Board Thread:Other games/@comment-3200351-20130227141546/@comment-3200351-20130303143910

Regarding Haunted Castle, it's probably not different because of hardware limitations. However, I do have a theory about why it's different.

Before Haunted Castle got released there was already an arcade version of Castlevania exclusively in the US (so not in Japan) called Vs Castlevania. On the start screen it says: "licensed exclusively to Nintendo". So I think at the time the original Castlevania could only be released on Nintendo platforms like the NES/Famicom and the VS arcade cabinents.

I think an arcade version for Japan was planned but because of licensing issues they couldn't directly port the game to arcades, so they were forced to make changes. Similary, this is also the reason why Rondo and DXX are different from each other.