Music in the Castlevania series

Recurring themes

Most of Castlevania's music changes from game to game, but some themes recur often. These include Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, and Beginning, three very popular tracks, first appearing in Castlevania, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, and Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse respectively. Other songs such as Dance of Illusions, Divine Bloodlines, and Poison Mind have been often recurring themes throughout the series. Several songs, including both Vampire Killer and Bloody Tears were also featured in the soundtracks of other Konami games, including Konami Wai Wai World, Contra: Hard Corps, and Konami Krazy Racers.

Notable composers

• The music for the first Castlevania game was composed by Kinuyo Yamashita and Satoe Terashima.^[1] Yamashita was credited under the pseudonym James Banana on the Famicom Disk System version of the game.
• Michiru Yamane worked on Bloodlines, Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, Lament of Innocence, Dawn of Sorrow, Curse of Darkness, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia, and a few tracks in Harmony of Dissonance and The Dracula X Chronicles.
• Kenichi Matsubara worked on Simon's Quest and Haunted Castle.
• Mikio Saito composed Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
• Sōta Fujimori is responsible for all of the arranged songs in Castlevania Chronicles.
• Taro Kudou (aka Souji Taro) and Masanori Adachi composed Super Castlevania IV's music.
• Sotaro Tojima composed Circle of the Moon.
• Yuzo Koshiro (Ys, Streets of Rage and ActRaiser) worked on Portrait of Ruin.
• Óscar Araujo composed the soundtrack for Lords of Shadow.

References