NES Classics Castlevania

Defeat the Count and his bloodthirsty minions in this Classic NES adventure for the Game Boy Advance!

JP release: 10th August 2004
NA release: 25th October 2004
EU release: 7th January 2005
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Nintendo
NGC Magazine Review: 3/5
Platforms: GBA
Version Played: GBA

As the DS was approaching and Nintendo were starting to focus on developing games for that, Nintendo decided to release a bunch of NES games onto the GBA, one of them being Castlevania. For the most part (the joke credits have been removed for some reason), this is the full original NES Castlevania running extremely smoothly, on the GBA, just with a few alterations to make it work.

The screen itself is cropped and lines of pixels have been removed to make the game work on the screen, making it feel a bit more cramped. Save states have also been added so you don’t need to complete it in one session – handy as you can at least save if you need to change batteries. But there’s not really any reason to play this version now.

Fine

Visually, it’s not looking too shabby either. It all looks recognisably NES, but there’s plenty of detail in there, which makes us feel a little ashamed that we didn’t appreciate it as much as we should have done bay back when.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #103

Remake or remaster?

It’s just an emulated NES version.

Official Ways to get the game

The NES version is in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection.