Official Review
If you've played Haunted Castle, then you'll be aware that it's a brutally unfair experience which seems designed purely to suck up your loose change. It's unbalanced and awkward to control, and the Simon Belmont sprite is so huge it makes avoiding damage almost impossible. In Haunted Castle Revisited, developer M2 has reconfigured the level design to make things fairer and has generally sanded down the rough edges to create an experience which, while challenging, never becomes overtly frustrating. For example, falling off the bottom of the screen in the original game would cost you a life, but in Haunted Castle Revisited, you simply lose some health and are placed back on the platform you fell from.
Outside of the vastly improved gameplay, the visuals are the most obvious upgrade. M2's artists have recreated many of the key enemies from the 1987 version, imbuing them with more personality and menace than before. Simon Belmont looks similar but benefits from smoother movement and a less constipated walking animation. It's the bosses, however, that have received the biggest facelift; all of them are vastly superior to their original guises, not just in terms of looks but in how their respective fights are structured and the attack patterns used. Particular praise should be levelled at stage 3's stained-glass knight, who looks utterly stunning in this new version, but it's the final confrontation with Dracula which has been given the most attention – it has to be seen to be believed. The only downside is that some of the backgrounds don't look quite as good as the sprites.
The one thing the arcade game had going for it was its amazing soundtrack, and that has been comprehensively updated in this version, too. The rendition of Castlevania's signature tune Bloody Tears is especially good, but all of the songs retain the feel and tone of the original versions but have been subtly improved to make them more appealing. The sound effects are also punchy and effective in their updated format.
While M2's glow-up of this much-maligned Castlevania is a success on pretty much every count, there's no getting around the fact that Haunted Castle is a game from the very earliest part of the series' history – so in terms of mechanics, it's not exactly pulling up any trees. Even in this much-enhanced form, Haunted Castle Revisited lacks the replayability of Dracula's Curse and Rondo of Blood, the two other "classic" Castlevania entries so beloved by fans. While it's arguably trickier than Super Castlevania IV, it lacks that game's atmosphere and epic scale.
This is hardly M2's fault – it could only do so much with a game like Haunted Castle as a template – but, very much like Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth, another M2 upgrade of a terrible game – it feels a little like the developer's talents are somewhat wasted here. We hope that it picks a stronger game, such as Belmont's Revenge, as a starting point for its next Castlevania project.
Even so, a new Castlevania is a new Castlevania, and that's always worth celebrating. While it doesn't quite reach the hollowed heights of the franchise's 8 and 16-bit glory days, Haunted Castle Revisited nonetheless represents a long-overdue rehabilitation for one of Konami's least auspicious arcade releases and is almost worth the cost of the Castlevania Dominus Collection on its own.
