It was just announced that Castlevania Dominus Collection is coming to Nintendo Switch, bringing the DS entries Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia together in one bundle – but the big news for us is that Haunted Castle, one of the worst games in the series, is being remade as part of the package.
Originally released in 1987, Haunted Castle came dead last in our user-generated franchise ranking and is infamous for its unfair difficulty and ropey design.
"For the most part, Haunted Castle is a pretty miserable experience, and in a strong contest with Castlevania: The Adventure (the first Game Boy game) for being one of the worst in the Castlevania series," said Nintendo Life in their review of the Arcade Archives version. "The options in this collection help allay some of the issues – or at least allow you to cheat through them – and it’s still (begrudgingly) worth struggling through for its unusual place in the Castlevania series. However, in the cold light of day, there's no denying that this is a pretty poor video game and one that most people will want to ignore."
It will be interesting to see how Konami can brush up this particular entry – but we won't have to wait long, as it launches later today.
Comments 13
Is it M2? Why wont they say who made it?
“The worst Castlevania game is getting a remake”
WAIT NO WAY THEYRE REMAKING LEGENDS?!?!?!
@gojiguy I’m almost positive it’s M2. They did the previous collection and the brief footage we saw gives me HUGE rebirth vibes
Why the worst? Haunted Castle was a good game for the time. You only should play the JAPANESE VERSION! The US version is absurdly hard. Just play Akumajou Dracula with easy settings.
@Nischenliebhaber yea compared to some of the other crap konami put to arcades like super contra, gradius 3 and rock'n rage, the japanese version of haunted castle is fairly tolerable in comparison even if it's still insanely ugly
@gojiguy credits confirm it's M2
@Damo LordBBH has shown the Japanese version is much fairer. The game's horrible reputation is because of the two English versions of the game.
Presumably the more offensive of those two is the US version. Konami in that era especially really jacked up the difficulty in their arcade games (and to very degrees on their console games) especially for the US market.
@Nischenliebhaber Its reputation as the worst came about before it became more widespread knowledge that Konami arcade games usually had more reasonable difficulty in the Japanese versions.
Though they did make changes to console games, reportedly the most common reason Konami liked to inflate the difficulty for the US market was to make the machines more favorable to arcade owners. 25 cents a game in the US was a much lower cost than 100 yen a game in Japan, so they needed to put pressure on Americans to put more coins in the machine.
I'm told Crime Fighters is another game Konami did brutal things to do in the localization (not the least taking out one of the attack buttons to encourage arcade owners to put their game in former Gauntlet cabinets).
@KingMike Yes, I know the fact that Konami, Capcom etc. did the games a lot harder for the western markets. I wrote a long article about this topic last year (in german): https://www.dasklapptsonicht.de/reportage-warum-waren-spiele-im-westen-haeufig-schwerer-als-in-japan/
I've played the remake and it's very good, akin to the remake of Castlevania Adventure. Simon no longer has slippery controls and all the attacks feel powerful.
The original game is also included, and there's also an option to remove the limited continues.
@PinballBuzzbro you must be the first person I’ve heard refer to Gradius III as crap. Not everyone’s favourite, but c’mon!
I got this collection mainly for Portrait of Ruin and OoE. Since my 3DS was stolen I wasnt able to finish PoR or even start OoE. Looking forward to both of them.
@X68000 snes version is phenomenal barring the occasional slowdown, and the arcade version COULD'VE been good but the fact it has no continues whatsoever while also having typical extreme arcade difficulty just ruins it for me. There's a borderline between a game being hard and a game just being not enjoyable to beat, idk what they were thinking pulling that crap on an arcade cabinet.
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