A whip cracks in the dark. Konami’s Castlevania arrived on the Nintendo 64 on January 26, 1999, and it was the first time the series traded its 2D hallways for the third dimension. Two warriors — a Belmont heir carrying the family whip and a young woman with a grudge of her own — make their way through Dracula’s castle and the cursed grounds around it.

The game is remembered as a transitional experiment: beloved for its gloomy gothic atmosphere and its belted-in heroine, debated for taking the series away from the side-scrolling play that had defined it. Mainline Castlevania, made and published by Konami, and proof that even a legendary house can get lost in its own corridors.