TopTenREVIEWS.com - Mar 17, 2008
Classic NES Series: Castlevania
Classic NES Series: Castlevania receives an overall TopTenREVIEWS rating of 2.48 out of 4.00. It is ranked the #5,371 game of all time, #55 game of 2004 for the Game Boy Advance and #309 Game Boy Advance game of all time. The rating and ranking is based on an average of 10 critic scores, awards and other criteria. To see a breakdown of the game ranking, read individual critic reviews, or see how... Top
games.net - Jan 1, 2000
Classic NES Series: Castlevania
Before you can undo the curse of the evil Count, first you must battle his ghoulish army of ghosts, mummies, bats and zombies. Use your Magic Whip and other weapons if you want to make it out of the castle alive! Top 
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Classic NES Series: Castlevania
Strengths: Classic Castlevania on GBA, ages well for such an old game, see how the series started, challenging old school gameplay, now includes a save feature
Weakness: Simple by today's standards, dated sound and graphics, too hard for some players, linear with only six levels, short length, limited extras, port of 20-year-old game
Unlike the recent GBA Castlevanias (Circle of the Moon, Aria of Sorrow & Harmony of Dissonance), the NES Classics Castlevania isn't an all-new adventure. It's actually a pretty old adventure (nearly twenty years in fact) ported over from the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the very first game in the Castlevania series for those interested.
If you haven't played the original NES title and want to know how the series started, this GBA release provides an excellent history lesson. They didn't have puzzle solving, spell casting, and other such complexities of today's adventure games back then. Instead, you get the simple jump/attack sidescrolling action of years past.
The original NES Castlevania was designed for (and played on) your home television set, so this port actually doesn't look too bad when shrunken down to fit your GBA screen. The details, coloring and animations are a little bland perhaps. The music and sound are a bit simplistic as well, but you're really here for the classic sidescrolling action anyway, right?
Unfortunately, Nintendo could have easily fit all three of the old NES Castlevania games (plus the three original black and white Game Boy Castlevanias) on this one Classic NES cartridge to give us much more value for our money (if they wanted to), but of course they didn't do that. Thus, you end up paying a full $20 for what's essentially a single twenty-year-old game. Given that you could buy all three of the original NES Castlevania game cartridges for that same $20, I'd recommend looking for this GBA port on sale if you must have it.
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