Topic: Theoretical: Randomized traditional Castlevania?

[The Silverlord]

I always thought Magic Sword was pretty good at randomizing.

Not so much the environments, but what locked doors or chests contained; keys/key types.  It made the game very replayable.  It also helped that the 100 levels or so were short stages packed with enemies and environmental hazards. You could scroll the player left of right and the stage would loop--as you'd expect going around the inside of a tower.  Hidden doors led to higher levels, there were hidden chests too and plethora of helpful items.

I'm with Ahasverus though: I don't think randomizing individual room, platform and enemy placements would lend itself well to Castlevania, unless it was done on a larger scale with a huge bank of really rich collections (kind of like Magic Sword standalone levels).  You'd lose a bit of what makes a certain area  unique or special if you ran the randomiser over everything, but tailored sets per area might work.  The level design in latter Castroids has left something to be desired and it actually feels like they ran some kind of a randomizer on it to put in platforms (and then saved those layouts).  But it's a fascinating idea.  I remember an old MSX flick-room game called Vampire which I used to think had Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and Igor wandering the castle randomly, it was quite frightening to think you could bump into them at any time.

Oh, MSX Goonies was another: there was often a Fratelli gang member or two chasing Sloth, and the game would remember their positions off-screen.  Very clever, but helped the immersion in the level a good bit.