Akumajou Dracula English translation
悪魔城ドラキュラ · Demonic Castle Dracula · Castlevania
An English patch for the original disk release of Castlevania, which, unlike the NES cartridge, can save your progress, plus a handful of extras from DvD Translations.
What it is
The Famicom Disk System version of the first Castlevania plays like the NES game but stores your progress on the disk, something the Western cartridge never did. DvD Translations put its Japanese menus into English so that version is easy to use, calling it Demonic Castle Dracula after looking into what the original title was meant to say.
What's translated and improved
- A new English title screen, plus English main menu, name entry and erase screens.
- The menu now labels the column that counts how many times each save has died.
- Spaces are allowed in player names, which matters because your name appears in the ending.
- The high score and last score, already kept in the save data, are now shown on the menu and game over screens, and the last used save file is picked for you.
- A hidden Moai treasure is finally animated the way it was meant to be.
- Simon's name in the ending reads Belmont, the spelling the series settled on.
Release
The patch came out on 26 April 2020 with the group's Bomberman and Nekketsu releases; on 10 May 2020 a missing helper file was added to the download.
Playing it
Apply it to your own disk image of the Japanese game following the included readme. Patch, readme and manual links are on the project page.