Castlevania turns 30 as the grave begins to swallow the classic series

What a terrible night to have an anniversary. Castlevania, the series of gothic-themed action games, is now 30 years old.

The original Castlevania came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System (more specifically, the Japanese Famicom Disk System) on September 26, 1986. The 2D side-scroller spawned a series with almost 40 entries, with titles on platforms like the NES, Super Nintendo, Genesis, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and Xbox 360. In the old days, Nintendo had Mario, Capcom had Mega Man, and Konami had Castlevania. The franchise has sold millions of copies (although Konami declined to tell us exactly how many). Its early releases were some of the most challenging platformers of their time, and the series would eventually elevate the 2D sidescroller by inventing the “Metroidvania” subgenre, combining the exploration of Nintendo’s Metroid series with Castlevania’s gameplay.