Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse[a] is a 1989 action-platform game developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The upper route takes the player across the lake to the main bridge, entering Dracula's castle through the front gate, while the lower route takes the player through a series of tunnels and caverns, leading to a climb up the cliff face below the castle.

Joining Trevor Belmont in his mission to defeat Dracula are three new playable characters: Sypha Belnades, a young sorceress with poor physical attack power but powerful elemental magic spells at her disposal; Grant Danasty, a pirate with the ability to climb on walls and change direction in mid-jump; and Alucard, Dracula's son, a dhampir with the ability to shoot fireballs and transform into a bat.

Western versions of the NES did not have the ability to support external sound chips, so the North American release replaced the VRC6 with Nintendo's Memory Management Controller 5 (MMC5).

The Japanese version has slightly different backgrounds in many stages, and has special effects not seen in the North American and European releases.

[7][better source needed] The North American packaging artwork was painted by Tom Dubois, who stated that he was inspired by animator Ray Harryhausen's works.

[8][9] It was released on the Wii Virtual Console in the PAL regions on October 31, 2008,[10] in North America on January 12, 2009[11] and in Japan on April 21, 2009.

[13] It was released on the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan on April 16, 2014,[14] in North America on June 26, 2014[15] and in the PAL regions on September 4, 2014.

[10] It was later released again as part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on May 16, 2019.

He discussed characters such as Alucard (whom he called iconic) and Grant (whom he praised for his wall cling ability).

Shutaro Iida, who was a programmer for the GBA and NDS games and director of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, also said it is his favorite in the series, and cited the special sound chip in the Japanese version as the reason why.

[26] An animated Dracula's Curse movie had been in development since 2007 with writer Warren Ellis, Frederator Studios, and James Jean attached to the project.

[27] In August 2015, film producer Adi Shankar teased that the project, now an animated mini series, was finally in production.