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No, the world's most famous vampire wasn't judged unsuitable for families. Rather, it's a long-awaited hint of a localized Virtual Console release for Dracula X: Rondo of Blood. The legendary PC Engine Castlevania game came out in Japan in April 2008, but never made it to the Virtual Console elsewhere. Now, the Australian OFLC ratings board has classified the game, listing Nintendo as the publisher.

The impact of this development may be dulled somewhat by the game's availability in both original and remade form on the PSP Dracula X Chronicles disc, but we would enjoy the opportunity to play this game without first purchasing another system, and then unlocking the game somewhere in its remake.

[Via GoNintendo]

Depressed about the lack of availability (as of right now) of Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth in North America? Then you'll be crying Bloody Tears over this Japan-only CD collection, releasing March 24. The Akumajou Dracula Best Music Collections BOX contains nineteen discs of Castlevania music.

The collection includes soundtracks for Castlevania games ranging from NES, Game Boy, and MSX releases to more recent games on Game Boy Advance, PS2, and the arcade. Even the spin-off, Kid Dracula, is included on Disc 2! Disc 18 is an "arrange" album, with covers Castlevania tunes by Symphony of the Night composer Michiru Yamane, and disc 19 is a DVD featuring recording studio footage and interviews with Yamane.

It's very unlikely this collection will be officially made available outside of Japan, and if an importer does carry it, you'll have to whip a bunch of candles to scrounge up the coins: Konamistyle prices the collection at ¥21,000 ($232).

[Via Original Sound Version]

[Via VG247]

Machinima user M0rtanius has created another video that mashes up a classic Konami title with Half-Life 2. His original piece placed Half-Life's protagonist into the world of Castlevania, whereas this latest one features Contra. The attention to the level design is pretty neat in both, and the music is lifted straight from the NES games, but it's just not the same without the Contra arsenal and Simon's whip. Also, we're not seeing any Konami code being entered, which means a quick end could not be far behind. Check out both clips after the break.

Man, is this National Awesome Half-Life 2 Mod Weekend, or what?

Machinima.com user (and assumed Source engine guru) m0rtanius recently made a 3D adaptation of the first level of Castlevania, which you can view in the video after the jump. Before you pass judgment on this mod, we suggest you view this clip from Castlevania 64.

We've come a long way, baby.

[Via GoNintendo]

Upon close inspection of two new videos of the WiiWare title, Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth, we can confirm the following: It's definitely a Castlevania game. While the game is a remake of the Gameboy title of the same name -- sans the "ReBirth" bit -- the WiiWare version is more reminiscent of the 16-bit games found on the Super Nintendo and Genesis. In fact, we're fairly certain we spotted some reused art from said 16-bit games, which is pretty characteristic for a Castlevania title! Still, the classic monster-slaying, holy-water-tossing gameplay looks to be firmly intact.

Check out the footage after the break.

Taken directly from Konami's Japanese website, we present to you a solitary screenshot from its upcoming WiiWare remake, Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth. Given that the game is based on a GameBoy title, it's perhaps appropriate that the screenshot is very small. Still, we apologize for the pathetic tininess of the image. Then again, we're not sure what we were expecting. After all, what is a screenshot but a miserable little pile of pixels?

Though Konami still has yet to officially announce Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth for WiiWare, the title has shown up on the ESRB's database, Nintendo's release calendar and now in Famitsu ... with full release details. We're going to go ahead and call "case closed" on this one.

As the name suggests, the new game is a "concept remake" of Castlevania: The Adventure for Game Boy; a game that desperately needed to be remade. ReBirth will have new enemies and altered level designs -- most notably, stairs have been implemented to replace the ropes from the Game Boy game. It'll also have new arrangements of classic Castlevania music. Like the other ReBirth games, this one is going for a faithful 16-bit look.

ReBirth will be out in Japan on October 27 for 1,000 Wii Points. Nintendo's calendar gave it a "Q3 2009" date for North America, so it could be out here by Halloween as well!

It's been over a year since we last heard rumors of a re-Vamped Castlevania installment on the WiiWare service -- now, a new ESRB listing has rekindled the flames of conjecture. The board recently gave a Teen rating to Castlevania the Adventure ReBirth for the Wii -- as you may have noticed, it shares the suffix applied to the similarly renovated Gradius ReBirth and Contra ReBirth, both of which surfaced on Nintendo's download platform this year.

According to the ESRB rating, the game will finally deliver the "side-scrolling action" which classic 'Vania fans have been clamoring for. If it's based off the Game Boy title of the same name, our only request is that they smooth out the game's unscalable difficulty curve. To this day, we're not sure that game has a second level.

It must be nice winning $40,000! We imagine Dust: An Elysian Tail developer Dean Dodrill will be drinking his fair share of shirley temples this weekend with all those extra duckets, after winning first place in this year's XNA Developer Dream-Build-Play competition. As you can see in the gallery below and video after the break, Dust is a beautiful, hand-drawn side-scroller that features action-RPG gameplay in the vein of Castlevania ... but with furries.

Second place (and $20,000) went to Panya Inversin from Coin App who created Max Blastronaut, which looks to be a mix between Super Stardust HD and ... Double Dragon? We're just as confused as you are, but see for yourself after the break, below the Dust clip. Third and fourth place went to Mauricio Garcia's Rotor'scope and Hu Ling's HurricaneX2 Evolution, respectively. Congratulations to all of this year's winners!

A wave of nostalgia washes over us when we hear music from our favorite classic franchises. One of those iconic pieces is Castlevania's "Vampire Killer" series theme. The folks at Tiny Cartridge (specifically, Joystiq's own JC Fletcher) stumbled upon a YouTube clip featuring every version the classic track has spawned since the origin of the Castlevania franchise.

While musical style and technology has evolved, this video showcases how Kinuyo Yamashita's original piece has lived on throughout nearly two dozen Castlevania games (as well as some non-Castlevania titles). Feel like taking a stroll down memory lane with us? Check out the comparison videos after the break ... but stop holding our hand. It's kind of weird.

We were a bit perplexed when Konami announced Castlevania: Lords of Shadow at E3 earlier this year. The reason: Konami announced the exact same game last year, minus the "Castlevania" in the title. Many of us here at the 'Stiq had assumed that Konami had seen an opportunity to raise the profile of the title by attaching the Castlevania name but, according to producer David Cox, that wasn't the case.

Cox tells 1UP that the game was always meant to be a Castlevania title, but the association was removed when it was first announced at E3 2008. It seems Konami didn't want to steal any thunder from its then upcoming Castlevania: Judgment. Probably a good call, considering Judgment's nominal thunder could be stolen by a reasonably large rubber ball.

Cox also revealed some fresh details on the game, most importantly saying that it will not follow the design of most of the recent titles in the theory, abandoning Metroid-esque exploration in favor of more linear action. In response to franchise purists, Cox pointed out that some of the best entries in the series (notably Castlevania II and IV) have been action-only affairs. Of course, it helps that the main character, Gabriel, is actually a Belmont. Head over to 1UP for more details and be absolutely certain to watch the new, extended trailer above.

"Metroidvania" is a term used to describe side-scrolling games with large, open worlds, new areas of which are accessible only with certain items or powerups. Take away the side-scrolling element, and you've got Zelda; take away the powerups, and you've got Pitfall. It's named after the two most famous series to make use of the format, Metroid and (later) Castlevania.

Shadow Complex has suddenly thrown the Metroidvania genre back into mainstream gamers' attention, thanks to its fancy graphics and being an Xbox 360 game. It isn't the first game that isn't a Metroid or Castlevania to apply this formula -- in fact, many developers stumbled upon the Metroidvania formula or a close variant even before Symphony of the Night.

Join us on a brisk tour of some notable free-roaming games. If you are overcome by Metroidvania fever, you can read more detailed writeups of many of the games in GameSpite's ToastyWiki.

Click here to start your adventure!

Holy crap! We've been connoisseurs of vampire-centric media for quite some time now (thankfully, we've managed to avoid those dreadful books), but we never knew that vampires were made entirely out of blood. At least, that's the conclusion we've drawn from the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow screenshot you see above -- one of a handful of pieces of media we just got our hands on. You can see the whole batch in the gallery below.

None of the others feature this bizarre phenomenon -- however, we suppose it's equally amazing that the vestments of Gabriel (the game's protagonist) remain so hemoglobin-free while he's running around, popping dudes like bloated mosquitoes.