in this installment are eight-directional attacks with his whip, which allow him, among others, to damage enemies standing below and above him. Holding out the whip will block enemy attacks. Simon can also latch his whip on special grappling points to swing over pits and obstacles. Game progression is saved by passwords given to the player after a stage has been completed.

Visually, the game uses hardware "Mode 7" effects such as parallax scrolling, rotating rooms, and pseudo-3D objects in some locations.

[edit description | view history]

Alternate Titles

"惡魔城" -- Chinese Title (traditional)
"悪魔城ドラキュラ" -- Japanese Spelling
"Castlevania 4" -- Common Informal Name
"Akumajo Dracula" -- Japanese title

[add alternate title]

Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Super Nintendo Super Castlevania IV	SNES	$21.00
	Super Castlevania IV
Please select your country: Not an American user?

User Reviews

Easily one of the most enjoyable platformers for the SNES.	Bregalad (819)
One of the best games for the SNES and of the entire Castlevania series	Xantheous (1291)
The best old-school Castlevania game in the series.	The Silverlord (4)
The "Belmont" Tolls For Thee...	So Hai (337)
The greatest 2-D platform game ever made. Period.	Simon Wingate (27)
An atmospheric masterpiece	Brad Shead (6)
Hey Drac. How's It Goin?	Lake Hylia (3)

[review game]

The Press Says

Game Zero	Apr, 1992	93 out of 100	93
Original Gamer	Dec 03, 2008	9.3 out of 10	93
Mean Machines	Jan 01, 1992	93 out of 100	93
The Video Game Critic	Dec 22, 2004	A-	91
Nintendo Land	2003	89 out of 100	89
Game Informer Magazine	Apr, 2004	8.75 out of 10	88
Video Games	Jan, 1992	83 out of 100	83
Retrogaming History	Jan 26, 2010	8 out of 10	80
Retrogaming.it	Jan 22, 2008	7 out of 10	70
Digital Press - Classic Video Games	May 01, 2005	7 out of 10	70

[see more rankings | add ranking]

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Odd resolution	1	Supernintendo Chalmers (10816) Jul 12, 2007

[new thread]

Trivia

There are differences between the US and Japanese releases of Super Castlevania IV. In Japan, the game is simply known as Akumajo Dracula. The cross on the tombstone at the beginning of the game was removed, for fear that people would be offended by lightning destroying the icon. Also, the name "Dracura" is visible in the Japanese version, but is merely a smudge in the American one.

There was also another censorship issue...the statues in level 6 were originally topless, but a toga was added for American release (why they changed this and not the nude Medusa is unclear). The font used in menus and the status bar is entirely different.

There there is the gore. The opening logo drips blood. All of that green slime in level 8 was original red, and even bits of gore were cleaned off the spikes in the English release. Cryptically enough, the tears of the crying eyeball thing are still red.

[more trivia | add trivia]

This entry was contributed by Corn Popper (69145) and PCGamer77

(3030)