Review: Castlevania Best CD

After a less than ideal shopping experience at Gamemusic.com not long ago, I purchased this official soundtrack compilation CD. This is the original sound versions of all three Castlevania games on Japan’s equivalent of the NES, the Famicom. Here, the games were called Castlevania, Simon’s Quest, and Dracula’s Curse. You can probably tell I’m struggling a little to describe this because of the language issue.

Case in point is the name of the disc. The spine refers to it as Akumajo Dracura [sic] Best. Castlevania in Japan is best known as Akumajo Dracula, which can be translated as Demon Castle Dracula or Dracula’s Demonic Castle. However you like it, the meaning is still the same. I’ve seen this called simply Dracula Best, or Famicom Dracula Best, but if Akumajo Dracula is Castlevania, than it makes sense to me to call it Castlevania Best.

In effect, what we have here is all the music from the first three console Castlevania games, plus a few extra tracks with dressed up versions of some of the flashier songs.

Some of the tracks are listed in Japanese and some in English, but I’ll provide a full English track listing below.

1. Beginning/Dreams of Triumph
2. Bloody Tears
3. New Determination: Prelude, Epitaph, Prayer, Beginning, Boss Fight, Block Clear (Dracula’s Curse)
4. Desperate Battle: Destiny, Clockwork, Mad Forest, Anxiety (Dracula’s Curse)
5. Ralph’s Crisis!: Rising, Stream, Game Over (Dracula’s Curse)
6. Darkness and Tension: Dead Beat, Nightmare, Encounter (Dracula’s Curse)
7. Escape from the Underground: Aquarius, Pressure (Dracula’s Curse)
8. The Final Battle: Demon Seed, Déjà Vu/Vampire Killer, Riddle, Overture, Big Battle, All Clear (Dracula’s Curse)
9. Ending: Evergreen, Flashback (Dracula’s Curse)
10. Message of Darkness (Simon’s Quest)
11. Within These Castle Walls (Simon’s Quest)
12. Bloody Tears (Simon’s Quest)
13. The Silence of Daylight (Simon’s Quest)
14. Dwelling of Doom (Simon’s Quest)
15. Monster Dance (Simon’s Quest)
16. Last Boss (Simon’s Quest)
17. Game Over (Simon’s Quest)
18. A Requiem (Simon’s Quest)
19. Underground (Simon’s Quest)
20. Prologue (Castlevania)
21. Vampire Killer (Castlevania)
22. Stalker (Castlevania)
23. Wicked Child (Castlevania)
24. Walking on the Edge (Castlevania)
25. Heart of Fire (Castlevania)
26. Out of Time (Castlevania)
27. Nothing to Lose (Castlevania)
28. Poison Mind (Castlevania)
29. Black Night (Castlevania)
30. Voyager (Castlevania)
31. The Silence of Daylight (Town Stage BGM, Simon’s Quest)
32. Bloody Tears (Street-day time-Stage BGM, Simon’s Quest)
33. A Requiem (Ending BGM, Simon’s Quest)

The first two tracks are not from any of the three games, and in fact they sound exactly like the tracks of the same name on the 20th Anniversary Collection CD that came with preorders of Portrait of Ruin. This version of Beginning sounds very much like the one from the original PC-Engine version of Rondo of Blood. The last three tracks seem to be slight variations on three of the Simon’s Quest tracks that appear on the CD, but the difference is not significant.

Tracks three through nine each contain several of the songs from Dracula’s Curse. I’m not sure why they grouped them together this way, rather than giving each its own track as was done with the other two games, but I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard to break the tracks apart when ripping them for listening on an MP3 player. Still, it’s kind of a nuisance and I don’t understand it. Track five, by the way, is called Ralph’s Crisis because Trevor Belmont is called Ralph in Japan. I learned this from the Curse of Darkness manga, where they didn’t bother changing his name when translating the manga.

Tracks 10 through 18 each contain a song from Simon’s Quest. Tracks 19 through 30 each contain a song from Castlevania. Strangely, the Walking on the Edge track contains sound effects from the game. This track, also with the sound effects, also appears on the Konami Game Music: Classic Castlevania compilation that’s available on iTunes and Amazon MP3. These are all original sound versions, but natually they sound much better than what you’re most likely getting out of your NES or even virtual console. In particular, the songs from Dracula’s Curse sound much better, because they’re the original tracks that were used in the Famicom version of the game, which had a special chip in it to produce much higher quality audio.

I wish they had split up the tracks from Dracula’s Curse, and I wish there weren’t sound effects mixed into the Walking on the Edge track. I also don’t really get why the games are featured in reverse order, and I don’t understand the point of repeating the three tracks from Simon’s Quest. It would have been nice to have orchestrated versions of some of the better songs on here instead, even if they only could have fit one in place of these three repeated tracks. Still, overall, I’m very pleased with the CD. The purchase price of $15.99 was reasonable, even if the shipping cost of $8 was not. I can see myself listening to the CD quite a bit, and even perhaps using some of the music in a podcast, if I were to ever find the time for such a venture.

I’ll rate Castlevania Best 4 out of 5. Pick it up if you can find a better shipping price than I did, but watch out for bootlegs!