Haunted Castle is funny, and you're probably asking, "funny hah hah" or "funny peculiar"? Truthfully I think it goes both ways. I would like to first articulate the "funny peculiar" part as Haunted Castle sticks out from the rest of the games in the series like a particularly sore thumb.

It is of course an arcade game, an attempt at bringing the gameplay of the beloved NES title to the mean streets of the coin-op cabinet at your local pizzeria. You may have noticed it is also called "Haunted Castle" instead of "Castlevania", unlike the JP title Akumajō Dracula where it shares the same name with the Famicom Disk System game (along with later the Super Famicom and Sharp X68000 games, thanks lads I'm sure that's not confusing over there). I could actually wager a decent guess as to why they did this change. You see, the director was a massive fan of the Atari 2600 classic Haunted House, they just had to get their reference in. Remember the bat and the ghost? They in fact guest star in Haunted Castle, that's actually the same characters from Haunted House. I shit you not, my logic is infallible.

The game also bizarrely begins with an obvious Ghosts n' Goblins-esque intro with Simon peacefully walking along with his bride-to-be, only for an explosion to go off in the distance with Dracula flying in out of nowhere to whisk her away to god knows where (Ohio maybe) as Simon gives off a "curse you Dracula!" pose. Official documents state this was supposed to be a retelling of the first game, but I like to imagine that Dracula is constantly trying to inconvenience Simon at every turn. In the next Adventure Simon will be peacefully enjoying a meal at his favorite steakhouse only for it to be revealed that his steak was well done, then Dracula explodes from the background revealing his new ownership of the place and proceeds to put on the most annoying song in the jukebox.

This is where I stop farting about and actually comment on things that legitimately annoy me that have nothing to do with the gameplay, and that's the fact that Simon does not do his famous strut in this game. Instead he looks like he's clutching his tummy and needs to take a massive shit. It turns out there's no bride at all, Simon is just breaking into Dracula's castle to use his bathroom and ruin his plumbing. I am continuing the charade that this is all a childish rivalry between Mr. Belmondo and Mr. Dracula. There is also a second thing that annoys me, and that's that the best upgraded weapon in the game is a sword. That's right, Simon has sold out. He throws out his trademark whip for the most dull weapon to ever hit dullsville. The reason all of these peculiar things happen is most likely because Haunted Castle was originally not supposed to be related to Castlevania at all, and everything kind of got shoehorned in during the middle of development. It was also painfully early in the series' life, so maybe they figured they could just do anything since it was the new hotness and would probably make massive bank.

However! If you wish to make massive bank at the coin-op, maybe you should allow infinite continues! For the original release of these games, one credit was one life. That's all you got, and you could only continue with an additional credit three times, and after that? Do I hear wedding bells? Oh my, another explosion has taken place and Dracula took another one of your wives! Dearest me. Apparently Konami couldn't quite wrap their heads around how to properly gouge people of their money, because I doubt new players are going to bother with this kind of brutality, especially when the North American release features an insanely high damage boost to the enemies. In the original JP release of Haunted Castle, a bone thrown from an enemy skeleton results in a bit of damage. In the American release? One of those bones is now powerful enough to level the broadside of a Nimitz-class Supercarrier. There is also no pot roast in this game, and your health is not refilled between stages. You are given very little room for error.

Astonishing.

To say Haunted Castle is a hard game would be the biggest understatement since they invented the word "understatement". It is a game designed to make you pull your hair out with how often your Boston Big™ hitbox will be nailed by everything in sight as you get to watch a bat pull some spectacular aerial maneuvers to somehow not get hit by your whip and nibble your face off in retaliation. To be frank as Frankenstein, I also think the game just looks ugly. Many sprites feel haphazardly drawn, which gives credence to the game being quickly rejiggered into a Dracula of some kind instead of whatever it was originally going to be. The rock golem that's the boss of stage 4 literally doesn't do anything after you kill it. The game just freezes as the victory jingle goes off and you're given no satisfaction for your patience, no explosions, no decapitation, no nothing. Stage 6 is literally just walking to the left and hoping you can get by all the bats flying at you without the collapsing bridge behind you catching up. It's meant to be a setpiece, but it's just painfully boring and feels like a creative setup to make the final stage quickly, and make it less obvious that this was rushed out to bank off the success of Akumajō Dracula's name.

Now you may be thinking, "where's the funny hah hah"? Well, there's these boulders in stage 2, they make an incredibly cartoonish Scooby-Doo "bonk" sound when they hit the ground.

:)

I feel like I've done nothing but drone on here, but I guess that's what happens when it's both a Castlevania title and a bad game. Now imagine if it were also a fighting game on top of that, wow I wouldn't shut up. Oh god, I just realized something and had a vision please keep it away, oh god, oh jeez, oh god, oh fuck, oh jeez.

So, uh... this was a thing apparently. Some time after Castlevania II, they made an arcade game for the series, which was NOT called Castlevania, because that would only make too much sense.

It was only thanks to the Arcade Archive of this game on the PS4 that I was able to play this game after 36 years, and after finally doing that... yeah, no, this game sucks. Sure, the attempt to make a Castlevania game for the arcades is appreciated, and it isn't flat out terrible, but this could have been done SO much better.

The story is basically a mix between Castlevania and Ghosts n' Goblins, because apparently Simon needed a wife, the graphics look pretty good for a Castlevania arcade game, the music is alright, but doesn't really have anything noteworthy, and it is short enough to where it doesn't waste your time.

As you would expect, everything falls apart when it comes to the gameplay. The control is pretty awkward, and does take getting used to if you are very familiar with other Castlevania games, the movement is SO FUCKING SLOW, Simon's sprite is way too big, and, the biggest problem, there are enemies and obstacles EVERYWHERE. As an arcade game, it is meant to eat up your money, so it does so by throwing as many enemies and obstacles at you at once without seeming like it is unfair, and you will take damage A LOT, most of it not being your fault. It works out for arcades, but when you play it at home, it makes me wanna throw my controller.

At some point in the game, I just decided to run through the stages while taking the least amount of damage as possible, and that ended up working out more times than not. If I have to resort to that in order to beat your game, then you know you have fucked up. With all that being said though, I think I have found a more hilariously bad cover art then the Mega Man 1 box art. Seriously, that is so bad, it is priceless.

Overall, while I don't think it is completely awful, it is a pretty bad attempt at a Castlevania arcade game, and I wouldn't recommend seeking it out to try to play it.

Game #23

I'm a sucker for the "classicvania" style and figured I'd give this one a try. It was really attractive to me—for one, the arcade sprites are huge and beautiful—admire Simon's Chun-li-esque thighs—and I was interested in seeing how the platforming acton translated into coin-op form. It turns out not very well.

I played the infamously difficult Haunted Castle on the Japanese rom, having heard it's easier than the American one. I was having an alright time until the third level, when it was taking four slaps of my level 1 vampire killer (I had died and lost my power up) to kill this game's flea variant; you simply don't have enough time to fire off four hits before the enemy hits you. Your other option is to rush the enemy and duck at exactly the right moment so he would fly over Simon, but it's 1) really hard to time and 2) useless when two of them are rushing at you, or there's a knight involved. I reset the game, ready to try to get there again with the level 2 vampire killer (which swaps the whip for a morning star flail) to see if it did more damage, and then dug into the settings. Sure enough, Konami Arcade Collection graciously supplies difficulty modifiers. I turned enemy enemy damage on low, and difficulty to easy. It was certainly easier, but still a pain in the ass.

The final level is a long bridge sequence to Dracula's castle. The bridge collapses behind you, while bats dive at you in front of you. When you stop to attack, the bridge collapsing doesn't pause, so as you defend yourself from bats while crossing the bridge you move ever closer to falling off. In fact, if you successfully kill every single bat you encounter, you are certain to be pushed off the falling bridge. However, these bats don't knock you back, so you can truck through them, but you'll take damage. You're forced to strategically kill bats and alternatively take damage while crossing the bridge, and figuring out exactly how many bats to kill to maximize leftover health for the Dracula fight was a weird experience. It's a fascinating bit of design where you literally cannot get through without taking damage. This learning process didn't feel great, but I found it was successfully thematic. You're not getting away clean if you want to kill Dracula. (I found after that you can also just memorize when the bats swoop down then time a jump to kill it as it does, but I'm too stupid for that kind of solution.)

Dracula himself was a total chump, and went down in just a few hits. In general, the bosses of this game are just rewards for making your way through the difficult levels, which I don't mind. I liked seeing Frankenstein and the Gorgon in arcade style, even if you only see them for a few moments.

I can't really recommend this game—The Astyanax is a much better Castlevania arcade game—but I'm glad I checked it out. It's an interesting curiosity and worth seeing if you're a fan of Castlevania.

Hoo boy, where to start? Haunted Castle is rough, to put it that way. The game is more of a retelling of the first Castlevania, with Simon having to rescue his wife from Dracula, whom he just married; what a dick

The game has six stages to go through, and visually, it looks fine for a 1987/1988 arcade game, but I wouldn't say it's the best Castlevania aesthetic-wise. Simon's walk animation looks weird; it looks like he's carrying a cramp while fighting classic movie monster enemies. The music in this game is solid, with the bridge theme being my favorite out of the entire soundtrack. I wouldn't say it's my favorite out of the games I've played so far, but this is the best thing to come out of Haunted Castle, in my opinion.

The sub-weapons here are a bit different compared to a traditional Castlevania game. Some do return, like the stopwatch (which is easily the best weapon in the game), and it can freeze everything, including bosses, making the whole Dracula fight piss easy. There is new stuff like the mini crosses, bombs, and "boomerangs" that can be similar to the cross and holy water from previous games. Like with the last two games, you can upgrade your whip from a standard whip to a mace and a sword for some reason. Hearts can be scarce, with no candles to hit. Instead, you rely on killing enemies to collect the hearts, whether they land on the ground or in a bottomless pit

The game is concise, and it'll probably take about half an hour to beat. But if you thought that this game would be easy? Oh, think again. This game is the definition of unbalanced. I hit a literal brick wall, which dealt half of my damage, and I got a game over because of it. You will see a lot of bullshit once you progress further into the game.

But the most befuddling this about all of this is that, in the original arcade release, players had limited continues. Once they're gone, it's back to the beginning, which is honestly punishing for an arcade game. I did some research, and I found that Haunted Castle had a development cycle of around six months, and those who've worked on the game were short-staffed. Ex-Konami staffer Masaaki Kukino revealed that debugging the game was needed and, unfortunately, didn't have time to balance it properly, and it definitely shows and is likely the reason why it failed

Haunted Castle is not a good Castlevania game, though I say it's worth at least one playthrough for those curious about trying it out. If you want to play this game, I highly suggest you pick up the Arcade Archives version available on Switch and PS4. There you will have modern conveniences like infinite quarters and the option to play the Japanese and European versions, which from what I heard, can deal less damage than the North American version. That begs the question, why is North American version harder in the first place? Isn't it supposed to be the opposite, with the Japanese version being the more difficult one? I say without these modern conveniences, the game would be nearly unbeatable for me

It's my least favorite Castlevania game so far; so, moving on

A mean game for losers who want to waste their lives doing dumb shit like playing Haunted Castle. Did you know they released this on Switch? What the fuck? As dull as Vampire Killer was, that deserves to be remembered far more than this. Haunted Castle is like playing the original Castlevania except with sloppier controls and hit detection. In the first level alone there are numerous points where you're essentially forced to take damage because there's no way to predict incoming damage. Movement is so clunky that twitch reflexes won't get you anywhere either. Castlevania just doesn't translate to the arcade format. They kept the same progression and I can't help but realize this would just be infinitely better on a system that isn't designed to take money every time you want to play it. Also I really hate the North American promotional art, I'm sorry this is such a hateful review. 1/6

A couple things.

Firstly, John Backloggd please change the game game icon to either the title screen or the Japanese artwork because I think the Western promo poster sucks!!!!

Secondly, it's actually okay. I 1cc'ed this bitch (technically? kinda sorta not really?? I mean I used up continues to refill my health because that's how healing works in this game but I never saw the "continue" or "game over" screens) in about 3 attempts because the stopwatch totally destroys this game and kinda makes it one of the easiest games in the franchise??? Like sure, without it you're going to have a bad time and I don't blame people for thinking this is the worst Castlevania related thing ever, but I'm talking easier than Castlevania 1 holy water spam. The hardest part is probably keeping the stopwatch, since there's only one in the whole game, but that just comes down to learning when and where item drops occur since they're fixed. Regardless, it works on bosses, and all bosses take 6-7 sword swings to the face before going down, which you should have by around the middle of stage 3 assuming you don't run out of health. Just make sure to use up your continues to refill your health instead of actually running out of it, and if you really hate the bottomless pits (there's like, 3 sections in the whole game with them and they're incredibly easy to avoid) you can play the Japanese version. Still some moments and enemy patterns that require trial and error to figure out but this might be one of the least offensive arcade quarter munchers of the time if you know what you're doing.

This isn't too dissimilar from traditional classicvania titles. Learn, get better, and conquer. Obviously getting sent back to the very beginning of the game sucks but considering this game is shorter than just about all the others, I think it's not as bad off for it as it otherwise would be.

Thirdly, I also like Castlevania II just as much as CV1 and a little less than CV3. I'm weird and have weird opinions. I can see why this game is particularly despised but I personally had a decent time with it.

If I made a game part of a series that was this bad, I'd give it a different name too to try and distance it from its original namesake. Realistically this should have been called "Castlevania Arcade" or something else equally generic. Instead it gets the somewhat awful Haunted Castle name and is the most "Castlevania at home" meme there could be, except Konami actually made this.

I'd never actually heard of this until I started playing through the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection. Interestingly it's also the only non shoot 'em up on there. I still can't decide if I'm happy they included it as a historical oddity for me to try or not.

So the game plays very much like a "classicvania", which shouldn't surprise coming out only a couple of years after the original game. Visually it's ok, technically the sprite work is good and yet it all feels wrong. Like uncanny valley Castlevania or a fan made project. I can't put it into words but the fleamen are too large, there are no medusa heads, the whole game feels off, too....chunky.

Gameplay wise it has everything I dislike about the classic games but amplified. The enemies come from awkward angles, there are cheap hits and occasional traps you can only get past by level memorisation, or save states. The boss designs are really awful both mechanically and artistically. One of them looks like a vector man enemy and jumps while fleamen run at you. It doesn't even look like it belongs in this game. There is a boss on stage 4 that you can barely hit unless you get the right subweapon as he moves off screen when you approach and is generally just poorly animated. Add to this each level is on a roughly 5 minute timer and it's pretty evident this was entirely designed to try and take your money, not for entertainment.

I stopped on stage 5. Near the start you get on an elevator that goes straight up. As it moves there are stone ledges that hit and damage you that your character (who walks at such a slow gait it's like he has rickets) cannot avoid even when you see them coming. Knowing the pattern is the only way. It's awful. It just isn't fun, which is the purpose of gaming to me.

Honestly there just isn't anything about this game I like, nothing stands out, nothing's unique, clever or interesting and nothing about this is fun. I got the point score I needed for the Konami Arcade Classics trophies and then stopped. Literally any other Castlevania (except arguably the Game Boy ones anyway) is better than this. An interesting historical novelty of an attempt by Konami that is best forgotten.

- Unfun gameplay.
- Bad bosses in both art and gameplay design.
- Weirdly ugly compared with it's main series counterparts.

Sim, essa merda é um Castlevania e, meu deus, que jogo odioso...
Foi difícil aparecer um jogo que me forçasse a dar meia estrela, mas esse aqui n tinha como.

O único elogio do jogo são as artes dele q, tirando a animação de andar do Simon que parece que ele tá se cagando nas calças, tem um visual até q bem dahorinha - agr o resto do jogo é tudo horrível.
É um jogo de arcade, então claro que ele quer que você morra igual um desgraçado pra vc gastar com fichas, mas esse aqui nem sequer tentar disfarçar esse aspecto. É tão na cara que o jogo quer que vc se foda que chega a ser cômico.

Não é uma experiência agradável e muito menos recompensadora de jogar, esse chorume é simplesmente uma total e absoluta falha mascarada por visuais bonitos.

Podem me chamar de louco, insano, ou maluco, mas eu fiz, eu fiz o feito de zerar o jogo sem morrer! Como? Simples, a programação desse jogo é idiota.

Pessoas reclamam que esse é o pior castlevania, e não conseguem passar nem da primeira fase, mesmo com a versão japonesa, mas elas nunca pararam pra notar a forma em que o jogo se comporta. Tudo o que acontece no jogo é programado e não há nenhum evento aleatório, tudo foi escrito para acontecer em um determinado momento em que você anda na fase. Isso faz que com decoração, todos os desafios são facilmente derrotados. Eu fiquei cerca de uma semana inteira aprendendo os padrões e analisando estratégias de speedrun, e foi divertido detonar esse jogo com a maior facilidade. Ele não era difícil! E sim facilmente desinteressante e frustrante para fazer as pessoas pararem de jogar.

Sinceramente, vá jogar outros jogos, esse é apenas um jogo de arcade papa ficha que nem os graficos ajudam à enganar. A única coisa a ser consumida desse jogo é a OST, que apesar dos remix, possui trilhas exclusivas únicas, como a "devil's revival" ou "basement melodies", a trilha sonora foi tão boa, que mesmo o jogo sendo esquecido, ela ainda foi mantida por remix através de vários jogos da franquia. É a coisa mais satisfatória do mundo terminar o jogo enquanto toca "sent to the devil's requiem" por ficar em primeiro colocado.

É um jogo estranho que um bom desocupado (eu) vai adorar ser desafiado.