The game has the player controlling Simon Belmont, who embarks on a journey to save his wife Selena from the clutches of Dracula.

Like in other games of the series, these bosses are generally taken from horror literature or legend, and include Medusa, Frankenstein's monster, and Dracula himself.

A PlayStation 2 port of Haunted Castle was released by game publisher Hamster in May 2006 as part of the Oretachi Gēsen Zoku series.

[10] Haunted Castle is also included in Konami's Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection, released digitally on April 19, 2019 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC (via Steam).

[12] Haunted Castle is included in the Castlevania Dominus Collection, released in August 2024 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC (via Steam).

The collection includes a reimagining by M2, Haunted Castle Revisited, which features updated graphics and sound, rebalanced difficulty, and many other changes.

It was described that "It starts off well enough; the sprites are nice and large (a fact that makes it hard to avoid danger) and there are some amazing tunes here.