Created by Kurt Sunderland on Wed, 04/09/2025 - 21:40
Description:
Castlevania is a classic ninetendo game in which the main character that you play as is a vampire hunter from the Belmont family of famous vampire hunters. The purpose of the game is to kill Dracula, this is to be done by traveling through the different levels of his castle fighting monsters along the way. The success of Castlevania: Vampire Killer was so great that the game was reinvented many time over, and with those reiterations came increasingly Gothic names such as: Castlevania Dracula's Curse, Castlevania Haunted Castle, and Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance to name a few. Castlevania leans on the inspiration of many classic horror films and the monsters they invent like warewolves, zombies, Frankenstein's Monster, and Dracula himself. Of course all of these monsters come from litterature first, but Castlevania serves to perpetuate the visual aspect of these figures of myth and folklore. Castlevania obviously references Bram Stoker's Dracula, to create it's main antagonist, but also references Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla to inspire a reoccuring character by the same name.
Castlevania was reinvented to be an anime style TV show that was picked up by Netflix and produced in 2017 with two seasons, and a sequal Castlevania Nocture that was released in 2023. This TV show situates Dracula as a man of science who's technology is so advanced that the Church deems it witchcraft-- resulting in Dracula's expulsion from humanity and disdain for it. That is until he meets a woman who comes to the doors of his castle in search of a cure that only his science could find. Dracula then marries this woman and takes up a form of pacifism. That is until the Church murders his wife for using Dracula's science to act as a doctor. This inspires Dracula's rage to take over the world as vengence for humanity killing his wife. The other characters Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades come together with Dracula's son Alucard to take down Dracula and save humanity.
The entire fanchise rests on the perpetuation of supernatural creatures, and Dracula's large and extravagant castle-- both hallmarks of the Gothic genre.