Notable Tracks: Theme of Simon, Chandeliers, Treasury Room, Forest of Monsters, Room of Close Associates, Clockwork Mansion

Notable Tracks: Heart of Fire, Vampire Killer, Wicked Child, Out of Time, Stalker, Poison Mind, Voyager

Notable Tracks: Bloodlines, Den, Dance of Illusions, Slash, Cemetery, Picture of a Ghost Ship

Notable Tracks: Dracula's Castle, Lost Painting, Wandering Ghosts, Dance of Pales, The Tragic Prince, Wood Carving Partita, Tower of Mist, Dance of Gold, Marble Gallery, Rainbow Cemetery

Notable Tracks: Awake, Aquarius (unique rendition)

Notable Tracks: Beginning, Aquarius, Mad Forest, Stream, Clockwork, Riddle

Notable Tracks: Ripe Seeds, New Messiah, Praying Hands, Psycho Warrior, Road to the Enemy, Evil Gods

Notable Tracks: Hail from the Past, The Gears Go Awry, Jail of Jewels, Gaze Up at the Darkness, Bad Situation, Invitation of a Crazy Moon

Notable Tracks: Ebony Wings, An Empty Tome, Unholy Vespers, A Prologue, Chamber of Ruin, Wandering the Crystal Blue, Edge of the Sky, Rhapsody of the Forsaken

Notable Tracks: N/A (but sick 90s Konami Arcade style versions)

Notable Tracks: Iron Blue Intention, Reincarnated Soul, Prayer of a Tragic Queen, Sinking Old Sanctuary

Notable Tracks: After Confession, Pitch Black Intrusion, Dracula's Tears, The Pinnacle, Cursed Clock Tower, Condemned Tower

Notable Tracks: Top Floor, Ruined Castle Corridor

Notable Tracks: N/A

Notable Tracks: The Tower of Dolls, Etude for the Killer, Moon Fight, Creatures in the Depth, LOAD BGM, Thrashard in the Cave, You Goddamned Bathead

Notable Tracks: Bloody Tears, The Silence of Daylight, Dwelling of Doom, Within These Castle Walls, Monster Dance

Notable Tracks: Abandoned Castle, Baljhet Mountains, Mortvia Aqueduct, Cordova Town

Notable Tracks: Belmont Theme

While this game seems to miss the mark on evoking what makes Castlevania great, MercurySteam gives us a unique take surrounding the characters and fiction of it all. The gameplay is a pretty rote version of God of War, but there are some neat spectacles to behold and fights to enjoy.

Notable Tracks: Offense and Defense, Successor of Fate, Merchant Room

Notable Tracks: Lament of Innocence (Leon's Theme), Anti-Soul Mysteries Lab, Ghostly Theatre, Melancholy Joachim

Notable Tracks: N/A

Noteable Tracks: N/A

Kid Dracula is a largely inoffensive handheld sidescroller. It has its own weird charm painting Dracula as a child. It's got pretty bland level design and action, but it can be respected for being an odd take on the series.

Notable Tracks: Basement Melodies, Don't Wait Until Night, Cross Your Heart

It's not a great Castlevania game by any means, but it looks a lot worse than it is. It can be a little too unwieldy and some of the levels are a bit trying, but they're pretty short. With some more polish it probably could've been really good, but as it is, it's just mediocre. However, it did introduce some great tunes to the series.

Notable Tracks: N/A

Nintendo was able to do it for Zelda and Mario on the Nintendo 64, but Konami wasn't for Castlevania. It's not as aggressively bad as it might initially seem, but it's certainly not very close to being good. It's just generally dull and uninteresting to engage with its enemies, its puzzles or the castle as a whole. So much so that it's hard to even identify it as a Castlevania game. And it's sad to say that this poor interpretation of the series set the stage for the games to come in the third dimension, better they may be, great Castlevania they are not.

Notable Tracks: Kitchen

God of War style combat arguably feels bad where it has room to breathe in three dimensional spaces. In a two dimensional space that doesn't make much of verticality, it makes Mirror of Fate a horrible claustrophobic chore to chug through. At the very least MercurySteam kept moving their own Castlevania fiction in an interesting direction.

Notable Tracks: N/A

It's not quite as bad as the first Castlevania game to be put on a handheld as it at least runs pretty well, but in every other regard it's about as weak. When you combine that with a lack of original music compositions, Legends becomes a real slog.

Notable Tracks: Calling Tiffany

Notable Tracks: The Dragon Returns

This game like its predecessor largely misses the point of Castlevania. Even so it has the opportunity to create an interesting fiction surrounding Dracula and the Belmont clan, but squanders it at every turn. It makes nothing out of the modern day setting and nothing out of Castlevania. It's an overly generic, poorly paced and far from stylish action game.

Notable Tracks: Battle of the Holy, Death Fair, Revenge

This game is needlessly difficult as Castlevania's go, which says something, and it doesn't help the pace of the game is matched by its stuttering performance. It's a slow and unsteady mess.