Castlevania: Symphony of the Night marks the start of a dramatic shift in the series, moving away from pure action toward a more exploration based gameplay with light RPG elements – the so-called “Metroidvania”. Finding a PAL copy of the game is an expensive endeavour due to high demand.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a turning point for the series. It was the first of what the fans dubbed “Metroidvanias”, called such because the game adopted a non-linear approach to gameplay that teased you with places you couldn’t access without the necessary ability. It also introduced English voice acting to the series with hilarious results.
A fan translation of the 1993 PC Engine classic Castlevania: Dracula X Rondo of Blood is now complete. Titled Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, the patch translates the in-game text to English and replaces the games audio with the PSP remake’s English dub.
Castlevania: Dracula X Rondo of Blood was first seen outside of Japan in 2007 in the form of a 2.5D remake featured in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP which also included an unlockable port of its sequel Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
The patch can be downloaded here.
Source: Retro Collect
Castlevania: Bloodlines (The New Generation for PAL, or Vampire Killer for Japan) is the only Castlevania game to have been released on a Sega system. That has led to it gaining a bit of a “red-headed stepchild” treatment at the hands of series fans due to the game’s weird attempt to tie the series into Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, which has mostly been retconned now.
Master of Darkness (titled Vampire: Master of Darkness in the US), a Castlevania-style vampire hunting platformer released for the Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear in the early 90s, will be re-released on the 3DS Virtual Console.
In Master of Darkness players take up the role of Dr. Social, a psychologist armed with a wide range of weapons – including knives, rapiers, axes, pistols and bombs, and fight their way through a variety of locations to defeat many enemies and eventually Dracula himself.
A date for the 3DS release is yet to be announced.
Source: Siliconera
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was the second of three original Castlevania games developed for the Game Boy Advance, and arguably the most divisive. Many fans label the game’s soundtrack as the worst in the franchise’s history. Others feel the game is too easy. Despite these complaints, it is still considered one of the better games on the Game Boy Advance.
The best game in the GBA launch line up.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (or just Castlevania in Europe, again) was the first Castlevania game for the Game Boy Advance, and the second to use the free roaming structure set by Symphony of the Night. Unfortunately, due to its release with the original non-backlit GBA, a lot of players had a hard time actually seeing what the heck was going on when attempting to play.
Belmont’s second GB outing.
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge is the direct sequel to Castlevania: The Adventure, and is generally one of the lower profile entries in the series, despite being quite good.
Divisive.
Castlevania‘s first trip into 3D was well received by critics at the time of release, despite what they try to claim years later. It was cast out of series canon by series producer Koji Igarashi in around the time of the release of Harmony of Dissonance, though his official stance is that Castlevania 64 is now a side story.
Konami and their weirdness.
Kid Dracula is a parody of/spin-off from the Castlevania series. Instead of playing as a member of the whip-wielding Belmont clan, you play as Dracula, albeit as a younger kid. He’s still evil, and rather cocky about it, but he’s too cute to be threatening. The Game Boy game is both a remake of and sequel to the Famicom game Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun.
