The front of the CD booklet has a small picture from the label of each of the 3 games. The Japanese Castlevania 3's label art, the one on the book, is quite different, and in my opinion, inferior to, the much more detailed and realistic art of the American game. The back of the book has 2 screenshots from each of the games. The interior of the book is entirely in black and white, and, not surprising, all the liner notes (except for a few song titles) are unfortunately in Japanese. There's quite a lot of liner notes, and the person writing them must have been very excited because frequently sentences end in 2 exclamation points. I have no idea what they say, however, except one sentence in a P.S. (the writers were apparently fond of Jap-glish) contains "Vol. 2," apparently an ad for the Dracula Best 2 CD collection. On the plus side, all the song titles (except for the second) are given in English. Only Castlevania 3 had a sound test, but the song titles in the sound test are identical to those given by this CD.
The first 2 songs on this CD are taken from the ultra-obscure arcade game, The Haunted Castle - supposedly, as I've never played it. However, these 2 songs are immediately recognizible to any Castlevania fan as the first is a remix of Beginning, the music of the first stage in Castlevania 3, and the second is a remix of Bloody Tears, the excellent music from Simon's Quest that plays when fighting monsters during the day. These songs could be considered to be "rock" remixes, but all the instruments have a very "synth" sound. Beginning has a heavier opening and a little guitar solo in the middle as well. Personally, I never thought Beginning was one of the very best of the Castlevania themes, despite that it's been redone in many later Castlevania games, about as often as Bloody Tears and second only to Vampire Killer , and I think the more organic version of Bloody Tears from Castlevania 4 is superior to this version, so the first 2 songs really aren't the reason to get this CD. The real reason, of course, is for the memories the original versions bring.
As for the original versions, for some reason the order of the games on the CD is in reverse order of their release - that is, Castlevania 3's songs are first, then Castlevania 2's.
I have a gripe with the way Castlevania 3's music is presented. Each track has multiple songs on it, so if you want to listen to Deja Vu, for example, you couldn't just press the forward button on your CD player until you reach it. No, it's on the same track as 6 other songs, so you have to listen to Dead Beat first (or fastforward past it). Fortunately, this doesn't affect the music of any of the songs, as there's usually enough silence between them that the remain distinct - though that only begs the question of why they're on the same track to begin with. There's another unusual feature - sound effects play between the songs. This could have been really cheesy, with wolves howling or something - fortunately it's never taken to that level of absurdity. There are times when footsteps make noise walking through water, or water flows before a song from a stage filled with water, or a door will creak open and slam. Though these effects don't add much to the soundtrack, at least they don't affect it too negatively.
Castlevania 3's music on this CD sounds slightly different than the game, but this could perhaps be due to the extra sound chip in Japanese, but not American, versions of the game to improve the sound. Even so, the music (most of the music on the CD) sounds like it could have been played on a Casio keyboard (one of the reasons people who aren't fans of the series should stay away from this CD). Nightmare probably sounded spookier on the NES, because the notes were less distinct and more distorted. Deja Vu/Vampire Killer, however, is superiour, with more instrumental activity and fast drums which add to the excitement. On average, though, most of the music sounds rather similar to the original. Every single bit of music from Castlevania 3, no matter how short (including the Game Over music), is on this CD.
The music to Simon's Quest has the WORST feature of this soundtrack. Anyone who's played this game probably remembers first turning on the game, pressing start, and being greeted by the mood-setting, spooky music (Message of Darkness) that plays before the player selects 'New Game' or 'Password.' Well, the version of this tune on this CD is TOTALLY inferior to the version on the NES! The chromatic scale that's played in the background is still there (but it sounds much better on the NES) but rather than having the fading, echoing notes on top of it annoying buzzes are played. What makes this much worse is at the end of the CD a few extra songs for Simon's Quest are reprised, the second time as the NES version, but this song ISN'T ONE OF THEM!! I can't imagine why this is, as this is the song that is most different from the NES version. The songs that are reprised are Bloody Tears (meaning there are 3 versions of this song on this CD), The ending theme and the day-time village theme. The music for Dracula's castle is not reprised, though it is noticibly different than the NES version (a few extra sustained notes are played on top of the NES version on this CD) - however, with the exception of Message of Darkness even the Japanese versions of the songs from this game are pretty close to the versions you know.
Castlevania's soundtrack has yet another extremely annoying feature! After the music that begins the fourth floor (the dungeon, Frankenstein's monster's level) plays through once and begins to loop crappy sound effects from the game start to play, just about ruining the track! Damn it, the reason for this CD should have been to listen to these songs without the sound effects that you hear when actually playing the game! In case you're wondering what these sound effects are, it's whip snaps that sound extremely artificial, and aren't even played in time with the music. Someone probably thought, "Hey, these are game fans! They'd probably want to hear more sounds from the game!" How wrong they were... The rest of the music is pretty similar to that on the NES. To illustrate how close, Vampire Killer was originally the stage one music in Castlevania, but it was redone as Deja Vu for Castlevania 3. This soundtrack has both versions and it's immediately clear which version is from which game. As I alluded before, Deja Vu has almost a double time feel, while Vampire Killer is somewhat slower and the notes have a staccato phrasing. The differences between these two tunes is preserved on this CD.
There are two short bits of music from Castlevania that were ommitted. The few seconds of music that plays when you completely run out of lives and the 'Continue/End' screen appears is missing, and the few seconds of music that plays when you grab the final energy ball when Dracula dies and you've beat the game is also missing. I wonder if these two songs were in the Japanese version - this CD DOES have a 5 second song (that plays before the short bit of music that plays during the non-interactive part when Simon walks outside Castlevania and enters the gate) that I've never heard during the game.
Ultimately, Dracula Best will bring back many memories of these great games that had the best soundtracks for their times, though it's a soundtrack with several flaws.