Within the expansive Castlevania series, 1994’s Castlevania: Bloodlines stands apart. Being a Genesis/Mega Drive game, it was the only Castlevania to have been designed for a Sega platform. (Symphony of the Night was ported from PlayStation to Saturn in Japan, but Bloodlines was designed exclusively for Genesis.) The soundtrack saw Michiru Yamane make her debut with the series before going on to become its regular composer. Oh, and there’s one other thing: Bloodlines remains, quite arguably, the most unfairly forgotten Castlevania game ever made.

Granted, publisher Konami doesn’t currently appear to have much interest in doing much of anything involving Castlevania. The only thing happening with the brand in general these days is decidedly violent Netflix cartoon, which will launch a second micro-season later this year. The company doesn’t have any compunctions about cashing in on Castlevania’s history, though. You can find Castlevania games on every iteration of Virtual Console, on Nintendo’s recent retro NES and Super NES mini-consoles, and even in Hamster’s Arcade Archives series for PlayStation 4. Bloodlines, however, does not number among these prolific reissues.

Nearly every other Castlevania game has seen a reissue of some sort over the past 20 years, even the oddball obscurities. Dracula X, the mediocre Super NES conversion of Rondo of Blood, has made its way to Virtual Console several times over. Akumajou Dracula for the obscure Japanese X68000 computer was remade on PlayStation as Castlevania Chronicles. Haunted Castle, the terrible arcade rendition of Castlevania for NES, has inexplicably been republished a few times. Even the unloved Nintendo 64 Castlevania got a remake of sorts back in the day with Legacy of Darkness, which essentially took the original, compromised N64 release and added back all the material its developers had been forced to cut for reasons of time and budget.

Bloodlines, however, has never resurfaced in any form. Anyone who wants to play it today either needs to hunt down the Genesis cartridge or resort to piracy. Why has Konami abandoned this one Castlevania sequel when it’s never been shy about reissuing others? Bloodlines shipped in all regions back in the day, and unlike contemporary Genesis releases based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tiny Toon Adventures, there are no licensing considerations to deal with. Yet Bloodlines remains locked down in the Konami vaults.

Indeed, only two other classic Castlevania games share Bloodlines’ missing-in-action status: Belmont’s Revenge and Legends, a pair of monochrome Game Boy sequels. Even then, it seems likely those games would have shown up again eventually if not for the fact that Nintendo abandoned the classic Game Boy Virtual Console for 3DS in record time following its debut. And Bloodlines holds up far better today than either of those games, rivaling the quality of its 16-bit peers. It’s a superior work to Dracula X for Super NES, and it feels a lot more like the classic “vision” of the series’ core design than the brilliant but unconventional Super Castlevania IV. It’s a vintage gem simply begging to be rediscovered — or even discovered — by fans hungry for a new Castlevania experience.

In a lot of ways, Bloodlines represents the last great expression of the series’ early format. Castlevania’s legacy has always been one of experimentation. The original trilogy of NES adventures — Castlevania, Simon’s Quest and Dracula’s Curse — were united by common visual styles and control mechanics. When the franchise hit 16-bit consoles, that unity vanished, as if Konami’s designers couldn’t decide how best to move forward a series so bound to the specific limitations of the NES. Super Castlevania IV for Super NES was interesting but one-of-a-kind: An evolutionary dead end. Rondo of Blood for PC Engine added a heavy emphasis on discovery to Castlevania III’s branching linear stages, paving the way for the series’ move into free-roaming RPGs that kicked off with its sequel Symphony of the Night. Between the releases of Rondo and Symphony, however, Bloodlines took one last crack at the “classic-vania” whip.

Bloodlines plays out across six linear stages, with no complications or hidden secrets. In the style of the NES games, it tested players’ reflexes and twitch skills with a steady gauntlet of enemies, environmental traps, and platforming hazards. Familiar enemies like Axe Knights and Red Skeletons dog players alongside never-before-seen foes. This includes a host of burly minotaurs capable of wielding a variety of improvisational weapons, as if they were a tribe of demihuman Jason Bournes. The platforming challenges and play physics in Bloodlines call back to the series’ early days: slightly stiff, but surrounded by thoughtfully crafted environments that complement rather than compete with the heroes’ limitations.

In “heroes,” we find one of Bloodlines’ critical distinctions: It abandons franchise tradition by not giving players a member of the Belmont clan to control. On top of that, its whip-wielding protagonist John Morris is merely one playable option rather than the sole hero. Players can also elect to complete the adventure with a Spaniard named Eric Lecarde, a spear-swinging fighter capable of more limber footwork than the beefy Morris. Fans of classic vampire lore might find the name “Morris” familiar, which speaks another of Bloodlines’ ambitions: The game attempts to draw Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula into the Castlevania universe, with John Morris cast as the son of the novel’s doomed vampire slayer, Quincy.

Bloodlines abandons franchise conventions in another respect: Only a single stage is set in Transylvania. Every previous Castlevania adventure had taken place in Dracula’s castle or in its immediate environs, but befitting its British and Spanish protagonists, Bloodlines instead sends players on a journey around the world on a quest to track down the site of Dracula’s impending revival. Dracula’s niece, Elizabeth Bartley, seeks to being the Count back to life amidst the chaos of World War I. The game’s globetrotting succession of stages — which include the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a German munitions factory — serve as the backdrop for the heroes’ quest to find Bartley’s hideout, since she has decided not to set up camp in Transylvania.

Unsurprisingly, the varied settings gave Konami’s development license to experiment with themes and visuals unlike those in any previous chapter of the series. The company had a real fondness for pushing the Genesis hardware to its limits and performing feats that narrowed the technological game between Genesis and Super NES, and you can see that on proud display in Bloodlines. Lighting and transparency effects lend visual depth to the environments. The placid waters of Greece reflect the image of the heroes battling Fish Men across the ruins of Atlantis. Traps and hazards can be harnessed by the player to destroy monsters. The Leaning Tower in particular presents a showcase for advanced Genesis programming techniques: It sways back and forth with an impressive and flashy simulation of Super NES’s Mode 7 tech. Toward the end of the stage, players travel around it on a series of platforms that creates an incredible Castelian-like rotation effect on a diagonal object.

Bloodlines’ excellence makes Konami’s failure to keep the game in circulation for the past 20 years all the more disappointing

Bloodlines puts new spins on old standards, too. The traditional clock tower shows up here, midway through the game, in the form of the German factory. It throws in some new variations on the theme, forcing players to ascend staircases that revolve around a central gear shaft and introducing multiple mid-bosses to contend with along the way. The final castle, nestled away in the British countryside, throws massive multi-jointed mechanical knights at players as they attempt to navigate dizzying, upside-down rooms of illusion. Bloodlines seems to have emerged from the primordial creative stew that gave us Gunstar Heroes, which was created by Konami expatriates around the same time as Bloodlines. For example, the munitions factory boss takes the form of a dizzyingly animated segmented boss reminiscent of Gunstar’s Seven Force. The penultimate showdown with Death resembles Gunstar’s famous board game battle, forcing you to clear out separate battles contained in a spinning hand of Tarot cards before taking on the Grim Reaper himself.

Altogether, Bloodlines’ various parts add up to what is perhaps the most inventive and technically impressive expression of the classic action-platformer Castlevania concept ever put to silicon. Its excellence makes Konami’s failure to keep the game in circulation for the past 20 years all the more disappointing. The company seems reluctant to republish any of the dozen games it created for Sega Genesis, including other masterpieces like Rocket Knight Adventures, so it’s hard to know if we’ll ever see Bloodlines again. Aside from a now out-of-print direct sequel (2006’s Portrait of Ruin, in which the ghost of Eric Lecarde serves as an advisor to John Morris’ son) and a cameo for Lecarde in the bizarre Wii fighting game Castlevania: Judgment, Konami seems happy to forget about Bloodlines altogether. But Castlevania fans shouldn’t. Nearly a quarter of a century after its debut, Bloodlines remains a singular expression of the Castlevania concept — and an excellent one at that.