The game's default controls are shown above.

HUD

Life gauge: The player's life gauge. It will decrease with each hit Christopher takes, once it is depleted Christopher will collapse and lose a life. The life gauge can be filled back up by finding hearts, and it will also be refilled at the start of each level.

Time: The amount of time you have left to finish the current level. If this reaches zero, you'll lose a life. The timer will vanish during the fight against Dracula's second form.

Score: Your current score, increase it by defeating enemies and finding coins. During boss fights, the score will be replaced with the life gauge for the boss.

Gameplay

The Castlevania Adventure is a platform game. You play as Christopher Belmont, a vampire hunter who must defeat Count Dracula. He must enter Dracula's castle and battle his way through four stages, each one filled with various traps and enemies. Christopher is armed with the legendary vampire killer whip, which can be upgraded to become even more powerful. At the end of each stage there is a boss to defeat.

Game Over & Continue

When you run out of lives, you'll get a game over. After a few seconds a continue option will appear. Choose yes to continue the game from the beginning of the stage you were on, or choose no to reset the game.

Christopher's moves

JUMPING

Press the A button to jump. This is Christopher's main method of getting past obstacles and evading enemy attacks.

CROUCHING

Press and hold down to make Christopher duck, which is very useful to avoid enemy attacks. And if you're thinking "that sprite looks the same as the jumping sprite"...that's because it is.

WHIPPING

Press the B button to attack with the whip. You can attack whilst standing, jumping or crouching. When you start the game, the rope will be at its weakest power. However...

...by collecting the above crystals, you can increase the power of the whip. You can do this twice, the first time will extend the whip's reach and power, the second time will let you cast fireballs with the whip. There is a big catch with this however: if you have the whip upgraded, it will degrade whenever you take any damage.

Items

Throughout the game you'll come across candles, which contain items. Whip the candles to release the items. In addition to the already mentioned whip crystal item, there are also these:

HEARTS

These items will restore some of the life gauge.

FLASHING HEARTS

These special hearts are much rarer than the usual ones, and will restore a lot more of the life gauge.

COINS

Collect coins to increase your score, they are worth 50 points each.

CROSS

Collecting this will make Christopher invincible for a short amount of time, although he will still die if he falls down a bottomless pit.

1 UP

Collecting this will give you an extra life, but they aren't very common.

BOSS CRYSTAL

These will always be found in a candle placed in the boss arena for each stage. Collect the crystal to make the boss appear.