Since its US debut in 1987 on the NES, Konami's Castlevania series has gone on to become one of the most popular franchises in video-game history, with releases on nearly every major platform (including the Super NES, Genesis, and GameBoy). The latest installment - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the PlayStation - is quite possibly the best 2D action side scroller ever.
Symphony takes place four years after Dracula X, a PC Engine title in Japan that never saw a US release. Unlike most previous Castlevania games, Symphony features a main character who isn't one of the whip-cracking Belmonts. Stranger still, it turns out that our hero, Adrian Fahrenheit (aka Alucard), is actually a son of Dracula. Your task is to explore Dracula's castle (rumored to only appear once a century) and find out why Richter Belmont, the hero of the first game (and descendant of the original Castlevania hero, Simon), has mysteriously vanished. Oh, and you've also got to kill quite a few monsters along the way....
Since the main character doesn't carry a whip, gameplay has obviously changed quite a bit from past Castlevanias. Now you can use several different weapons and items, each of which is kept in an RPG-like inventory subscreen. But Symphony mimics an RPG in more ways than one. Experience is gained from killing enemies; attributes are raised whenever Alucard levels-up, which is good incentive not to pass up enemies when trying to get from one area to the next; special skills are learned by performing different control-pad movements that subsequently save to a move list in the subscreen; and you can find and use numerous magic items during your quest. Even with the new trappings, though, the basics of the game are true to previous installments - break candles, collect hearts and money (which you can now actually spend in a shop), and fight ghoulish enemies.
