March 3, 2025
A big Castlevania: Nocturne update as I continue through the first season of the series. We have bio updates for: Annette, Abbot Emmanuel, Erzsébet Báthory, Juste Belmont, Richter Belmont, Edouard, Lydie Erlanger, Cécile Fatiman, Jacques, Maxim Kischine, The Marquis and Marchioness, Olrox, Maria Renard, Tera Renard, Drolta Tzuentes, and Vaublanc, as well as a new page for vampire warrior Nikolai
And while I was working in the bios section it made sense to start going over all the character bios and giving them a refresh to the new format as well. Many of these were the first things I wrote for the relaunch of the Inverted Dungeon, and they need a lot of work, including spelling and grammar fixes. This will take a little while, but we're getting a start with: Christopher Belmont, Dolores and Zoe Belmont, Desmond Belmont, Gabriel Belmont, Hanz Belmont, Illyana Belmont, Julius Belmont.
And now I'm tired. See you all next time.
February 16, 2025
We have a smaller update today while I continue working on Castlevania: Nocturne content in the background. Three new articles for you to read while we wait on the next massive dump of content:
First in Horror Cinema we start in on the Subspecies series, covering the first movie in Full Moon Entertainment's vampire franchise. It's really not great, but then you can't expect that much from cheaply made, direct-to-video fare.
Speaking of cheaply made, we bounce over to Related Games to take a look at Van Helsing, Universal's failed video game tie-in for their failed cinematic universe starter. The game is a shameless Devil May Cry clone, but one made on a deadline and a budget, and it shows.
I suppose this does also open the floodgates for me to now cover Devil May Cry and God of War games on the site, although I'll get to that later. I still have a lot of other stuff I gotta cover first.
Finally, moving into Reviews, we have an article up for Castlevania: Reincarnation, the Chinese bootleg game that borrowed so liberally from Aria of Sorrow you could consider it a mobile conversion. An English patch is now out online that lets players enjoy that mobile experience, so we took the time to explore it four ourselves.
More to come, of course. Still, I'm very happy I'm keeping up with this site again after too long of an absence.
February 7, 2025
After a short break last weekend to focus on other projects, we have the next batch of Castlevania: Nocturne updated. It's honestly quite nice breaking up the flow this way, taking a couple of episodes at a time and covering their content. It keeps me from feeling overloaded on a project such as this. Really helps a lot.
So for this batch, we have new Cast Bios for Cécile Fatiman, Esther, and Mizrak, and updates for Abbot Emmanuel, Annette, Drolta Tzuentes, Edouard, Maria Renard, The Marquis and Marchioness, Olrox, Richter Belmont, Tera Renard, and Vaublanc.
This also spawned new and updated pages for the Chronology section: 1781 AD, 1791 AD, and an updated 1792 AD. This puts us halfway through tracking the season, and the next set of page updates will hopefully go live next weekend. Hopefully.
Additionally, since I had a little extra time on the side, I got in a movie review for a dumb, silly, but at times amusing Troma film: Frankenhooker. It was bad, but still kind of watchable.
January 26, 2025
Getting the standard maintenance report out of the way first, we have the final round of updates for the existing Series pages: Kid Dracula, Hai no Majutsushi, Jikkyō Power Pro Wrestling '96: Max Voltage, Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, Wai Wai Bingo, Piccadilly Circus: Konami Wai Wai World, Wai Wai Jockey, Wai Wai Poker, Castlevania: The Medal, Pachislot Castlevania, Pachislot Castlevania II, Pachislot Castlevania III, Monster Retsuden Oreca Battle, CR Pachinko Castlevania, Pachislot Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and the Castlevania: Labyrinth Series Games. The section still needs some additional work, via adding pages for games not yet covered on the site, but we'll get to that in a bit.
Now, onto new content. First, yes, I know the new season of Castlevania: Nocturne is out and I will cover it soon enough. I first need to finish documenting all of the first season, which I failed to do over the last year, so we're going through and doing it now. I watched the first two episodes of the first season again and have written extensive notes. Those notes are now getting translated into articles for the site and, as I continue watching and writing, the various pages will get fleshed out.
For now, we head over into Chronology where we now have articles for 1775 AD, 1783 AD, 1792 AD for the Netflix series. This also required updates for Erzsébet Báthory, Richter Belmont, Olrox, Annette, Maria Renard, Tera, Drolta Tzuentes, and well as the creation of pages for Abbot Emmanuel, Edouard, Jacques, The Marquis and Marchioness, and Vaublanc.
And in and amongst that there were also a bunch of tiny updates here and there to things I noticed weren't quite right. It wasn't anything worth tracking here, just tiny errors here or there.
Man... that ended up being a lot of work. I can see why I tried to put this off for as long as I could, haha.
January 19, 2025
First up, everyone's favorite part of these updated: maintenence. We have a bunch more pages in the Series that I've moderninzed and run through spelling and grammar checks again, getting them up to the standard I want for my content. These include non-continuity entries and canceled titles: Haunted Castle, Haunted Castle Revisited, Super Castlevania IV, Castlevania: Legends, Castlevania: Order of Shadows, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, Castlevania: The Bloodletting, Castlevania Resurrection, Castlevania (2008).
But the fun doesn't stop there as I then went into the other Konami games that loosely tie into the Castlevania series. These include some updates (and some rewrites) for a few pages, and adding in even more pages that, honestly, I should have had up already when I added articles to the Reviews section. These include: Getsu Fūma Den, Getsu Fūma Den: Undying Moon, Konami Wai Wai World, Wai Wai World 2: SOS! Parsley Castle, Konami Krazy Racers, Konami Wai Wai Sokoban, Krazy Kart Racing, Parodius, Parodius Da!, Gokujō Parodius!, Jikkyō Oshaberi Parodius, Sexy Parodius, Paro Wars, Otomedius, Otomedius Excellent, Demon Castle Special: I'm Kid Dracula, and Kid Dracula.
So that was a lot. Now I'm gonna go let my brain cool off.
January 13, 2024
Maintenance update today. Just tracking through things I really should have done a while ago to get this site into the more modern layout I want. This is all stuff you all will likely never notice normally, but I felt it wise to list here just so readers are aware.
First, over in the Series section, I've revised and given a new grammar/spellcheck pass over the pages for: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Castlevania: Judgment, Castlevania: The Arcade, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, and Castlevania: Moonlight Rhapsody. That actually gets us through revisions for the whole main series, but there's a lot of spin-offs, side-games, and other adventures to cover in that section still.
I also saw a number of side articles that I could finish up if I just continued my haul through the articles, so all Lords of Shadow and Netflix series pages were updated as well: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Castlevania (Netflix), and Castlevania: Nocturne. This let me upgrade: Postmortem for the Castlevania series, Home Video Gaming Generations, Metroidvania, and 2.5D Game Play.
Then, while in that section, I also updated the Timeline of Releases for various games and more. The most important bit was getting Haunted Castle Revisited on the list, but I also listed off a few of the newer collections, updated links, and the like.
And then finally, on the Cast Bios pages, I've added on the various playable characters from Castlevania: Moonliught Rhapsody. Other Castlevania sites have given those characters bios, and have detailed out various other NPCs from the game, but I'm holding off for now. The game is still in development (if it ever gets a release at all) and details may change. I'd prefer to "touch once" than have to revise bios over and over as things change for the game.
January 12, 2024
It's a new year, and we kick it off early. I'm going to work to redouble my efforts to get this site going again on a regular basis, and this update is the first step to that. A couple of decent sized content updates a month. I mean, it's been ten years since I relaunched the site and major sections still aren't done to my satisfaction. That's not where I want it to be. So we're going to get to work and get this done.
And we start the year working on the Reviews section, finishing up coverage of the various semi-related oddities for the Castlevania series. First is Getsu Fuma Den: Undying Moon, an unexpected sequel to the 1986 NES game. The sequel switches the gameplay into a roguelike platformer, and it has a very pretty art style... but it's lacking in other areas that could have made it shine.
Then we look at Krazy Kart Racing, Konami's sequel to their first kart racer. The game isn't bad... but it also isn't good, and it's sorely hampered by the platform (mobile phones) it was released on. There's a reason most have forgotten about this title.
We next move over to Horror Cinema for a look at Nosferatu, the new remake of the classic silent film from Robert Eggers. The film is wonderously artistic and very cool, even if one or two performances in it aren't as good as I would have liked. Then we also have Abigail, Universal's very loose, and very messy, reinvention of Dracula's Daughter. It's fun, but in a bad movie kind of way.
We'll get more work done soon, I promise. Just gotta get on the horse and get moving. See you all soon.