In the good old days, people knew only peace and prosperity.
Now, thanks to the wii's virtual console you can play this game for only 900 wii-points. This is really cheap considering some fans paid hundreds of dollars to play this game. Videogames were much more expensive in th 16-bit days.
The game is still completely japanese, exept for a german introduction. You can find the translation of the game's dialogue on the internet, but it's really not necessary. As always it comes down to this: destroy Dracula.
You play as Richter Belmont, from the famous family of vampire hunters. There are also four maidens to be rescued during the game and when you have found the first, Maria, she also becomes a playable character. She can tale less damage, but she has a double-jump and a pair of pigeons (!) that destroy any enemy within reach in no time. She also uses animal friends as weapons, whereas Richter uses more conventional weapons such as holy water and crosses. When you have gathered enough hearts you can use these to do an item-crash, which is a very powerful attack with the currently equipped sub-weapon.
Using either Richter or Maria you make your way through these 2d castlevania environments such as a graveyard, a bridge across a lake, dungeons and of course a clock tower. At the end of each level there's a level-boss and they are really challenging. Also, there are alternative routes to alternate levels and bosses.
Though sometimes the game is quite difficult it helps to keep at it. Overall i found it a lot of fun. The music has great cd-quality and though the graphics are made out of these giant pixels they do have nice colors and details to them.
I can recommend this game to everyone who loves videogames, though these graphics might take some getting used to.
If you are in doubt on whether to get this one or the also recently released Castlevania Rebirth, i'd say: get them both. If you really have to choose get Rondo of Blood. It's considerably longer, about 10-12 hours if you want to discover all levels and rescue all maidens and all-in-all more fun. Though Rebirth has it's own charm.