Castlevania Anniversary Collection

The best first step for anyone to take into the world of Castlevania and the fight against Dracula!

NA release: 16th May 2019
EU release: 16th May 2019
JP release: 16th May 2019
Developer: Konami, M2
Publisher: Konami
NintendoLife Review: 8/10
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Version Played: PC

With compilations, I’ll be reviewing the package itself rather than the games themselves, as I’ve already covered those individually. The Castlevania Anniversary Collection contains 8 games, covering the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Mega Drive, all running in emulation with a single save state each and some filters.

The home console Castlevania games are Castlevania, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania: Bloodlines, with Kid Dracula thrown in as a bonus game, the first time this one got released outside of Japan. There are some basic scanline and stretching options, but it’s all very basic with no rewind.

The Game Boy games, Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (no Legends) have an LCD filter or a colour option (which I think sets a particular GBC colour palette), but no way to combine the two. Both of these also got enhanced full colour versions in Europe, but those versions are missing from this package.

In terms of extra features, there’s not a lot. You can play the Japanese versions of most games (no Simon’s Quest as the Japanese version was never on cartridge) and a scan of a “History of Castlevania” book. There’s some good stuff in there, but scrolling through a digital book on a TV is a bit odd. It would have been better to have it split up into a gallery.

While it’s great that all these games are together in one package, it’s a rather disappointing collection due to not having a lot of in-game options and very few bonus features, especially as a lot of collections feel like celebrations. Even a music player would have elevated it.

Fun

Despite the sheer volume of solid gold hits in the series, Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a somewhat mixed bag from Konami, with stone-cold classics sharing the spotlight with a couple of undead clunkers that really should have remained dead and buried.
Chris Scullion, NintendoLife

Remake or remaster?

It would be nice for this to be updated to be more in line with the later collections.

Official Ways to get the game

Castlevania Anniversary Collection is available on all major platforms.