You never forget your first time as the saying goes and Castlevania's only entry on the Sega Megadrive was my personal first experience with the series and dare I say to this day still my favourite.

Castlevania: The New Generation (Or Bloodlines for the American release) has a surprisingly deep story when you flick through the manual. The basic plot is Dracula is back and you can choose two characters either the current welder of the vampire killer whip John Morris or Eric Lecarde who to make up for his feminine appearance carries around a very large spear. Eric is out for blood as the love of his life was killed by the countess and both heroes travel across Europe to take down Dracula was well as many other baddies and ghouls in the process.

The story is as simple or complex as you want to read into it, and performs well as a standalone Castlevania title as all links to other games are very loose. New Generation is platform action refined to a T. The controls are solid each character has its own unique feel when using their weapons, not only that but each character has a special move which allows them to access a slightly alerted route through some of the levels in the game. John Morris can swing with his whip from walls and Eric Lecarde can do a sort of super jump with his spear weapon accessing high up platforms. 

Anyone familiar with the series will be aware you have a health bar allowing the player to make some mistakes depending on difficulty. Like most of the games in the series when your hit your character actually jumps back slightly which can cause you to fall to an instant death and possibly rage quit the game depending on your patience level, however, I always felt this addition always added to the challenge especially when you had a health bar, preventing you from just breezing through the game without any consequences when being hit.