General Castlevania Thread

Minus stages 2 through 5, I've now personally played through every stage in the prototype.

Highlights:
- Only the first 5 stages are available under normal play. Once you enter Dracula's castle in stage 5, the game resets.
- Accessing stages 6-11 require passwords or cheat devices.
- Stages 7-11 consist primarily of placeholder graphics and quickly become devoid of enemies and candles.
- If you have zero hearts when you grab an orb, the game will enter an infinite loop where it keeps counting down your hearts over and over again. You need to have one or more hearts when you grab an orb.
- All bosses are implemented except for Dracula.
- Every defeated boss rewards you with an orb. In the final game many bosses are not followed up with an orb.
- Defeating the golden bat in stage 9 crashes the game.

The secret room in stage 6 actually exists, the player in the video I posted earlier just missed it. It contains only small hearts and a cross. No old man nor any dog.

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Unused secret room for Stage 9?
EDIT: CORRECTION, this one is in the final game.
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Unused intermediary part of clock tower, intended for after defeating the golden bat (stage 9) and before entering the clock tower interior with all the spinning cogs (stage A-2 in the prototype, stage A-1 in the final game). There's a pronounced spinning (mode-7?) effect when climbing up the tower in this unused segment.

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If you die in the unused A-1 block, an invalid password is generated. However if you die in A-2 (final game's A-1 of the clock tower) a valid password is then generated that will spawn you in the unused A-1 block. :wacky:

According to others who have hacked the game, the game's ending credits are not present in the game data.
 
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Keveh Kins

Pun Enthusiast

Been watching this incrementally over the last few weeks and it's a pretty fantastic overview of the entire franchise. Learned a fair few things about the development and of course, Konami being Konami, that I never knew :monster:
 

Nandemoyasan

Standing guard
AKA
Johnny

Been watching this incrementally over the last few weeks and it's a pretty fantastic overview of the entire franchise. Learned a fair few things about the development and of course, Konami being Konami, that I never knew :monster:

Fascinating video @Keveh. I knew most of what was in the video regarding the games themselves, but it was still interesting to learn the reasons behind it all. Poor Castlevania. Started out as a perfectly concise and simple concept; Vampire Hunter Vs. Dracula, and during its entire lifespan it has either been getting short-changed by budgetary concerns of the TMNT Franchise, shuffled around to different studios/directors, meddled in by Executive Incompetence, or at last, desperately tweaked to try to please both USA/European and Japanese audiences. And the whole time, Konami was over there with the sword of Damicles hanging over whoever happened to be working on it.

Fans' opinion of the series seems like they've always been a lot more favorable than Konami Suits or sales numbers would tell. They're by and large fairly decent games, but of all the classic series that have been muddled beyond recognition (looking directly at FF), Castlevania seems to have gotten the shortest of shrifts.

Cheers to you lads, your games DO belong in this world
 
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