Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness

Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is a 3D action platformer developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. It is an expanded reworking of that same year's Castlevania (often called Castlevania 64), built on the same engine but adding new playable characters, new and revised stages, improved visuals, and an expansion of the story. The two games together represent Konami's first attempt to move the long-running series into 3D.

Legacy of Darkness centres on the werewolf Cornell, whose campaign serves as a prequel to the events of Castlevania 64, before opening up additional scenarios including a reworked version of the original game's quest. It blends platforming, combat against the series' familiar gothic bestiary, and exploration of Dracula's castle and its surrounding grounds, all rendered in the early, ambitious, and frequently awkward 3D of the Nintendo 64 era.

The game has a mixed but affectionate reputation. It was criticised at release for camera and control issues common to early 3D platformers, but it has been reassessed over time as a bold, atmospheric experiment, and the N64 Castlevania pair remains a point of fascination for series fans precisely because it sits so far outside the 2D template the franchise is best known for.

In 2026 the game returned to attention through a work-in-progress recompilation by the developer fliperama86, which converts the original N64 code into a native PC executable using N64 recompilation tooling, allowing it to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux with higher frame rates and resolution while still requiring a legally dumped copy of the original ROM.