Castlevania Legends

Released in Japan on November 27, 1997 and in Europe and North America on March 11, 1998. The game received mixed to negative reviews, with criticism directed towards its lack of difficulty, short length, technical issues, and unoriginality. The game received its first official re-release on the Nintendo Classics service on October 31, 2023.

• Developer — Konami Computer Entertainment Nagoya • Publisher — Konami • Director — Kouki Yamashita • Designer — Tsukasa Hiyoshi • Programmer — Yoshiteru Yamaguchi • Artist — Kazunobu Uchida • Composer — Kaoru Okada Youichi Iwata • Series — Castlevania • Platforms — Game Boy • Genre — Action, platform • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — Gameplay Castlevania Legends is a side-scrolling platformer where the protagonist, Sonia Belmont, armed with a whip, charges through five stages of Count Dracula's castle, filled with various enemies and candles containing items. Each stage ends in a mini-boss fight which rewards a "Soul Weapon", which Sonia can cast, consuming varying amounts of hearts. The game implements two difficulty levels and password based save states. Should the timer run out, Sonia fall off the screen, or either her life bar or time counter fall to zero, she will lose all of her hearts and one life, and will restart at the last checkpoint with the basic whip. If she loses all of her lives, the player is presented with the game over screen, where they may exit or choose to continue from the last checkpoint of the current stage. Once per stage, Sonia can activate her inborn ability to enter "Burning Mode", where she becomes invincible, moves faster, and has more powerful attacks for ten seconds.

The story begins in the year 1450 in Transylvania, during the incarnation of the original Count Dracula. Sonia Belmont, the first vampire hunter of her clan, develops mystical powers in her 17th year, and ventures out to challenge Dracula, meeting Alucard who seeks revenge against his father. After Dracula's defeat, he swears to Sonia that as long as there is evil in the world, he will be resurrected, and in response she swears her family will always defeat him. Later, Sonia gives birth to a child, implied to have been fathered by Alucard. The game was designed as the first game in the series timeline, but later declared non-canon after the release of Lament of Innocence.

Sonia was one of the confirmed leads in the Dreamcast game Castlevania: Resurrection, up until that game's cancellation. Sonia appears as a playable character for the Ode to Castlevania DLC in Vampire Survivors.