Timeline | 1987: Castlevania

Castlevania was an amazing experience when it first arrive on the NES (in NA) in 1987

Originally produced by Konami in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, Castlevania was ported and localized for the NES in Northa America and released in May 1987. In Castlevania you play as Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter (with an awesome whip!) as you set out to storm the demonic Castlevania, the fortress of Count Dracula. The game was a platformer with quite a few items, enemies, secrets, bosses and great stuff to explore. 1987 was one of the better years on the NES and Castlevania was a big reason why.

A screenshot from Castlevania, showing Simon Belmont utilizing his whip - there was a slight but noticeable delay between the button press and the whip action in the game (this was intentional and a subtle way of imitating the relative slow speed of using something like a whip - as opposed to a gun for example)

Castlevania had great graphics for the time (later NES games would surpass it, but in the early days it was right up there with the best) and the smooth controls, and challenging but rewarding gameplay made the game a hit. There would be another two Castlevania games on the NES (and another on the SNES along with many more moving forward) making it a big hit for Konami. Konami released quite a few games for the NES but Castlevania was one of the most popular (right up there with Contra, the TMNT games, and of course Metal Gear released under their Ultra Games shell corporation to name a few).

Further Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania_(1986_video_game)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania