Castlevania is an action platformer for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Known in Japan as Akumajou Dracula ("Demon Castle Dracula"), this game is about a clan of vampire hunters known as the Belmonts hunting down and killing Dracula himself.

You play as Simon Belmont, and fight your way through Dracula's castle (known in English as "Castlevania", a portmanteau of Castle and Transylvania, har har). You have many weapons at your disposal. Your main weapon, the Vampire Killer whip has somehow been passed down through the Belmont clan for generations. You can get power ups for that (essentially changing it from a leather whip, to a short chain, and longer chain whip). You also have many sub-weapons, which require hearts to use. These include a knife, throwing axe, holy water, cross boomerang and stopwatch (which freezes all enemies on screen). You can only throw one of these in a certain period of time, unless you get the "II" and "III" powerups.

Castlevania on NES is notorious for its difficulty, the battle against Death in particular.

In order to rebalance the game, this hack makes the following changes:
[list]
[li]A multiplier is hidden on the way to Death. This was unavailable on the first loop in the unmodified game[/li]
[li]Player damage has been reduced by 1, which means that in the last levels, the player can sustain 5 hits before dying instead of 3.[/li]
[li]Pork chops now give 8 units of health instead of 6.[/li]
[li]One pork chop is hidden before the battle against Dracula.[/li]
[/list]

An alternative patch is provided where the player loses 3 health units by any hit instead of 2, 3 or 4 depending on the level.
Compared to the unmodified game, this means that level 1 and 2 are more difficult, 3 and 4 the same, 5 and 6 less difficult.

Finally, a bonus patch is included, that fixes the hitbox of the spike traps in stage 2.

Database match: Castlevania (USA) (Rev A)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20180803-121122)
File SHA-1: 7A20C44F302FB2F1B7ADFFA6B619E3E1CAE7B546
File CRC32: 856114C8
ROM SHA-1: 3DCB69A8C861C041AEB56C04E39ADF6D332EDA3A
ROM CRC32: B668C7FC