Castlevania is one of the finest series in video games, the series began with the release of vampire Killer for the msx line of computers in 1986, but the series did not achieve popularity untill castlevania was released for the nintendo entertainment system in 1987. From the series only increased in quality of both gameplay and production values.
The commodore 64 would receive a port of the original castlevania in 1990, several years after the original release and well into the commodore 64's twilight years.
Suffice to say it is not a bad option for playing the original Castlevania, though it is not quite up to par with the original nes release.
The premise is exactly the same Simon Belmont must take up his whip and defeat Dracula and his minion of the undead.
The basics of the game are all basically the same as well, Simon must traverse the castle of Dracula using his whip, the vampire killer, and a variety of sub weapons, which include holy water, a cross, an axe, a knife and the stop watch, all of which can be except the stop watch can be enhanced through multipliers, and they are still powered by hearts which are found by whipping candles.
The enemies are still the same zombies, mummies,
madusa, flea men, bone pillars and all of the other classic enemies of the nes original.
The quality of the port itself is quite competent, but in several ways it is inferior to the nes original all of which are basically due to the limitations of the commodore 64.
First there is loading, but that's a no brainier with disk based games
Second the control suffers due to either being force to use a keyboard, or the problems encountered from using a 1-button controller.
Third the visual take a slight dip, in general the detail is still nice but the image doesn't look quite as good.
Fourth the game doesn't scroll, instead it jumps up 1 screen every time you reach the end of the screen.
Regardless of these flaws the music is still fantastic thanks to the commodore's very nice music chip.
Overall even with the flaws the game is still a very playable port of a fantastic game, when given the option I'd personally play the nes original, but if I want to just for fun I will gladly pick up and play this release of Castlevnia
