Castlevania was developed and published by Konami, first released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan in September 1986 before reaching the NES on cartridge the following year, alongside a same-premise MSX2 sibling title called Vampire Killer that shipped with different level design around the same time. Character designer Akihiko Nagata built the game around Simon Belmont, the latest in a hereditary line of vampire hunters tasked with entering Dracula’s castle to end his reign once and for all. Players fight their way through a series of gothic-horror stages using a whip as the primary weapon alongside sub-weapons like axes and holy water, facing off against classic monster-movie enemies such as Medusa heads, mummies, and Frankenstein’s monster before a final confrontation with Dracula himself. Its tight, deliberately weighty jump physics, memorable Kinuyo Yamashita soundtrack, and gothic art direction set the tone for the entire long-running Castlevania series that followed.