Castlevania Anniversary Collection

This is a pretty good collection of emulated ROMs, and credit to them for Kid Dracula and the extras (including Japanese versions of most of the games).

The original Castlevania is a true classic imo. It's a game that mixes precise, demanding challenge with a type of strategy that I call "bullshit mitigation" – the management of unfair situations through advance planning of resources and manipulation of enemy AI. It also plays perfectly in this collection.

The other games are great too. I need to finish Bloodlines some time.

Good old classic Castlevania for the Castlevania nerds and old veterans

Though, if you are new to the series I suggest you play the other two collection before you play this one. This is just too retro in terms of game designs and controls.

Please give us 'Castlevania: Symphony of the Night' on PC.

This game is truly fantastic

As someone with no nostalgia for any of these they all range from decent to fantastic. Each has their own quirks and problems of course but I am having a blast working through all the titles in the collection. Definite recommend if you can deal with some obtuse directions (looking at Castlevania II) or challenging sections.

Still fun games overall

wish you could make the collection's UI sound effects quieter

Castlevania gets an anniversary and I don’t get a single anniversary I hate my life

ITS CASTLEVANIA, its amazing, love it.

Very poor showing from Konami.

Though, generally, I have to wonder why Japanese developers insist on treating their own gaming history like crap? It's not just this one - look at Koei's "Kou Shibusawa Collection" or the "remasters", if you can call them that, of Princess Maker 1 and 2. In case of emulation, they always make sure to make it the worst performing and most feature-devoid emulation possible. When it's remasters of old Windows or TownsOS games, they always stick to their old, crummy original resolutions. Apparently they don't know how to do stretching. A feature every emulator on Earth has had for two decades now.

As far as this specific collection is concerned, Castlevania 1 doesn't get proper fullscreen with preserved aspect ratio, and the Gameboy games perform worse than on original hardware with ghastly screen tearing on top - this never even happened with Gameboy emulators from the DOS era!

So, I suppose, the only reason to buy this is for the licenses, in case you care about this sort of thing. There is no other reason to bother with this.

Ah Castlevania... one of my favourite videogames series

yes

Notwithstanding the quality of some games, this collection is overall good. I just wish that a few other classic games were included, and it is criminal that there is no option to just listen to the music. But as of now, this is the best way to play classic Castlevania. (8/10)

Pros:
- The Castlevania Adventure 2: Belmont's Revenge
- Castlevania: Bloodlines
- Save States
- Music
- Pixel Art
- Animation Work in General

Mixed:
- Castlevania 4
- Castlevania 3
- Kid Dracula

Cons:
- Castlevania 1 & 2
- The Castlevania Adventure 1

I'll start off by saying that this is a good collection and it's great that they put in the save state feature so you can actually win unless you want to put in a ton of practice since there many cheap deaths in most of the games. I'm not the biggest fan of classic castlevania but I genuinely enjoyed TCA 2 & Bloodlines as the difficulty and experience are mostly balanced and fun as a more casual fan. If you're interested in a spiritual successor, the Bloodstained series does an excellent job that modernizes & improves this particular genre of the classic Castlevania side-scrollers. 8.0/10

really hard

Hard to beat the originals, but it's time to give Symphony of the Night it's much deserved remake! All it needs is a graphical update, please leave the rest alone.

Kid Dracula is the best game in the entire collection.

The games are good if they work for you but I had issues with controller support working in the main menu but not working when in-game. There is also apparently no in-game method for adjusting volume or resolution. These can be done in Windows but show how cheaply this was put together. You are better off playing these games elsewhere.

I've spent nearly 60 hours on this game at the time of the review, and I just completed 100% of the achievements. So I'd like to say that I think this collection is pretty awesome. I was always a big fan of the OG Castlevania so I mainly got it to occasionally play through that and maybe try out the others. What ended up happening was that I got hooked on this need to beat them all. Here are some of my thoughts on each game, and then I'll give my thoughts on the collection as a whole:

- Castlevania - Solid difficulty and always felt like I had to readjust from whatever else I was playing to get the jumping and attacking timing down. The boss fights are challenging but doable once you figure out the patterns.

- Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - While holding onto the action elements, this game increased the scope of the world and made it more of an action RPG. Took me quite some time to beat this but it was a satisfying playthrough.

- Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse - You can play through this game as 4 different characters and I felt like the game really opened up once you got to play as Grant Danasty, the pirate. It was a lot of fun playing as Sypha also. This game really showcased everything the NES had and it's quite satisfying once you beat it with all characters.

- Super Castlevania IV - This is a remake of the original with the Super Nintendo hardware and the music and graphical improvements are stunning. It's a gorgeous game. The difficulty factor, however, was super low compared to the previous 3. Didn't take as long to beat this one.

- Castlevania The Adventure - The first of the gameboy games in this collection is a bit cumbersome and clunky, but once you get the hang of what your limited to after playing the previous 4 games it ends up being pretty do-able. I don't really see myself playing this one again.

- Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge - I wanted to remark on this gameboy game, the followup to 'Adventure', specifically how it seemed like a huge improvement from the first one. The graphics are much better and you get additional gameplay styles with how the items work. Also I really enjoyed the story relating to Christopher Belmont in this one. This was a satisfying playthrough.

- Castlevania Bloodlines / The New Generation - This was the Sega Genesis (or MegaDrive) Castlevania that allowed you to play as John Morris or Eric Legarde. It was a beautiful game graphically but in a different way than Super IV. There were some parts I thought were pretty stunning. Eric plays totally different than the whip-toting John, and it allows you to reach a few rooms that you couldn't otherwise reach. I thought the music in this one was incredible! I'm a big fan of the soundchip in the Genesis, so hearing Castlevania-esque music pushed through the YM2612 was pretty exciting.

As for the difficulty: it varied from not bad to excruciatingly hard. Prepare yourself for the boss rush. The only thing I could compare it to is if Streets of Rage 2's Hellevator and the 70-man-battle in Shenmue had a baby. It just never seemed to end! But then the final fight was pretty epic! Bloodlines surprised me in a good way.

- Kid Dracula - Now this one was totally new to me. I'd never even heard of this gameboy title, but it was pretty fun. I was expecting from the graphics that it would be a pretty simple playthrough but it had a couple hard parts. Nothing too terrible though. I really got the sense that the people who made this game tried to copy Super Mario Bros. 3 levels, enemies, and aesthetic without being obvious (but it was obvious, lol). The levels and gameplay all had hints of Mega Man, especially the music, which was very up beat.

Playing as Dracula is kinda cool. The comedic, lighthearted feel of the game was nice. It kinda felt like I was playing a Kirby game, honestly.

- The Anniversary Collection as a whole - I really feel like I got my money's worth with this game. If for some reason 50-60 hours across 8 games (1 with 4 playthroughs, and 1 with 2 playthroughs) isn't enough to justify the cost, then you've also got the ability to play a handful of them as the Japanese versions and a Bonus book that is full of all kinds of interesting information, box art comparisons, and interviews.

I definitely recommend this game. If you've never played Castlevania, you really owe it to yourself. These games can be pretty brutal sometimes, but there's this incredible satisfaction that comes from overcoming adversity in these games. Being able to play as different characters all across the Belmont line (among others) and seeing the story being weaved throughout (though not as involved as some of the later games). I also really loved hearing how the music evolved as the new games came out.

This collection is totally worth the time. Get mad, yell at the screen a little, then bring your A-game and don't blink! Before you know it you'll have all the games under your belt. Again, I said this game is worth the asking price in my opinion, so if it's on sale I would say it's a no-brainer.

One final warning though: if you aren't great at platformers, this might just be unnecessary punishment for you. I know for a fact my wife would hate all of these games. If, however, you're ready for challenging games that won't hold your hand like some modern games tend to do, then grab some holy water and follow me to Dracula's castle!

ok so here's the rundown

Castlevania 1 - Good but bullshit
Castlevania 2 - Boring
Castlevania 3 - Great game
Super Castlevania 4 - Fun but loses some of the charm
Kid Dracula - Quaint little game
Castlevania Bloodlines - Great Game
Castlevania The Adventure - fucking terrible
Belmont's Revenge - bad

Rondo should have been included its the best one.

Can't go wrong with classic Castlevania

Okay so after almost 20 hours, I finished all games (aside from advanture and belmonts revenge) and I gotta say I enjoyed every minute of it! I love the music the combat and art style, some levels feel dated and hard without save scumming. I am overall happy I got to enjoy the start of this series each game is unique in music and atmosphere, which I never had the pleasure of playing as a kid I wholly recommend buying this if it's too hard you can save after each frustrating part which makes it bearable if you are less patient and don't want to replay the whole level!

My favorites are :
1. Castlevania 1 the original
2. Castlevania 4
3. Kid Dracula

.

As of the time of writing this review, my gameplay time might seem ridiculously low but I already know this collection will be great. Back in high school, I had a portable emulation console and I played the hell out of all of these games during lunch and in between classes. I'm glad these games are on Steam now

Amazing games and all of them for only 4 dollars!. beware tho theres an RNG audio glitch that may or not may destroy your eardrums on launch but its fixable by restarting the game

very good but a little disappointed to learn that there was absolutely no good porn of sypha

Amazing collection, better than an emulator. You get concept art books and a few nifty bonuses.

This game works really well with a controller. Its like playing the older games in a newer format and a fun walk down memory lane.

7/10 - the best way to play retro games, but they are still just retro game with all pros and cons

Assim, é uma coletânea bem pobre, tipo ta faltando uns jogos importantes aqui, e a emulação não é das melhores, mas é castlevania, espera uma promoção se tiver intresse, se não, você consegue esses jogos tudo de graça viajando pelo oceano com seu navio.

Neat little game collection with some awesome bonus stuff, but after all it's just a couple ROMs gathered in a nice packaging.
You might as well go play the original ROMs... Still a decent collection though.

For the price the game is a fantastic collection, it's exciting to go back and experience classic gaming history. I have completed 1 and Super at this time, I look forward to playing through some of the others. The additional bonus books with artwork, music, and copies of the English and Japanese instruction manuals make the games even more worth it for those who want a behind the scenes look. I bought all 3 Castlevania collections for Halloween to replay Circle of the Moon, but found myself dragged into Castlevania 1 first and absolutely loving the difficult and old fashioned style gameplay.

All the old games
+ Japanese versions
+ Works great all way
+ modern overlay functions. like save state.

Very convenient having these together, even if it isn't exactly convenient using ALT-F4 every time I'm done playing. Running through these back to back starts to feel very "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man???" in the best possible way. Good presentation, whipping Dracula in the face has always been inherently funny

Before Castlevania Anniversary Collection, I’ve only dabbled in two games from the franchise: Castlevania: The Adventure on the Game Boy and Super Castlevania IV on the SNES. I didn’t finish either one of them, but I’ve always wanted to revisit this series at some point. Little did I know that I’d be doing it on the PC.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection was developed by M2, the team that also gave us Contra Anniversary Collection. Considering these two collections were released one month apart, and the Contra collection was merely adequate for an “Anniversary Collection”, I didn’t have high hopes for this compilation of Castlevania games.

As expected, Castlevania Anniversary Collection, like its Contra counterpart, runs in windowed mode with no clear option to change screen setting, and has a paltry selection of unremarkable border frames. Plus, the graphic design of the game menu and bonus book, titled The History of Castlevania: Book of the Crescent Moon, looks amateurish.

Further proof of how lackadaisical development of this collection was is the absence of original game manuals. I excused this for Contra Anniversary Collection, but not for this one. Castlevania games are action adventures, and it’s important to know what the icons means and how the in-game menus work (especially for Castlevania II). There are abridged manuals, but they aren’t very informative. Plus, the manuals are in The History of Castlevania bonus book! This means to access them, you’ll have to save your game with save state (thank goodness for that), exit the game, scroll to the bonus book, find the entries and read them, exit the book, and restart the game. What asinine design!

Ignoring that, however, Castlevania Anniversary Collection has a pretty decent set of games. It has most of the 8- and 16-bit game console and Game Boy games, but is missing Haunted Castle (arcade), Rondo of Blood (TurboGrafx-16), Dracula X (SNES), and Castlevania Legends (Game Boy). Haunted Castle and Dracula X are in the Dominus Collection and Advance Collection respectively, but including them here would have been more appropriate.

How much you’ll like this compilation highly depends on your appreciation for Castlevania and/or your nostalgia for this franchise. Here are my impressions of the ones featured in this collection:

• Castlevania – Challenging, especially with the knockback and enemy placement. Very atmospheric, but limited colour palette made some aspects of the environment hard to detect. Truly a classic.
  
• Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest – I was particularly curious about this title because I read the novelization from the Worlds of Power series as a kid. It’s an ambitious, but confusing game partly because of the unclear, bad translation. The day/night cycle was poorly implemented, and became annoying quickly.
  
• Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse – Very challenging, but highly replayable given the branching paths, companion recruitment, and ability to switch characters. It’s brisk, responsive and fun, allowing Castlevania to end its NES era on a high note.
  
• Super Castlevania IV – The multidirectional whipping and overpowered weapons made this game relatively easy. That, plus the bright, colourful art direction made it feel less like a Castlevania game. But, it’s still very fun, and it holds up well over 3 decades later due to the fluid gameplay and some amazing level designs.
  
• Castlevania: Bloodlines – Although this game doesn’t star a Belmont, it allows you to play as either the whip-wielding John Morris or the spear-sporting Eric Lecarde. This offers two unique gaming experiences, making Bloodlines worthy of replay.
  
• Castlevania: The Adventure – Marred by slow speed and clunky controls, this Game Boy title is frustrating to play – not just as a Castlevania game, but also as a platformer. If it weren’t for nostalgia, I wouldn’t have spent as much time on it as I did.
  
• Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge – The Game Boy sequel is faster, has more responsive controls, and brings back subweapons. While a vast improvement over The Adventure, it still can’t match its 8-bit peers.
  
[*]Kid Dracula – Kudos to M2 for putting in the extra work to localize this game in English, but this game is not the reason for your buying this collection. Despite the slightly unrefined controls, it’s a fine action platformer.

I have liked these classic Castlevania games since I first played them a little over 10 years ago and have beaten and replayed the original Castlevania a few times over the years. I've played a chunk of several of the other games in this collection as well, so I feel confident saying that this is a fun little bundle of games. In all honesty you could probably find many or all of these games quite easily on various emulators but I don't find the price tag to be too outrageous for around 8 classic games, especially if you find it on sale. While they can be quite fun, you should be warned that they come from an era of games where players got their value from how difficult the challenge was rather than the amount of content available. Overall, I enjoy these and recommend them

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
This game sucks. Castlevania I and III are great classic Nintendo games, but for Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, the game designers obviously were not thinking straight. At first, it seems like a pretty decent game. A little different from the first in the series but, that's okay. Zelda II was different from the first, Mario 2 was different, but they were all good.

The collection itself kinda blows in some areas but it does mostly get the job done thankfully and im glad i got to play all these games with it
Playing it long into the night reflecting on all the time spent with it
Memories
thatll last forever

I can run games like Elden Ring, and GTA V on steam but for some reason this Collection slows to a grinding and sometimes makes a crackling sound.

This hurts my ego.

I don't care for that Dracula fellow

almost 40 years later and the original Castlevania has claimed another controller

10/10, one of these days I'll overcome this skill issue and be able to play the rest of the collection

(pls Konami bb, port SoTN)

Big collection full of games and localised Kid Dracula, there are some quality of life improvements (save states so you dont rely on passwords and stuff), but it has some nitty little issues, mainly with screen size, where you can't play 4:3 without scanlines (which I honestly didnt mind much); sound, where you cant really change bgm or sfx or stuff like that, which is a big bummer to some people since old NES games have ear ringing beeps (like the sound hearts make when they are counted as score after finishing an level), and, Castlevania 1 freezes and softlocks for no reason while playing, but since it is being emulated you can just load up a save, so, remember to save during gameplay.

Other than all that, pretty good collection, great games, Castlevania 3 is amazing also.

Castlevania is the staple of what modern video games are founded on today and many or most games draw the basics from the Castlevania series on the NES. Castlevania Anniversary Collection is no Exception and represents the best value for the quality of games presented as well as quantity of games presented. Castlevania is a AAA game by far and deserves many future installments as well as remakes of old installments. Keep an eye on this collection and the many others that are here or on their way.

After a brief and easy fix for full screen, I was right back in my room in 1989, playing Castlevania again.
It's like I never stopped. Only took me 90 minutes and one death to beat Castlevania 1.
I love that retro gaming is big. Gen X demands our childhood again!

Absolute nostalgia! fun blast from the past however there are no audio settings - so what you hear is what you get. Also there is a constant crackling sound.

Emulation is for leeching vampires... So be a vampire-killer! Soak up the 80s pixels and whip your weapon back and forth!

Brilliant quality, great option to display with CRT lines and no bugs found (apart from those pesky spiders)!

Despite the many negative reviews I've read. I thought it was a pretty good collection as long as you buy it on sale.
As for the quality of the emulation, I haven't had any problems so far.Could there be more filter options and rooms for saving states? Yes, but the ones that are there are good enough. Only one save state slot is ultimately a good limitation that results in having to play one game at a time. All the titles in the collection are worth playing, each for their own reasons.

Two things I would really change if I had the chance: First, the ability to add and remove filters in all screen resolutions. The second thing: it should be possible to get achievements for the Japanese versions of the games as well, not just the Western versions. Keeping in mind that in some cases the Japanese versions are preferred by many players.

Güzel oyunlar, kötü port. Ciddi ses sorunları var ve oyunu windowed oynarken Alt+Enter ile fullscreen'e alıp sonra Left Trigger ile erişilen menüye girerseniz oyun çöküyor.

Most of the games are very good (I only didn't like The Adventure), all of the music is great. Castelvania is generally difficult but with save states it is not as frustrating.

I really only got this collection for Super Castlevania. It's good but the overall emulator that runs the games is janky as heck. What's the point of putting sound options in the menu if there aren't any options? Also, for the love of glob Konami, PUT SotN OUT ON STEAM ALREADY!!

As a longtime fan of Castlevania, from the NES classics to Symphony of the Night, I was excited to dive into the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. This collection is a curated nostalgia trip, especially for fans who want to revisit the early days of the Belmont legacy and experience the game's evolution. But, let's talk about the elephant in the room – the difficulty.

I don't remember Castlevania being this hard. I played through the NES originals, so I know what to expect from old-school difficulty. But playing these in the collection feels different, almost artificially challenging. I don't know if it's the controls, the collision detection, or just me getting older, but the hitboxes seem way off. It’s infuriating to take damage from Medusa heads that clearly aren't touching you, and when you add in the rigid, slow response times, it feels like you’re constantly fighting the controls as much as the monsters.

The collection itself is, admittedly, a fantastic deal when it's on sale. For around $4, you get multiple games in one package, a solid buy for a casual weekend of retro gaming. But when these issues start piling up, the experience feels like a "Temu" version of the real thing – good enough for the price but not exactly what you’d call high quality. It’s a shame because, at its core, this collection has some of the best entries in the franchise, and it’s a trip down memory lane that every Castlevania fan deserves to take.

In summary: For long-time fans, it’s a fun but frustrating journey. But without some polish on the mechanics, it’s easy to feel like this collection misses what made the originals challenging and fun.

Castlevania is obviously one of those early videogame franchises from the 80s that influenced platformers long after 16 Bit consoles were deemed ancient technology. While I do have an NES, SNES and Sega Genesis where I can play the mayority of the games here included, I don't have a Game Boy, so those 2 extra games, plus the never released outside of Japan "Kid Dracula" make this selection ,which is 75% off until November 4, a worth buy. The collection also includes a digital book with the story of every game, and even the famous music from the original NES games. Moreover, you can play the Japanese version of each game, which is another bonus, as there were differences on each of the games, mostly due to mild censorship and different cultural approaches. I've read reviews complaining about how the playability was affected by this port, and, no offense, but it's clear these people never played the original games when they came out. Controls work just like they did for the different consoles. Training for long jumps, and dodging enemy attacks is part of the journey. If you still don't why the recent retro game fever is called "Metroidvania" look no further. Even if you have the games in the original formats, it's still a pleasure to have them all here on your beloved Steam without the need for plugging HDMI connectors, and turning on your smart TV. These games play like they should. The added scanlines and pixel perfect filters, allow you to customize your gaming experience. Long live the Belmont family!