Castlevania (C64)

Within this box your fate may be sealed.

NA release: 1990
EU release: 1990?
JP release: N/A
Developer: Unlimited Software
Publisher: Konami
Lemon64 Review: 5/10
Platforms: Commodore 64
Version Played: Commodore 64

In 1990, Konami licensed three different developers to develop ports of the original Castlevania to three home computer platforms. There’s not that many details about the actual release of them, and the game supposedly released in Europe, but I can’t find any actual details on it, or any pictures of a PAL box or tape, so it’s quite odd.

This is a fairly direct port of the NES Castlevania, just with downgraded graphics. The system isn’t capable of as many colours, so it looks rather hideous as a result. The capabilities of the Commodore 64 are also evident in the enemy behaviour – their movement is a lot more random than the unique movement of each enemy in the NES Castlevania. The first boss, the bat, got itself trapped under some stairs.

Even worse are the controls, which are designed for a one button joystick. This means that up is jump and that you hold fire to use the sub weapon. You’ll do a lot of misjumps with these controls, and stairs are even more of an nightmare than normal. On top of this, it all feels very stiff and delated. It’s quite bad to play.

Poor

Overall, Castlevania is a butchered port of an awesome NES game. NES, NES, NES….I keep saying that, don’t I? Well here’s why: because I’m giving you advice to play the NES version. Don’t play this average conversion that undermines the computer it’s running on.
“Speccy” Rev. B, Lemon 64

Remake or remaster?

There’s nothing here that the NES version doesn’t do better.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no way to get the C64 version of Castlevania