Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse completes the 8-bit Castlevania trilogy. Set centuries before the first game, the protagonist of Dracula's Curse is an ancestor of Simon Belmont. Despite dropping the non-linear elements of Simon's Quest, the game contains branching pathways and the ability to switch playable characters.

Sub-Pages#

Prerelease Info Notes Regional DifferencesA surprising amount for a NES game.

Sound Test#

At the title screen hold A or B (or both), then press Start. The sound test was designed to fit at the bottom of the Japanese version's title screen; the routine wasn't altered to take the larger title screen of the US version into account, and displays it over the copyright text as a result. The European version does a better job of not displaying anything over anything else.

Japan	US	Europe

Debug Menu#

Game Genie code KVEVPYEP sets memory address $0018 (a global event/menu index) to $07 when beginning a game, which is one byte higher than normal and hence allows access to the debug menu. Note that the menu is very similar to the one in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prototype, right down to the cross-shaped cursor.

When starting a level from this menu, the first 100 points you score will instantly give you a 1up.

Controls:

• A - Increase value.
• B - Decrease value.
• Select - Move cursor.
• Start - Begin game.

Options 1, 2, 3#

This allows you to choose which stage, act and screen you want to start out on. For a full list of every room, see the Notes page.

• 00: Stage 1-01
• 01: Stage 2-01
• 02: Stage 3-00
• 03: Stage 4-0A (after the second flight of stairs)
• 04: Stage 5-0A
• 05: Stage 6-0A
• 06: Stage 4-01 (starts you off in a wall, unable to move)
• 07: Stage 5-01 (after the first flight of stairs)
• 08: Stage 6-01 (after the first flight of stairs)
• 09: Stage 6-01 (the cave area)
• 0A: Stage 7-01
• 0B: Stage 7-0A
• 0C: Stage 8-01
• 0D: Stage 9-01
• 0E: Stage A-01 (after the autoscrolling part)

Option 4#

This allows you to choose which partner you start out with:

• 00: Nobody
• 01: Sypha
• 02: Grant
• 03: Alucard

Unused Graphics#

There are graphics for melted sub-weapons that went unused.

Build Date#

Present at the end of the PRG ROM, with dates written in YYMMDD format. Similar IDs can be found in many other Konami games.

Interestingly, the Japanese date uses "SAMP" (short for "Sample") rather than "MAST" (short for "Master", typically used in this era to denote the finalized build of a game). For whatever reason, the US date just has the year portion filled in.

References#