Kid Dracula is an odd inclusion in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. This game does not play like the other games in the collection. It is more like a Mega Man game with you shooting and gaining new power-ups or magic in this game’s case. The level design is reminiscent of a Mega Man game.
The game is average. Some of the magic powers are good and some are situational. The best magic powers are the homing and bomb powers when charged up. I rarely used the bat or upside down powers unless the level design required me to use them. There is some cheap enemy placement here and there. Some bosses were easy and some were frustrating like the Sphinx boss where you are fighting him above a bottomless pit.
Kid Dracula is slow. His running speed is pathetic. After I beat the game, I went and loaded up the Mega Man Legacy Collection and played a stage in Mega Man 2, the game I am familiar with. Mega Man is faster than Kid Dracula. K.D., catch up to that blue boy.
I do like the music and how the game looks. It is a shame there is slowdown and sprite flickering.
Kid Dracula makes me want to play through all the Mega Man games. I only played and finished the second Mega Man game and I thought that was good. Kid Dracula is average.
The game is average. Some of the magic powers are good and some are situational. The best magic powers are the homing and bomb powers when charged up. I rarely used the bat or upside down powers unless the level design required me to use them. There is some cheap enemy placement here and there. Some bosses were easy and some were frustrating like the Sphinx boss where you are fighting him above a bottomless pit.
Kid Dracula is slow. His running speed is pathetic. After I beat the game, I went and loaded up the Mega Man Legacy Collection and played a stage in Mega Man 2, the game I am familiar with. Mega Man is faster than Kid Dracula. K.D., catch up to that blue boy.
I do like the music and how the game looks. It is a shame there is slowdown and sprite flickering.
Kid Dracula makes me want to play through all the Mega Man games. I only played and finished the second Mega Man game and I thought that was good. Kid Dracula is average.
It's a realy cute game. I found it fun magical and whimsical. The game had great controls that made it quite enjoyable. It's filled with many different weapons but under utilizes the need to switch them making it feel uninovative. The last level is a bit obnoxious and ruins the pacing. Probably the worst thing about the game is the sound effects in the final boss. The boss isn't to difficult but the sound makes the experience unbearable. As fun and cute as the game is it's not great objectively.
I have a personal doc with some notes that I am working on refining my game reviews this is the first on this system. I pro will start versioning them and adding that to them.
I have a personal doc with some notes that I am working on refining my game reviews this is the first on this system. I pro will start versioning them and adding that to them.
Kid Dracula for the Famicom is a weird and light-hearted spinoff of the Castlevania series, and it's cool that we finally got this localized inside the Castlevania Anniversary Collection back in 2019, which is where I'll be reviewing
Kid Dracula stars, well, Kid Dracula (obviously) as he traverses through nine wacky levels to defeat the almighty Galamoth. Kid Dracula is sort of akin to Mega Man. At every level you clear, you'll get a new power-up that can be used throughout your journey. My favorite is the homing attack, which sends multiple balls of destruction to enemies and deals crazy damage. Unlike Mega Man, Kid Dracula can shoot fireballs from his finger in four directions. The music and bosses are decent enough; my favorite boss is the Statue of Liberty. Seriously, we need more trivia-based bosses in video games instead of resorting to violence
I wouldn't call this game an excellent platformer for a few reasons. First off, most platforms have tricky and quite finicky platforming sections that sometimes leave me feeling frustrated. An infamous example is Level 7, where you're supposed to climb to the tower with platforms descending, but you have to be early to make it, or else you die. The final level is easily the worst because there are no checkpoints, meaning you must do the two mini-bosses and make your way to Galamoth again. Thankfully I restarted the game to get more lives instead of using the save state feature
Overall, Kid Dracula is a decent platformer with lots of charm behind it. It won't be anything amazing, but it's something worth checking out if you're a Castlevania fan
Kid Dracula stars, well, Kid Dracula (obviously) as he traverses through nine wacky levels to defeat the almighty Galamoth. Kid Dracula is sort of akin to Mega Man. At every level you clear, you'll get a new power-up that can be used throughout your journey. My favorite is the homing attack, which sends multiple balls of destruction to enemies and deals crazy damage. Unlike Mega Man, Kid Dracula can shoot fireballs from his finger in four directions. The music and bosses are decent enough; my favorite boss is the Statue of Liberty. Seriously, we need more trivia-based bosses in video games instead of resorting to violence
I wouldn't call this game an excellent platformer for a few reasons. First off, most platforms have tricky and quite finicky platforming sections that sometimes leave me feeling frustrated. An infamous example is Level 7, where you're supposed to climb to the tower with platforms descending, but you have to be early to make it, or else you die. The final level is easily the worst because there are no checkpoints, meaning you must do the two mini-bosses and make your way to Galamoth again. Thankfully I restarted the game to get more lives instead of using the save state feature
Overall, Kid Dracula is a decent platformer with lots of charm behind it. It won't be anything amazing, but it's something worth checking out if you're a Castlevania fan
Kid Dracula is the pinnacle of character design.
As for actual thoughts, this is a fun, charming, and surprisingly challenging little platformer! I played it via the CV Anniversary collection, and noticed the game had a lot of trouble with moving objects. Lots of unpleasant flashing. I also had to beat the final boss twice to see the ending since it glitched out and wouldn’t die the first time. Don’t know if these issues are exclusive to the port, but I figured it was worth mentioning.
As for actual thoughts, this is a fun, charming, and surprisingly challenging little platformer! I played it via the CV Anniversary collection, and noticed the game had a lot of trouble with moving objects. Lots of unpleasant flashing. I also had to beat the final boss twice to see the ending since it glitched out and wouldn’t die the first time. Don’t know if these issues are exclusive to the port, but I figured it was worth mentioning.
Complete playthrough. More Mega Man than Castlevania in its gameplay, Kid Dracula sees players taking control of the eponymous Kid Dracula, running, jumping and shooting across nine side-scrolling levels, seeking to recover his throne. Vividly-coloured levels take a variety of fairly common platforming themes, including cloud, city, ice and fire-themed areas. New powers earned upon completion of each level provide some measure of gameplay variety, replacing the standard fireball with a homing attack, an ice projectile, or more unusually, the ability to reverse gravity or transform into a bat - but for the most part these are very much non-essential and the standard fireball will suffice. Otherwise, the gameplay is fairly standard shooting and running - entertaining enough while it lasts, but not really all that memorable.
Imaginen si Castlevania y Super Mario Bros. 3 hubiesen tenido un bebé. Castlevania le es infiel a Super Mario Bros. 3 con Mega Man y de ahí sale otro bebé. Ambos bebés crecen, se hacen adultos, se conocen en la universidad, se enamoran sin saber que son familia y tienen otro bebé. Esta aberración genética es Kid Dracula. The things we do for trophies...
pretty fun to play, for the most part the game isnt too difficult and feels pretty fair. its cool that there are multiple different weapons but also some just make others obsolete or some just have no use except for in parts when the game deliberately wants you to use them. for some reason though the final level just has like a big difficulty spike?? the previous levels have some obstacles that will just kill you and it feels like you have to die first before you even know theyre there but the game hands out lives often and has checkpoints, the levels themselves really arent that long either. but then last level just like 3 bosses and an annoying platforming segment and if you die you get sent all the way back to the beginning of the level which was so ass
What was that? :D Tonally, this was completely different from the other Castlevania games but hey, it's a spin-off^^ Really good boss fights, fair levels, good level design in general. Sound/Music is not really my cup of tea but I recognize the quality behind it. Graphics are really cute and completely different from what I'm used to. I'm a bit overwhelmed :D
I mean it's nice that Konami went through all the trouble towards finally translating this game to put in their Castlevania Anniversary collection like that but this game is honestly pretty mediocre even by "2D platformers with a shooting mechanic released on the NES" standards. There's cute sprite work but that's really it.
Played this primarily because it was on the Castlevania Switch collection, but it's really only a Castlevania game by Konami's decision alone. Kid Dracula carries almost none of the features of the franchise typically has, beyond a few aesthetic similarities and the use of Dracula, a character not created by Konami, as a plot-relevant character. It plays more like a Mega Man game than anything else, which should be fine, but it isn't as tight. Like, nowhere close. Platforming is floaty, combat is slow, your character sprite is far too big, hit detection is wonky, stage design is creatively minimal, etc. The combination of Mega Man and Castlevania should at least provide some solid jams, but there aren't even any notable song selections. What a shame. 2/6