The first Game Boy Castlevania game was released in 1989. The development team opted to try and take the gameplay mechanics from the first NES game and adapt them for Nintendo's handheld. The results were, unfortunately, disastrous, and the game is commonly referred to as one of the worst in the Castlevania series. Christopher Belmont moves slowly, jumps awkwardly and only has the whip to attack with, and he can't attack whilst on a rope. Some enemies, or enemy projectiles, can move very quickly, making it difficult to avoid their attacks. Getting hit will degrade the power of the whip, meaning you'll often be stuck with the weakest whip, which means it takes forever to kill certain enemies.

Stage 3 is one of the toughest stages to get through, with half of it involving you being chased by spikes which will result in an instant death if touched in any way -but you've somehow got to move slow Christopher very quickly through passageways filled with enemies. Some of the jumps you have to make are ridiculous, involving one-chance-only leaps complete with many instances where it looks like you should make it...but then you don't and fall to your doom. If there is one positive thing I can say about this game, it has to be the excellent music.

When the game was originally released, the reviews weren't actually that bad, and a good deal of them were positive about it. According to a Konami ad for the sequel, this game sold 2.5 million copies, so it did really well sales wise. However, these days the game tends to get scathing reviews, and as mentioned earlier, it's seen as one of the worst games in the series. Konami would at least turn things around with their next Game Boy Castlevania adventure.