Castlevania

Castlevania, originally named Akumajō Dracula in Japan, is a gothic horror side-scrolling action platformer developed by Konami. It first launched on Famicom Disk System in 1986, then released as NES cartridge in 1987, acting as the debut title of the Castlevania franchise. Players control Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter wielding the legendary Vampire Killer whip to invade Count Dracula’s castle and destroy the resurrected vampire lord. The game consists of six main blocks with 18 stages in total, each ending with a boss fight, featuring Medusa, Frankenstein, Death and Dracula. The Vampire Killer whip can be upgraded to extend range. Break candelabras to collect hearts for sub-weapons, including holy water, axes, boomerangs, daggers and time-stop pocket watches. Character movement and jumps have inertia; hits trigger knockback stun, creating the game’s famous high difficulty. It has immersive gothic castle atmosphere and iconic 8-bit soundtrack, establishing the core design blueprint for the whole Castlevania franchise and regarded as one of the greatest hard action games of the Famicom era.

These are the default keys. Click the gamepad icon 🎮 in the player’s bottom toolbar to rebind them. Gamepads are detected automatically. On phones you get on-screen buttons.

1P

2P

The NES was always two-player — 2P uses the numeric keypad, and NumLock does not matter. No numpad? Rebind 2P to other keys in the 🎮 panel.