Konami Collector's Series: Castlevania & Contra

I bought "Konami Collector's Series: Castlevania & Contra" for two reasons. One, I own the original CD of this collection and I wanted a DRM-free digital copy. Two, I want to show support for Konami releasing games on GOG so that they release the superior "Castlevania Anniversary Collection" and "Contra Anniversary Collection". As for this collection, it is what it is. I consider it to be fun, but I'm not sure others would find it to be $6.00 USD worth of fun. It includes the Golden Age Konami titles from my childhood though the game play isn't NES smooth control-wise. The games look good for their age.

(CD VERSION review) There's really no reason to talk about the games themselves, as they're among the most revered classics of the Nintendo Entertainment System. HOWEVER, they're not presented well here at all. They're blown up to the PC resolution with no regard to how that would affect image quality. VERY basic menus, no filter options, no customization for the controller, and no extra content (regional variants, art, etc). Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this was just running off a sloppy implementation of NESticle or something. For games like this, more effort needs to be made. They really should have put out the Anniversary collections that are on Steam instead. Even if they charged more money, it would have been worth it. As it stands, the ONLY reason to buy this is if you feel bad about using the (readily available) roms that are all over the internet.

The included games are the NES versions, with minor alterations to remove references to Nintendo. The image is closer to what you'd get with basic emulator settings (so, a lot brighter and somewhat squished) than what you'd get if you played legit carts on a TV of the time. The ROMs can be removed to play in a different emulator, but that requires use of a hex editor, which is easier than you'd expect but still a step beyond what I think a general audience would be comfortable with. Still giving 4 stars because the game's just fine if you don't care about any of this ridiculous nerd nonsense and just want to play Castlevania and/or Contra.

For what its worth, its worth getting. I hope they port more Castlevania games on GOG.com DRM free gaming for life! 1: You can change screen settings by DirectX in the program folder 2: Its simple. You get three Castlevania games and two Contra games. It works alright, its not terrible.

I understand that this is an older collection made at time for PCs were using Windows 95 and the point of GOG is to bring back older PC titles back to the modern era, but this doesn't excuse the sub-par emulation quality of the games presented in this collection that have been rendered obsolete by the recent Castlevania and Contra Anniversary Collections by M2 that's available on consoles and Steam but sadly not in DRM-free form. The games themselves represented in this collection are fine on their own, but this collection hasn't even been updated or fixed to work on anything beyond Windows XP, showing its age and compatibility issues when most people nowadays are using Windows 7 or 10, and controller support doesn't exactly work too well with XInput ones like an Xbox 360 controller. You're better off getting the Castlevania and Contra Anniversary Collections for a wider selection of games, extra features, and better emulation than this ancient collection can muster in this day and age.