- #CASTLEVANIA ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION MANUAL#
- #CASTLEVANIA ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION PC#
- #CASTLEVANIA ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION SERIES#
Aside from a manual Quick Save system, a few perfunctory graphics filters, and screen frames, the games are, well, essentially ROM dumps. Konami-partnered again with developer M2, a studio renowned for their work on similar compilations for Sega and SNK-takes a similarly haphazard approach to the more restorative aspects of this collection. This is a collection that feels loveless as a result, as it lacks so much context or respect for the place these games hold in gaming history. Yes, putting the effort in to localize Kid Dracula certainly took work, but it’s also the least relevant game to said chronicle. That alone is a grand reason to chronicle the how and why of this series’s legacy in thorough detail. There’s an entire thriving genre of video games co-named after this series.
#CASTLEVANIA ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION SERIES#
Konami simply doesn’t, and it’s not for a lack of proof to draw from, given how different latter-day titles in this series became in the PlayStation/Nintendo 64 era. Many a developer has made that effort in bringing games of this age to modern players. There are countless stories and questions about the creation and advancement of the Castlevania series that remain untold and unanswered-stories you can tell either through the inclusion of the later games that showcase that evolution, or through the inclusion of ancillary materials that tell the story more directly. Ultimately, for a collection supposedly celebrating a series’s 30th anniversary, the amount of effort put into this release suggests a relationship long dead. Is it to bring a game visually or mechanically up to modern standards? Or is it to preserve its code? In recent years, we’ve seen Sega accomplish both with their Genesis Collections, Capcom with their Anniversary Collections of Street Fighter and Legacy Collections of Mega Man, and SNK with their 40th Anniversary Collection. The big question to be considered with any sort of collection or remaster effort is one of purpose. The same can somewhat be said of Kid Dracula, an old-school mascot platformer that’s adorable but ultimately expendable. Which is a shame, because it only takes about five minutes of playtime apiece to realize that the Gameboy titles are taking up valuable real estate here that could easily have been filled by better and more interesting games in this series.
#CASTLEVANIA ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION PC#
Want to play Haunted Castle, the obscure arcade game that serves as the mechanical basis for the first NES Castlevania? Or Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, the beautifully ambitious PC Engine CD spinoff? You’ll have to purchase those, and a sizable list of other Castlevania titles, separately. Out of the series’s history, the Anniversary Collection includes the three NES titles ( Castlevania, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse), the first two Gameboy titles ( Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge), Super Castlevania IV (originally released on the SNES), Castlevania Bloodlines (originally released on the Sega Genesis and outside the United States and Japan as The New Generation), and the NES port of Kid Dracula, which was only released on Gameboy in the U.S. So, it’s almost a tiny blessing that the worst thing visited upon the Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a sort of benign neglect.
Remember that Konani’s last major contribution to the Castlevania series was a pachinko machine. After all, this is a publisher that’s had no qualms about charging $10 for an extra save slot, or canceling entire games, regardless of positive reception or earning potential, based on a grudge against creators. The prospect of the widely detested Konami of 2019 turning a jaundiced eye toward the best franchise the beloved Konami of yore produced was, rightfully, a frightening proposition.
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