Castlevania 64

Drac’s back and this time he wants to stay!

NA release: 26th January 1999
JP release: 11th March 1999
EU release: 14th May 1999
Developer: Konami Kobe
Publisher: Konami
AKA: Akumajō Dracula: Mokushiroku (Japan)
N64 Magazine Review: 82%
Platforms: N64
Version Played: N64

Yes, I know this isn’t officially called Castlevania 64, people just do it to make it easier. Interestingly, while multiple games had the original name in Japan, the Japanese version of this was subtitled Apocalypse. The N64 games were the only Castlevanias I’ve played before, so this is a revisit for me. This is also the franchise’s first entry into 3D.

The game follows two characters: Reinhardt Schneider, a Belmont descendant, and Carrie Fernandez, a descendant of Sypha. This is technically non canon, but there’s nothing major that prevents it from fitting in – the every 100 years resurrection of Dracula thing has always been a bit wonky. Anyway, Dracula is back and has ransacked the village near his castle, and it’s up to one of them to stop him (they don’t interact with each other).

As I played as Carrie the previous time, I opted for Reinhardt this time. He uses the trusty whip, which has a healthy amount of auto targeting, and a sword for a short range attack. The original Castlevania gameplay has been translated to 3D fairly well, but there are significant problems with the camera and controls.

The camera has three modes: Normal, action and battle. None of them are particularly good, and the only way to adjust it is to use the lock on to centre it behind you. During a boss, the camera locks onto them, so I’m not sure why it doesn’t work like this when locking on to regular enemies. The jumping is also really janky. You have to be very careful to face the direction you want before you jump. There are quite a few moments where you have to jump, turn around and jump again and if you’re too fast, Reinhardt will jump backwards and not grab onto the ledge. Finding the sweet spot for climbing up the ledge is fiddly, too

But these are the kind of jank you can get used to, especially using save states to help alleviate the huge loss to would suffer with the original (save points are very far apart, failing a jumping section after a boss would be rage inducing), so you can enjoy the platforming (which is good when it goes smoothly) and smashing through some interesting enemies. Most levels are straightforward, but two in particular are quite interesting.

The villa level is a vampire infested mansion, but houses a few people you can talk to. One is a fellow vampire hunter and another is a friendly vampire. To speak to her, you need to be in a certain room at dawn, which the game counts as 3-6AM. This is quite annoying as the game gives you sun and moon cards to adjust the time of day, and the sun card skips you to just after this time. In this playthrough, I was lucky enough to just reach the room at the right time with no planning.

There are also specific doors which only open during the day or night, so the sun and moon cards are used to skip forward in time. I got quite lucky in this playthrough as I only needed to use one. Strangely, the second half of the game has none at all. The passage of time is also important as you need to reach the top within a certain number of days to fight the true final boss, so messing with three cards will screw you over.

The other key level is the castle keep, this is a large level with multiple floors. The objective here is to get through a wall that has a protective barrier. You need to disable it then blow it up. You’ll need to figure out a Resident Evil style puzzle for the barrier, while to get through it you need to bring an explosive to the wall.

This is easier said than done. While carrying the explosive, jumping, falling or getting hit will blow it up and kill you instantly. And the route with no jumping involves a long narrow, winding bridge with falling platforms, then through some cogs. It’s a massive cause of frustration for many, because failure means starting from the beginning of the route. I managed to surprise myself by completing this in my first go this time round, with no assists.

After this level, if you picked easy mode, the game will suddenly end and you’ll be told to start the game again on normal to continue. This caught me out first time, and is a pretty dreadful thing to do to you in a game. The remaining levels and the final bosses are quite neat and, even with the game’s issues, it’s still highly enjoyable.

Carrie, like other past magic characters, makes the game easier. Her magic projectile has a much greater range and her melee weapon, some kind of dual welded chakram, is quite powerful. This makes the combat more forgiving. That said, while I still like this game, I’d recommend playing the best one instead.

Fun

There’s some buttock-clenchingly annoying sections in the game – the garden maze, in particular, will have you kicking your TV in – but, for the most part, the game is also pretty intelligent, leading you by the hand just enough, but chucking surprise after surprise in to the cauldron to prevent the proceedings from sagging. Certainly, once you get used to its problems, Castlevania is superbly unpredictable, constantly churning up the unexpected.
Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #26

Remake or remaster?

This did get a sort of remaster with Legacy of Darkness, so I’ll go into more detail there.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get the Castlevania 64.