Castlevania Bloodlines

Castlevania Bloodlines is the first Castlevania game on a Sega system. You don't play as any Belmonts this time around, and chase Countess Elizabeth Bartley around Europe as she tries to resurrect her uncle, Dracula, instead of confronting the big man from the get-go, but it's still the same old stuff set in a different time frame. This game later saw a direct sequel in the form of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.

Unused Graphics


Years ago, a prototype of Castlevania Bloodlines was put up for auction on eBay. Many images were included in the auction - one in particular showed a very different version of stage 4-5. This earlier stage was flooded with molten steel - black platforms can be seen floating in the steel and a stream of it can be seen falling from a spout in the ceiling. One of the platforms that is touching the stream is melting, implying that the platforms would have moved through the steel. The platform and stream graphics from this early stage can still be found at in the Castlevania: Bloodlines ROM.



Another image from the prototype auction showed a zeppelin in the background of stage 4-7. Some of the zeppelin's tiles can still be found in the ROM, but unfortunately, nothing else seems to remain.

Regional Differences
The Japanese title, strangely, is not some variant on Akumajou Dracula but instead simply Vampire Killer. The censorship of blood in the European version extended to the title, and not only graphically, as the game is called Castlevania: The New Generation.

Eric Lecarde's face was significantly less masculine looking in the Japanese version's introduction.

John Morris is called Johnny Morris in the Japanese version.

Blood has been removed from the European version:

The dead zombie outside of Castle Dracula, which some crows are feeding on, has been removed in the European version.

The zombies have been changed from pink with red blood to a greenish blue with green blood in the European version.