Castlevania Celebrates 40 Years by Giving the Original Away Free on Mobile

Konami has found an admirably uncomplicated way to celebrate Castlevania's 40th anniversary: give people Castlevania. The original side-scrolling adventure is now available free on iOS and Android until October 24. Better still, anyone who downloads it during the promotion can continue playing after the giveaway ends, so there is no Dracula-shaped subscription trap waiting in the crypt.

The mobile release brings Simon Belmont's original castle-clearing adventure to modern phones, complete with the whip, monsters and architectural disregard for workplace safety that helped establish the series in 1986. Konami is also running anniversary discounts of up to 80 percent on other Castlevania releases and has announced concerts and music releases.

For mobile players this is more than a nostalgia exercise: having such a historically important console game legally available as a free phone download is a neat reminder that mobile can be a useful preservation platform when publishers resist the temptation to bolt fourteen currencies and a battle pass onto everything.