YMMV / Dark Castle

• Anticlimax Boss: The Black Knight is pretty easy to defeat.
• Adaptation Displacement: Some know the game better for the Sega Genesis version than the originals. Given the entries under Porting Disaster below, this did more harm than good to the game's reputation.
• Funny Moments: The wall graffiti reading "Saddam was Here" and "Gamers Rule".
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Bats respawn every time you re-enter a room, and have to be shot down before you can do much else.
  • In most of the Porting Disasters below, every enemy becomes this; in addition to the bats above, poor controls render all enemies difficult, if not outright impossible, to kill.
• Memetic Loser: Duncan, who brings as his only weapon to fight the Black Knight what looks like pebbles, and can die from falling down the stairs.
• Porting Disaster: Because the original was designed to be played with a mouse/keyboard and made use of highly detailed B&W artwork and precise physics. porting it to was pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster
  • MS-DOS: Being released before sound cards and graphic adapters beyond the standard (4 color) CGA adapter were available for PCs means the game suffered a severe downgrade in those departments. The game also runs much slower than the original making some challenges much more frustrating and while mouse support existed for DOS at the time, the game did not utilise it, forcing you to aim your throwing arm with the keypad which is barely doable.
  • Sega Genesis: Like the PC version it runs much slower than the original, while also having completely borked up physics, which combine to make the game almost unplayable at times. It was also criticised for its washed out graphics (seemingly done by smearing color on top of the original B&W Macintosh artwork, causing it to loose all its detail) and changed enemy behaviour (e.g. you cannot use the shield to get past the broom). Using the D-pad to aim your throwing arm is also pretty much impossible and the music only consists of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and turning it "off" simply freezes the music in its place and sustains the current note indefinitely.
  • CD-i: Being based on the Genesis port means it suffers the same borked physics and similar washed out graphics. Aiming you arm is also as annoying as ever due to you once again needing to use a D-pad.
  • Averted with the other computer ports (Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. All ported by the same company). Mainly due to the speed mostly being kept intact and the fact that you can use a joystick to aim which is slightly more doable.

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