Then suddenly you're being chased by an enormous bull-goat-thing, and on your first attempt this dramatic change of pace can be very disorientating. This game gets a lot of flak as a result, but while you could never say it's as good as Rondo of Blood it's still a good game in its own right.

To remedy this, Konami tried to shoehorn the CD-based Rondo of Blood into a SNES cart, dropping features and rejigging stages, and the result was Castlevania: Dracula X. It's widely considered to be one of the best (if not the best) of the traditional Castlevania games, so naturally it was never released outside Japan. It featured excellent graphics, superb music, and with alternate routes and people to rescue it injected a tiny bit more plot into the usual Castlevania storylines of 'kill Dracula' or, in Castlevania II's case 'bring Dracula back to life so you can kill him properly'. In 1993, Konami released Dracula X : Chi no Rondo ( Castlevania: Rondo of Blood) for the PC Engine CD, the game that bridged the gap between the 'classic' Castlevania games and Symphony of the Night, its direct sequel.

As the intro fills us in on the usual Castlevania story of Dracula rising from the grave and a member of the heroic Belmont family setting out to defeat the Lord of Darkness, it's time for a little background on the game itself.

Rondo of blood wad