In a barcade projecting a Castlevania III playthrough on the wall and it’s really impressive how advanced these graphics are for NES, it’s close to early Genesis really - some detailed backgrounds, complicated palettes, a “screen shake” where all the terrain seemed to vibrate while sprites held steady, a floating multi-segment bone snake moving in circles (which was a classic arcade “see what we can do” of the period)
Too bad the NES couldn’t handle the VRC6 coprocessor chip like the Famicom could, so non-Japanese players could hear the true soundtrack in all its glory. (And later Konami would make a VRC7 chip with FM channels that sounded like early Genesis…)
well golly