As part of my ongoing quest to play a couple of Classicvania games that I somehow missed before the upcoming release of Belmont’s Curse, I find myself jumping 16-bit platforms and this time unexpectedly landing on the SEGA MegaDrive. Even stranger: the game was in fact released in the USA and Europe—and even more strange for a nineties console game: within the same month! What did we do to deserve this? Our family was a MegaDrive one yet in 1994 at the wee age of 7 I wasn’t aware of the genre and mostly called myself a PC/DOS gamer. Let’s see if I missed out on something significant. Castlevania: Bloodlines stands out for a few reasons. Besides the remarkable platform jump (that made it here a big year before Vampire’s Kiss did), Bloodlines takes place in a much later timespan, somewhere around the first World War. An evil countess seeks out to resurrect the Dark Lord (yet again??) and has our heroes hunt down the allied evil all over Europe. Yes, heroes is plural: you can choose between John Morris who wields the Vampire Killer and his Spanish friend Eric Lecarde who brought along a nasty looking spear. This is not a rescue-and-be-playable situation like Maria in Rondo of Blood is: before starting the game you have to make the choice who will start the adventure. John can jump across wider gaps by swinging his whip and Eric can jump really high. I prefer the latter that has a very cool animation. Plus, yielding the spear is a (tiny) bit different than the conventional whip. Eric it is. Press Start! I think I just destroyed this statue somewhere in Greece? Whoops. (Stage 2-5) As soon as you start playing, given you’ve got previous Castlevania experience, you’ll notice the pickup in pace. The characters control well and the game plays more like a good 2D action game than a typical ‘Vania—which, in this case, I count as a plus. Eric can poke his spear in multiple directions (but not while walking) and you can abuse his high jump ability to quickly reach otherwise unreachable platforms. No backflip Richter-style to quickly get you out of harms way though. Perhaps that’s not needed here: I found Bloodlines to be easier than Rondo. There’s even the option to tone down the difficulty: another first. Oh, and the subtitle of this game is deserved: there’s much more gore here. Konami can go all out; it’s not a Nintendo platform! Zombies fall into dismembered pieces, crows peck on bodies without heads in the first stage and things explore with a squishy but satisfying sounding POOF. I'm... in the tower of Pisa, looking for Evil Incarnate? (Stage 3-5) Did I already mention that this game is weird? The story has you chasing evil across Europe—literally. That means the first stage starts at the Castle Ruins somewhere in Romania, only to continue in… a temple in Athens? To move on to climbing the tower of Pisa? Only to decide we should head to a munitions factory in Germany, nope, no Dracula here, let’s see, Versailles perhaps? What’s going on here? The Factory part especially felt out of place yet the skeletons dutifully wear WOI helmets and need to be killed twice. The stage does slowly evolve into a classic clock tower thing but the end boss made up entirely of gears is another weird one. That being said, the level design is much more solid than Dracula’s Kiss with the artists having squished everything out of the MegaDrive chip. The Pisa tower is literally tipping over as you try to descend it. The platforms in a later stage seem to turn around 360 degrees. In the Greece stage, the scenery is destructible. Once you enter the palace of Versailles, you’re met with another background layer imitating a cool sun/shade effect. It does feel like they’ve seen the rotating level-7 stage from Super Castlevania IV and said “maybe the MegaDrive can do this as well?”. Is this Sonic's factory stage or are we still in a Castlevania game? (Stage 4-4) There are no alternative paths available and no hidden dash stages: the game is over in less than 2 hours if you know what you’re doing. I didn’t. The last stage, Stage 6, is a bit of a disappointment, and yet another boss rush mode before facing Death (and then the countess and then Dracula). With only two continues during the entire game, Bloodlines still demands you to study the stages in detail and almost know them by heart in order to finish the game. That was the de facto way to keep us kids busy in the nineties: you bought a single game that was over in less than two hours but it took you twenty or more. We haven’t mentioned the music yet. If you’re expecting the sound quality of a CD-ROM-enabled PC-Engine, you’re going to be disappointed. At first, I didn’t really like the typical MegaDrive SFX/music effects that reminded me too much of a bright and colourful Sonic instead of a gritty and dark ‘Vania. But the more I play the game, the more I appreciate what Michiru Yamane tried to achieve here. For me, it’s still a bit of an acquired taste, but that’s my own fault: I played the GBA games first. I managed to climb out of the bloody fountain filled with Red Skeletons only to be met with death on the other side. No more continues! (Stage 5-1) Castlevania: Bloodlines is still very much worth playing today. I’m glad it was included as part of the Anniversary Collection. I still think Rondo of Blood is the better game, but the PC-Engine didn’t really exist in Europe, so if you could choose between this and Vampire’s Kiss, I’d know what to do. GENESIS DOES… WHAT NINTENDONT! Verdict: 3/5—Good. Classicvania series  ▹  Castlevania: The Adventure  ○  Super Castlevania IV  ○  Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge  ○  Castlevania Rondo of Blood  ○  Castlevania Bloodlines  ○  Castlevania Dracula X  ○  Castlevania Anniversary Collection  ○ By Jefklak on 25 September 2026.  Played on: SEGA MegaDrive/Genesis  Genre: 2D Platformer  Release Year: 1994  Developer: Konami  How long to beat: 2.6 hrs