Trivia / Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

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• Bad Export for You: The NES game is a great game in its own right, but the Famicom version has a better sound chip that leads to its music sounding a lot better, and Grant is a more useful character for combat as his basic attack is throwing his knife with no heart cost, instead of the stabbing attack with pathetically short reach he has in the NES version. The Famicom version is also significantly easier as covered on the main page, though that one is more a YMMV thing, as players may enjoy the greater challenge of the NES version instead, especially its boss battles that better live up to their name, and its second quest that provides a real Harder Than Hard mode for those seeking something especially challenging. Thanks to a bonus update to the 2019 Castlevania Anniversary Collection on current gen consoles, the Famicom version is now officially available in the west.
• Christmas Rushed: Played straight for the Japanese version, but definitely not obvious and ultimately not detrimental to the game. The Akumajō Densetsu ROM, surprisingly, is marked internally as a "sample", meaning it was not originally intended for mass-production. Since the game had a December 22 release date, and the ROM has a timestamp of October 7, it's plausible that time simply ran out for creating a proper "master" build. (The only indications of this trope in-game are a few glitchy enemy sprites, and indeed, most of those were fixed for Castlevania III.)
• Completely Different Title: The Japanese title, Akumajō Densetsu, means "Legend of the Devil's Castle."
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Koji Igarashi, the producer of the series' Metroidvania titles, has stated that Dracula's Curse is his favorite Castlevania game.
• Saved from Development Hell: In 2006, Project 51 Productions acquired film rights to produce a straight-to-DVD animated film based on Castlevania III. Simply titled "Castlevania: Dracula's Curse", it would have been written by Warren Ellis with art direction by James Jean. Since the project hadn't been updated since 2008, it was long presumed cancelled. It was finally released on Netflix as an animated series in 2017.
• Word of God: According to this commentary, Dracula's Curse was the result of Hitoshi Akamatsu trying to outdo Konami's Ninja Turtles games. In fact, further Castlevania sequels on the Famicom were a distinct possibility, but in the end, Ninja Turtles proved too popular. Also according to a supposed developer on 2ch, Ralph Belmond/Trevor Belmont's middle initial, "C.", stands for "Christopher", but it probably wasn't written in official documents due to timeline confusion with the development of The Adventure around the same time.

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