Castlevania Chronicles

Castlevania Chronicles is a remake of the very first Castlevania, reworked for the Sharp X68000 computer back in 1993 – a game that players outside Japan long knew only by hearsay and emulation. The PlayStation received this reworked version, with the classic linear journey through the castle, platform jumping, collecting money, and whip combat against hordes of gothic monsters and bosses, exactly in the spirit of the original NES Castlevania, just with more elaborate graphics, smoother animation, and a difficulty selection that even alters some of the paths through the castle – the kind of feature home computers of the time were capable of offering.

Compared to the X68000 original, this version adds newly rendered backgrounds and character art from the pen of producer Koji Igarashi, who by that point had become the face of the whole series following Symphony of the Night, but it also lets you switch back to the original graphics and music with a single button – so players can compare at any time how the game actually looked on the X68000, including the original color scheme and musical arrangements from home computers. Besides the graphics toggle, the game also added a Boss Rush mode for fighting all the bosses back-to-back without having to replay entire levels, a leaderboard of best times for speedruns, and a new orchestral arrangement of the soundtrack that gives the game a different atmosphere than the raw, purely electronic original from home computers. Given its origins, it's more of a short, straightforward arcade run through the castle than a sprawling adventure, which matches both the age and the structure of the X68000 original.

Why play it: Castlevania Chronicles is ideal for players who want to get to know the roots of the series in a form that never previously reached the West, and who will appreciate being able to switch between old and new graphics depending on mood, try Boss Rush as a faster way to play, and compare just how much the remake actually differs from the original computer game, all without having to reach for an emulator of the Japanese original.