A surefire way to get the Retro Gamer team excited is by combining two of our favourite things, and Castlevania: Spectral Interlude does just that by slamming our favourite vampire-hunting series onto the the Spectrum. This homebrew release originally started out as a conversion of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest to ZX Spectrum 128K, but eventually evolved into a full original game. Set in the years between Dracula’s awakenings, the game sees a rather downtrodden Belmont stuck with little to do but hunt evil creatures at the behest of the local soldiers – right from the beginning, you can see that the dialogue is firmly tongue in cheek.
What is rather less tongue in cheek is the meat of the game – it looks extremely good, controls flawlessly (and in a nice touch, keys can be redefined as you choose) and contains an excellent soundtrack. Better yet, the adventure is enormous – a huge number of screens are available for players to discover and ten enemy types exist alongside unique bosses. Best of all, it’s available for free download over at spectralinterlude.com, where you can find out more about the game.
If you’re not like us and only one of these things is amongst your favourites, we need to remedy that! Pick up a digital copy of Retro Gamer issue 102 to learn about the history of the ZX Spectrum, or grab Retro Gamer issue 56 to catch up on Castlevania – both via GreatDigitalMags.com.
