Castlevania: The Adventure was the first game in the Castlevania series to be released for the original Game Boy. It was published by Konami in 1989.

Set a century after the events of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, and a century before the events of the original Castlevania, the player controls a descendant of Trevor Belmont, and an ancestor of Simon Belmont, called Christopher Belmont, who is on a mission to defeat Dracula.

There are four levels in total. Each has a time limit, a graphical style/theme, and a boss battle at the end. Christopher uses a whip that can be upgraded – to the chain whip and the flame whip (which shoots a fireball as a projectile), but these upgrades are lost, one by one, when damage is taken from enemies. There are no secondary weapons, and Christopher’s health is replenished by collecting hearts (which is not usually the case in a Castlevania game).

Compared to the NES games, and Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge on the Game Boy, Castlevania: The Adventure is relatively bland, with suspect collision detection and gameplay that starts off very easy, then suddenly becomes super hard. You also can’t use your whip when climbing a rope, which is annoying.

The first couple of levels are fairly uninteresting (especially the bosses, which are easy to beat and not that engaging), but the third level is more interesting, because the floors move – to try to push you into deadly spikes on the ceiling – and there are also some sections where you’re being chased by spiked walls along vertical and horizontally-scrolling rooms, which are much more exciting and challenging. The fourth and final level is graphically the most interesting and also the hardest. In fact: it’s extremely difficult.

Christopher’s jump animation is a little weird because his legs seem to disappear when he leaps, but I just think that he’s bending his knees up under his body and the artist hasn’t drawn them particularly well.

As I said earlier: Castlevania: The Adventure isn’t as good as its sequel (Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge), and does have some issues. A fan-made ROM hack for the game was released in 2006. Called “Quick Fix”, the patch makes Christopher Belmont move at a faster speed; the whip no longer downgrades when he’s hit (it still downgrades when he dies, though), and the dodgy collision detection has also been improved.

Castlevania: The Adventure was re-released in colour (on the Game Boy Color) as part of the Konami GB Collection Volume 1 in 2000. A remake, called Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth, was released for the Nintendo Wii in 2009. The original Game Boy version is included in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which was released in 2019.

More: Castlevania: The Adventure on Wikipedia
More: Castlevania: The Adventure on romhacking.net
Steam: Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Steam