Castlevania was one of the first games I got for my NES (I'm thinking it might have been my third or fourth game - it's been so long I can't remember for sure anymore). I've always been a huge horror fan, especially of classic Gothic, Dracula horror. I can't remember if I already liked horror and that was why I wanted this game, or if it was in fact this game that spurred my love of horror. In any case, this was one of my favorite games in my NES days, and I went on to play both Castlevania 2 and 3 for the NES as well (videos for those will be coming soon).
I remember it took me forever to beat this game when I was a kid. There were three distinct phases to the process. First, for the longest time I couldn't get past Death. It didn't help that I was trying to use the boomerang, which is not the ideal weapon for him at all, but after a while I got to where I could reliably beat him.
Stage two was mastering stages 16-18. I remember freaking out the first time I started stage 16 and saw my very first opponent was the bat boss from stage 3, and then there were more of them after that! In my childlike naivete I thought I had to kill them all. It didn't take long though to figure out the way to go was just to run past them. It took a little while as well to learn to manage the hunchback drops in stage 17, but soon I was confronting the Count himself. It then took a bit of doing for me get past his first form. I usually had very little health left after stage 17 and the random hunchback drops, and Dracula himself was quite a bit for a ten year old. I had to figure out how to keep him from warping right on top of me, then I had to figure out how to deal with his fireballs, and then I had to figure out how to actually do damage to him at the same time. It took what felt like forever, but I remember the moment I finally got that last hit in on him.
Stage three begins at this point. You see, I didn't know the Count had a final form. None of my friends had this game, so I was on my own. So you can imagine my shock when I got that last hit in on his first form and expected to have won the game, but instead he turned into some kind of demon who immediately breathed fire on me and killed me. I believe I screamed, "OH THIS IS BULL$#!@" (okay, I didn't say that, I was ten, but that's how I felt). I felt so burned I didn't play the game again for several months. Finally I picked it back up again and kept working on it until I finally did in fact beat it.
I would hate for all those hours I spent as a child mastering this game to go to waste, hence my desire to make this video for you, dear reader. My goals for this video were:
- Open all candles
- Show all secrets
- No deaths
It's not actually possible to get the contents of all candles, but I wanted to at least show what was in all of them. For one, the axe is required to open some candles in stages 13 and 15, and the last place you can pick it up prior to that is stage 7, so I have to avoid all other special weapons in candles in between. Also, there is a candle in stage 17 right before going to Dracula that can be opened but not obtained by any means considering it sits over a pit.
I'm chagrined to say it took me forever to complete this. I probably had at least 200 failed runs before finally getting this one. Why did it take so long? Here is a list of the most common things that would end my runs:
- 60%: Stupid input errors I would be too embarrassed to have immortalized in video.
- 15%: Accidentally picking up another special weapon that replaced my axe in stages 7-15.
- 3%: Igor being a jerk and killing me.
- 10%: Death being a jerk and killing me (hey, he's still hard).
- 2%: Getting knocked off the bridge by a bat in stage 16 (it was only towards the end that I figured out a pattern to guarantee a safe passage).
- 5%: Getting killed or knocked into a pit by the hunchbacks in stage 17.
- 5%: Getting killed by Dracula because I didn't have enough health left after stage 17 (@%$# hunchbacks!)
But my persistence eventually paid off, and so I present you with this video.
I plan on doing more videos for this game in the future. In particular I'd like to do a speed run (not trying for a WR, but just a competitive time), a high score run, and a second quest run with the same parameters as above. However, those will be down the road, and for now I'm moving on to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. I hope you'll join me for the journey.
