Castlevania : Dracula X

Castlevania: Dracula X for Super NES is Konami’s 1995 action-platform game, released in Japan as Akumajō Dracula XX and in Europe as Castlevania: Vampire’s Kiss. It puts vampire hunter Richter Belmont at the center of a 16-bit assault on Dracula’s castle. After the count is revived and abducts Richter’s beloved Annet and her sister Maria, Richter takes up the hereditary Vampire Killer whip to break into the fortress, find the captives, and confront Dracula. Although it shares its lead character, premise, and some visual material with the 1993 PC Engine CD game Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, this SNES release is a separate conversion with its own altered stages and progression.

The game follows the deliberate, demanding side-scrolling style associated with the earlier Castlevania adventures. Richter advances on foot through enemy-filled areas, jumps across hazards and gaps, attacks with the whip, and times his movements around projectiles and close-range threats. Hearts act as ammunition for sub-weapons, allowing useful tools such as daggers, holy water, axes, and crosses to supplement the whip. Weapon pickups can strengthen Richter’s attacks, while food restores health. A large supply of hearts can also be spent on an Item Crash, a powerful special use of the equipped sub-weapon that can turn a difficult encounter in the player’s favor.

Dracula’s castle is not simply a straight route to a single ending. The SNES game has more than seven stages and includes alternate paths, hidden areas, and rescue opportunities that depend on choices and performance during the journey. Reaching certain routes can lead Richter to one of the imprisoned women; their fate affects which conclusion the player sees after the final battle. This gives the adventure multiple endings and encourages careful exploration even though the game’s password system, rather than the PC Engine title’s save feature, records a player’s progress.

Its locations move through the familiar Gothic world of the series: ominous exterior approaches, towers, caverns, rooms crowded with undead and supernatural enemies, and the increasingly dangerous interior of Dracula’s domain. Boss fights punctuate the stages, demanding recognition of patterns and precise positioning as much as raw offense. Richter remains the only playable character in Castlevania: Dracula X, which is a key difference from Rondo of Blood; rescuing Maria changes the SNES game’s story outcome but does not unlock her as a second character. That distinction matters for players looking for the specific Super Nintendo version rather than a direct port of the PC Engine game.

The regional names identify the same Super NES production: Castlevania: Dracula X in North America, Akumajō Dracula XX in Japan, and Castlevania: Vampire’s Kiss in PAL territories. Konami released it for Super Famicom in Japan in July 1995 and for SNES in North America that September, making it the second Castlevania installment on Nintendo’s 16-bit system. The cartridge translates the Rondo premise to a different hardware format and reshapes it around revised level layouts, fewer overall stages, passwords, branching routes, and the rescue-based ending structure. It should therefore be approached as its own version of Richter Belmont’s adventure, not as a replacement copy of Rondo of Blood.

Castlevania: Dracula X later returned through Nintendo digital releases, including Wii U and New Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, and was included in the 2021 Castlevania Advance Collection. Its place in the series is tied to the classic whip-driven formula: a single hero, finite health and heart resources, dangerous platforming, secret routes, and a climb toward Count Dracula. For Super NES players, it offers a compact but exacting chapter of the Belmont saga whose branching course and three possible endings make rescuing Annet and Maria part of the game’s central challenge.