Haunted Castle (1987)

Haunted Castle is a side-scrolling platform game released by Konami for the arcades in 1987. It is the second arcade game in the Castlevania franchise, following Vs. Castlevania, an arcade port of the original 1986 NES video game released exclusively in North America. Unlike the previous arcade title in the franchise, Haunted Castle is not a direct port of an existing console game, but a newly-developed arcade game running on custom JAMMA-based board.
The game has the player controlling Simon Belmont, who embarks on a journey to save his wife Selena from the clutches of Dracula.
== Gameplay ==
Haunted Castle is a platform game with six stages, which are played through in a linear progression. The player controls the main character, whose primary weapon is a whip. He must fight various enemies which consist partially of skeletons, zombies, mermen, and hunchbacks. By destroying certain enemies, he can upgrade his primary weapon first to a more powerful spiked morning star, then to a sword. In addition, various "sub-weapons" can be obtained which provide different means of attack which consist of bombs (powerful ground attack), boomerangs (straight attack), stopwatches (freezes enemies), crosses (powerful straight attack), and torches (continuous ground attack). Hearts are collected to use the sub-weapons. The player can only carry one sub-weapon at a time.
Each of Haunted Castle's six levels conclude with a boss fight. Like in other games of the series, these bosses are generally taken from horror literature or legend, and include Medusa, Frankenstein's monster, and Dracula himself.