Given its legacy in gaming, you'd be forgiven for thinking we know pretty much all there is to know about the Making Of the original NES Castlevania (known as Akumajō Dracula in Japan) by now.

However, due to some fairly shoddy crediting and the general elusiveness of Konami staff from the period (trust me, I've tried to contact pretty much everyone I could for Wireframe several years back!), there are still some pretty large holes in our knowledge of its development, with much of the information we have learned about the game coming from secondhand accounts from those who didn't even work on the title.

One exception to this rule is Kinuyo Yamashita, one of the original composers on the NES title. Over the years, in lieu of other accounts, she's become the single-best source we have on the development of the original game, and notably participated in a brand-new interview with the Castlevania/Bloodstained YouTuber Dongled (who previously interviewed the musician Michiru Yamane and the voice of Dracula Michael Guinn) yesterday, to share her memories for its 40th anniversary.

Among other things, this new interview covers which tracks Yamashita was responsible for specifically (and which were composed by Terashima) and highlights her involvement with the MSX2 title Vampire Killer:

"I was involved with entering the data for this game’s music on MSX, adapting it to the sound configuration of the platform. I believe I did a lot of the conversions, but it’s difficult to remember the specific details. Also, only the ending music is different in the MSX version."

Additionally, it also sets out to potentially clear up some of the misconceptions about the sound team.

The first is that the Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse musician Hidenori Maezawa was a composer on the original game. This is something noted on MobyGames, which I haven't been able to find a direct source for, but I personally believe could be based on an interview that the game journalist Jeremy Parrish conducted for 1Up, where Maezawa claims Castlevania was his first project, but that he doesn't think he played a huge role in that game's audio. It's worth stating here that Maezawa never claimed in this interview to be a composer on the project, but it's possible someone made the leap in logic themselves and listed him among its contributors.

The second misconception, meanwhile, is that Iku Mizutani (who was a regular collaborator with Yamashita at Konami and Bandai) was the primary sound programmer on the game, which seems to be extrapolated from a vague comment from Masaaki Kukino in John Szczepaniak's The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Vol.1. Kukino, it should be said, didn't work on the original Castlevania, but the 1988 arcade game Haunted Castle.

Speaking to Dongled via email, Yamashita told the YouTuber, "Mr. Maezawa was not involved. Mr. Mizutani may have helped with sound programming or other tasks, but I don't know for sure. It's unclear who created the sound program, but I believe Mr. Sakamoto was at least involved." This Mr. Sakamoto, Dongled goes on to state, could be referring to Shinya Sakamoto, who started working at Konami in 1984, originally on arcade games. Another name provided to him (Sada), on the other hand, he theorises, could belong to Kiyohiro Sada.

Reflecting on the series today, Yamashita told Dongled she feels "very fortunate" to have been involved in the game's creation, often receiving heartfelt messages from fans, but has mixed feelings about the way in which her involvement with the series became known to the public:

"About 30 years ago, when I created my own website for the first time, I wrote the titles of the games I had composed on the site. Even at that point, I still didn't know that Akumajo Dracula had become a series. Sometimes I have mixed feelings when I think that, if I hadn't written about my involvement with the game, people might still not know who composed the music"

The rest of the interview is well worth a watch. After all, it's not every day we get a new interview with video game music royalty.

Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.