As a Mega Man fan who is playing through the Castlevania franchise, this was a nice little surprise. A parody spinoff of Castlevania puts you in the shoes of the long time antagonist, Dracula, when he was a child has you jumpn' and shootn' Mega Man style through levels with a boss usually waiting at the end.

Other comparisons to Mega Man is the fact when you defeat a boss at the end of a level you get a new weapon in the form of a charge blast, that you are able to switch. Some of these charge blasts are homing attacks, explosions or even the ability to turn you into a bat for a short period. The only other thing the gameplay does to really differentiate itself from Mega Man is the ability to shoot up (which if Mega Man could do, he would be so OP).

I do wish this game had the structure of a Mega Man game where you could choose your level order, considering bosses do give you weapons this time around, it would have been cool to find an order that gives you your favorite weapons first.

Level wise, the design is more focused on shooting enemies then platforming. There are a handful platforming sections but nothing too hard or stressful. You won't get the disappearing blocks over a bottomless pit type of challenge. Some of the level themes are cool as they take some of the designs from Castlevania and "kidify" them in artsyle. The first level itself is a straight up recreation of Dracula's castle from the original title and it was so cool reliving it. Other levels are more typical levels you'd see in a platformer like the Ice stage or Desert stage - not bad but nothing too great and original either.

The game difficulty is very fair for a NES game and Castlevania game nonetheless. Someone with decent experience with NES platformers should be able to beat this in one sitting with a good level of challenge.

I liked this little fun break from the rage inducing early Castlevania titles, especially as a fan of Mega Man this is a solid MM clone and treat.