Castlevania... Pre-Classic

After Leon Belmont dooms Dracula for the next thousand years, Dracula decides to hide in his castle in Europe. In 1692, the Dark Lord tries to stirs things up, but when all turns to chaos, out comes a sturdy middle-aged man named Simon Belmont, armed with strength, holy water, wide tomahawks, and the Vampire Killer, intent on keeping the prophecy of his ancestor. This is the 1980's Castlevania, the one that has not much story but rather has a kill-and-advance gameplay where in the end you just fight Dracula. Well, before his "death", Dracula places a curse on Simon where he will die if Dracula is not revived. And, poof, credits.

However, it does not end there, as seven years later, Simon starts to feel the effects of Dracula's curse on him, and learns that in order to revive him, Simon must search for and reunite the Dark Lord's body parts. And so he proceeds to seek them throughout all Transylvania, beating up the beasts and undead that rose for the sole purpose of screwing with Simon's life. Finally, after Simon reunites the body parts at the throne of Castlevania (generic name for any castle where Dracula is found, because there were a LOT of them) Dracula returns, and Simon seals the demonic lord in the castle "forever"...

That is, until about half a century later, when Simon's grandson Juste inherits the Vampire Killer just before he finds his childhood friend paladin Maxim Kirschine returning from a self-training campaign... mortally wounded. The warrior tells the hunter that a woman named Lydie (yet another childhood friend of theirs -- I'm going to pause here and tell Konami that they should NOT relate characters in a game as "someone I knew as a kid") has been kidnapped and taken somewhere unknown. Furthermore, Maxim can't say anything else because of a sudden memory loss. Juste agrees to help him, but when both he and Maxim explore the area where she disappeared, they instead find -you guessed it- Castlevania.

Maxim says he needs to recover from his wounds, so Juste proceeds to explore the castle. About halfway into the castle, in the Chapel of Dissonance, Maxim appears, fully recovered but... different. He insists that Juste stay away from the castle while he himself searches for Lydie. Juste finds out that Maxim did what Simon had done fifty years ago: he collected the body parts of the dead Dracula, but Dracula's spirit merged with Maxim's eagerness to prove himself to Juste, and he himself became a placeholder while Dracula tried to regain power.

So it is up to Juste to collect the body parts himself and confront Maxim, who in the end overcomes the Dark Lord's influence by reminding himself of the moments Juste and Maxim had together. Meanwhile, Juste tries to perform the ritual with the body parts, and that's enough for the demonic Count to separate from Maxim and fuse with the body parts, becoming a fully reborn Count Dracula. But, well, let's just say that this experience was very short-lived for him.