One year and several changes later, the highly anticipated Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse game was released in the United States. That warm summer evening in June, when Calx purchased Castlevania 3, I realized that Dracula's Curse was the game of games. At this time I was naive, not understanding that ther was a far superior game released in Japan one year earlier.

Less than a month ago, I had spent a hard day at work, playing computer games (heh). After a one-mile drive back to my place, I found that package had arrived. Terring up the stairs with my Akumajo Densetsu Famicom cart, I plugged it into my Game Axe and fired it up. All I can say is wow!

The music to the Akumajo Densetsu game is quite superb, a large improvement over the American Dracula's Curse music. I'm not going to get into the technical reasons that Akumajo Densetsu has better music, for I would probably make a lot of mistakes in my text. Anyway, the music is so much better, I would have provided samples but they take so darn load to upload and I am impatient :)

Besides the music, Akumajo Densetsu has had much more detailed graphics throughout the game. Although the title screens are different, and the Japanese get blood and we don't, the cinema scenes at the beginning are a lot better as well. In the castle scene, the fog moves from one area to the other, it looks pretty neat actually.

There are many minor graphical changes between the two games, as well. Akumajo Densetsu has a fancier cross at the beginning of the game. The zombies are more humanish, the igors look like frogs, and the levian has horns. The horns were probably censored out of the American game due to satanic reasons. The leviathan also fires smaller fireballs.

The gameplay was also changed, ever so slightly, though it causes big changes in the game. Every enemy has a set number of hit points that it takes away. For example, medusa might take away 2 bars and she does so for the whole game. In the American game, the amount of damage taken depends on the level you are in, not which enemy damaged you. This actually makes the game easier in the long run. Dracula's fire takes away two bars, not four, for example.

Another slight difference in gameplay is the location of the special weapons. Boomerangs seem to be more plentiful. Axes tend to be scarcer. A funny thing to mention, the item before Dracula is a boomerang, not an axe. This actually makes the final boss a bit tougher.

The one gameplay change that I do not understand is why Trevor (known as Ralph in Akumajo Densetsu) comes back at Dracula's chamber in world 16, when you get caught. This doesn't happen in the Dracula's Curse game, which makes it a bit tougher. We get the Help Me code that the Japanese don't have though... The reason Super Mario Bros. 2 (lost levels) wasn't released in America was because the game was thought to be too hard for American gamers? It doesn't make much sense.

Personally Akumajo Densetsu is a much better game than Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse. Knowing that Castlevania 3 is one of my favorite NES games, it is hard to believe that Akumajo Densetsu makes Dracula's Curse look horrible. Believe me, it's true. Any Castlevania 3 fan has to play the original game, it is greater than you can imagine.