Haunted Castle (Arcade, 1987)

When figuring out my Castlevania series playthrough I figured I could skip Haunted Castle. After all, it’s a hasty reskin of another game, it’s famously not very good, and it’s not even called “Castlevania”.

Then I listened to Cane and Rinse’s recent episode about it. About halfway through I was convinced to give it a whirl. Their conclusion was that while Haunted Castle isn’t a good game, it is an interesting one.

They’re right, but “interesting” does not equal “fun”.

I picked up the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection for a couple of bucks on Steam to play it and, following everyone’s advice, opted for the Japanese rom with all the difficulty settings turned way down. Even with all that, Haunted Castle is still an absolute bastard.

The key to success is memorisation. This isn’t something as fun as figuring out enemy patterns or where the best power-ups are hidden, but literally committing the game to memory so you know what’s going to appear and when. Even with that, there’s a smidge of unfairness as this chunky lil’ Belmont sprite has an absurdly large hitbox.

Plus save states can really only get you so far. The whip upgrades are mandatory to survive – so managing to miss the first of them left me mired down in the third stage as I couldn’t avoid getting hit with my puny base-level whip. Then there are the power-ups. Midway through the second stage a bat drops the stopwatch, which is so powerful it’s practically mandatory to cling onto the thing for dear life.

I eventually beat Drac and saved Mrs. Belmont. As it quickly looped around for the second run I didn’t feel much satisfaction, or anything other than a vague desire to move on to the next game as quickly as possible.

Haunted Castle is a weird vestigial branch of the Castlevania tree, filled with familiar enemies and music but without any of the spark, style, or finesse that made the console titles classics. I’m glad it’s so widely available, but there’s a damn good reason this has a bad reputation.