Castlevania Best

	Album Title: Castlevania Best
	Record Label: King Records
	Catalog No.: KICA-1005 (1st Edition); KICA-7901 (2nd Edition)
	Release Date: March 21, 1990; September 23, 1998
	Purchase: Buy at CDJapan

Overview

I’ll be honest. I’m not much of a Castlevania fan, but I enjoyed playing the classic games in the series very much. And because of that, I had to get this compilation album, just to relive the memory of playing the original NES games.

Body

The album starts out with two arranged tracks of “Bloody Tears” and “Beginning”, both of which are ghoulishly done. The latter is particularly good, since it’s performed by Konami’s in-house band, the Kukeiha Club. In fact, I felt a bit of the chills from listening to these two tracks at first.

After that, well you know what comes next: the game music! All the music from the three Castlevania games for the NES are here. As always, the composition and melody are incredible, despite the weak sound system which dominated most NES game scores at the time. The medley-based tracks from Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse that open the release are particularly impressive.

Once you hear the all-too recognizable “Vampire Killer”, the rocking “Bloody Tears”, and the groovy “Beginning” the way they originally sounded, you’ll definitely remember what it was like to play those games to death (no pun intended). There are also a range of aggressive boss themes and haunting ambient tracks to supplement the release.

Summary

If you’re an avid Castlevania fan, this one might be worth your money. It features the complete scores to all three NES games in the series, plus some bonus tracks, so is good value. That said, don’t expect anything groundbreaking and be prepared for 8-bit sound quality.

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