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Even the credits jokingly list “Christopher Bee” and “Belo Lugosi.” Such aw-shucks imitation was the usual fare for the game industry, where Metroid and Contra openly mined the Aliens legacy and Nintendo fended off a lawsuit over Donkey Kong’s resemblance to a certain movie ape. Castlevania offered a cinematic buffet of monsters and action scenes, from the title screen’s film-strip borders to a clockwork tower and crumbling castle possibly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s The Castle of Cagliostro. He would take on gorgons, the grim reaper, mummies, a giant bat, and a twosome of Frankenstein’s monster and Igor. Dracula was indeed the gloating overlord of the castle, but there were many more dangers to face as the whip-wielding hero Simon Belmont stalked the manor. The new moniker perhaps better reflected the broad scope of the game. It bore the title of Akumajo Dracula, or Demon Castle Dracula, when it first appeared in Japan on the Famicom Disk System, but a name change took place when it came to North America and the cartridge-based NES. Any elaborate action game could do well with only a good idea at its heart.Ĭastlevania had that. First-round NES owners looked to these lengthier, detailed offerings, and there weren’t many to go around. Its early catalog was a hodgepodge of older titles and groundbreaking new ones, a place where simple arcade exports like Elevator Action and Mighty Bomb Jack mingled with more complex adventures like The Legend of Zelda and Rygar. Its American incarnation, the esteemed Nintendo Entertainment System, had only just started in the West. In Japan, the Famicom had enjoyed years of profit and was well into its second generation of software. Nintendo found itself successful on two fronts in 1987.

This is the history of Konami’s Castlevania franchise. Just as Dracula is resurrected time and time again, Castlevania has reinvented itself in ways engrossing, surprising, and occasionally downright embarrassing.

Konami’s Castlevania is the most elaborate treatment of Dracula that this industry has to offer, and the series has revisited the count and his monstrous forces many times over the years. Fiction invariably finds a way to revive Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire, whether it’s for comedy, horror, or a certain long-running video game staple.