That New Castlevania DS Collection Includes A Terrific Bonus Game

Final week noticed the shock launch of Castlevania Dominus Assortment, a fantastic compilation that (lastly!) offers us a option to play the sequence’ three Nintendo DS releases on trendy {hardware}. Castlevania followers have their robust opinions on which of those are one of the best, however the truth that Daybreak of Sorrow, Portrait of Damage, and Order of Ecclesia are actually much more accessible is a win for everyone. Nonetheless, it was one other inclusion within the assortment that made my jaw drop once I noticed the discharge trailer in final week’s Nintendo Direct: Haunted Fort Revisited, a model new remake of a little-known Castlevania arcade sport. And people, it’s completely attractive.

The unique Haunted Fort is a 1987 arcade adaptation of Castlevania, and it’s…not nice. It has its admirable qualities–notably its banger soundtrack and, for the time, some impressively massive and detailed sprites–however it feels stiff and awkward, and doesn’t seize the attraction of the NES sport that impressed it. (If you wish to get a superb have a look at it for your self, you may watch speedrunner LRock617 completely demolish the sport in this run from this 12 months’s Summer season Video games Performed Fast occasion, however remember the fact that he makes it look simple; it’s undoubtedly not.) Haunted Fort itself is right here within the Dominus Assortment, too, and it’s a really welcome inclusion, because it’s an fascinating and necessary a part of Castlevania historical past, warts and all. However what actually makes it particular is that it’s accompanied by a model new remake that actually is one thing to behold.

Made by the wizards at M2, Haunted Fort Revisited is a terrific, top-to-bottom reimagining of the unique arcade sport. It’s a type of arcade-style video games that appears so good, it’s much less like an actual arcade sport and extra like my idealized childhood reminiscence of what a fantastic arcade sport seemed like. In different phrases, it seems to be like a dream. The place Simon Belmont’s strolling animation within the authentic is awkward to say the least, right here he strides with easy, sleek willpower. The multi-layered backgrounds give the world a way of depth because it stretches away from you into the space, with strands of fog giving the panorama a contact of gothic dread. The soundtrack completely pops. Your whip cracks with satisfying affect. Gone is the unique’s stiffness, with Simon now feeling responsive and highly effective. That is the nice arcade sport that Castlevania has all the time deserved however by no means obtained, till now.

Haunted Fort Revisited isn’t an extended sport, and your first journey from the countryside all the way in which to Dracula’s clock tower will most likely solely take you about half-hour. However that’s the way in which an arcade sport needs to be–an expertise you may come again to many times for a fast jolt of adrenaline and satisfaction–and it’s nice to have this quick, gorgeous expertise alongside the extra elaborate, epic undertakings of the DS Castlevania video games. It’s the form of sport that, for true arcade aficionados, rewards mastery, and I intend to maintain enjoying it till I handle to get the last word satisfaction of a one-credit clear. Even when your curiosity is extra informal, although, Haunted Fort Revisited is an audiovisual feast, a luxurious deal with of gothic richness that reclaims certainly one of Castlevania’s most denigrated and missed video games. It’s a treasure.