"It's just like Castlevania except you die a lot easier"

What? Haunted Castle isn't technically a Castlevania game? Well it's by Konami, it's about a guy in medieval Europe who fights monsters with a bullwhip, including Count Dracula, Frankenstein, bone-throwing skeletons, Medusa and gill-men, and he has secondary weapons powered by heart-shaped items. Gee, that sounds just like...Castlevania! Even the title screen looks just like the box art for the first Castlevania game. It's not really a surprise that this is the forgotten chapter of that saga, however.

You're a guy getting married, but for some reason Count Dracula captures your bride and it's up to you to fight your way into the HAUNTED CASTLE to save your wedding. Good luck man, this game hates you.

Graphics-8
For a 1988 game, Haunted Castle's graphics are astounding. I've seen Super Nintendo games that don't look quite as good as this thing does.

Sound-9
Very few games have I played that had better sound departments than Haunted Castle. The background tunes are EXCELLENT, and the sound effects sound great too, from the atmospheric wolf howl the game gives off when you put in a quarter to the crumbling of statues in the graveyard. I have yet to come across a game from 1988 or before that looks or sounds better.

Gameplay-3
And here's where it all comes crashing down. Haunted Castle feels like almost all of the attention went into the aforementioned excellent aspects of the game. It unfortunately plays like a very rough version of the NES Castlevania game. As you'd expect, you've got your whip and you've got a couple other weapons you can pick up like grenades, boomerangs (which unlike in Castlevania don't come back once you throw them), knives, that kind of thing. You can get power ups for your basic weapon (including a sword!), but they're much less frequent than in Castlevania and you have to beat a couple of really tough levels to get to them. The secondary weapons use hearts for power like in Castlevania, but hearts are so hard to come across, not to mention the weapons themselves, that for the most part they're a pointless addition to your repertoire.

Plus this game is extremely cheap. A skeleton hit me with a bone and I automatically lost half my life bar. WTH?? How have the Belmonts survived so long in the monster-killing business with so little endurance? And your whip doesn't do a lot to slow down approaching enemies, so imagine the damage you'll take in the levels where they start coming at you in droves. You also get just one life per quarter, and you can only continue three times. Maybe this was designed that way so that you would have to get really really good at the game to be able beat it, but frankly all it does it make Haunted Castle one of the most frustrating video games I have ever played. I play video games to challenge myself, of course; sometimes I'd keep playing a level in Robot Alchemic Drive even if I had just lost it three times in a row. But Haunted Castle does not have that kind of challenge. Imagine starting a new game of Dragon Warrior, and instead of fighting slimes, you go straight to fighting the dragons. It's a lot like that. If the NES Castlevania had been as cheap as Haunted Castle, there's no way it would've given birth to one of the most long-lived and memorable series of video games in the world.

Replay value-1
Even if you have the patience and frustration threshold to make it all the way through Haunted Castle once, I have a very hard time seeing you having the urge to play the exact some frustrating game again.

Summation-
Haunted Castle showed so much promise, but unfortunately, most of that promise is in the presentational aspects alone. Like I said about games like Ultraman: Towards the Future and Lifeline, nice graphics and sound don't carry a game if the gameplay aspect is weak. If the game hadn't been so darn cheap, the combination of graphics, gameplay and audio would've made this one of the greatest arcade games ever.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/11/04, Updated 07/20/04