this game is fucking horrible. castlevania 1 but finding keys with worse controls.
The weird sibling of the original Castlevania. Like many people in the west, I played it for the first time decades after experiencing the original games, but I think that gives us a unique perspective to appreciate the open-ended differences here vs. the more linear original. You can see how both games would go on to influence the series, and I think this one plays just as well as Castlevania proper, albeit with some annoyances not as prevalent in the other game.
Vampire Killer reuses a lot of assets from its NES counterpart, and presentation wise, it looks quite nice, but this is all to lure you into a false sense of security. Real quick, you'll realize what makes Vampire Killer so different from Castlevania. Hearts serve two purposes here: one is for your sub-weapons (standard stuff), and secondly, currency, kind of like Castlevania II. You use these hearts to buy from merchants who are sometimes in plain sight or behind a breakable wall. You have to hit these merchants a few times before they sell you anything, and after you're done with them, you can keep hitting them, and they'll eventually die. Free points!!! Speaking of breakable walls, they're everywhere in this game, and hitting at walls is vital as they can hide chests that can be opened with regular keys you find scattered throughout the levels, but more importantly, you might also find white keys. These white keys are required to progress to the next level. Unlike NES Castlevania, there's no boss at the end of every level; instead, they're at the end of every third level. There are 18 levels in total, which means a lot of hitting at walls and hoping you find those white keys.
You start off with your classic whip, but from the previously mentioned merchants, you can replace your whip and have, for example, an axe or a knife as your main weapon. They don't consume hearts, so spam to your heart's content. Although if you have the cross or the axe, which acts like the cross in this game, make sure to catch it on the rebound or you'll lose it and you'll be stuck with your shitty whip. You might find a merchant selling a candle; this will highlight which walls are breakable. Don't matter though, since your entire inventory, besides hearts, resets after beating a boss.
So truth be told, I was actually having an okay time with this up until stage 17, where I managed to softlock myself. See this block I subtly highlighted (this screenshot is not from my playthrough; I took this from a longplay on YouTube)? I got here after picking up the white key, but for some reason this block wouldn't break, so I checked a longplay on YouTube, and it seems to only break with holy water? Which I didn't have, so I had to jump off a pit and restart the level. This also reset my hearts, so I had to grind hearts to buy the holy water. Turns out there's another white key in this level close to the exit, so I didn't actually need to do any of that. The fun doesn't end there; Dracula in level 18 has a completely unique second form compared to his NES counterpart. He has a jewel on the top of his head, and to hit it you have to jump up these small platforms and attack from the top. The best method of attack is the knife. Luckily, the very first merchant you see on this level sells them for uhhhh 90 hearts. I didn't exactly get that many hearts back after spending most of them on the previous level, so once again, I grinded for these fucking things. Here's a very useful hint: you'll occasionally find red and white bibles. White bibles make merchant items cheaper, while red ones make them more expensive, so don't accidentally pick one up while you already happen to be holding a white bible, completely screwing yourself over. Play with save states if you really want to play this.
You start off with your classic whip, but from the previously mentioned merchants, you can replace your whip and have, for example, an axe or a knife as your main weapon. They don't consume hearts, so spam to your heart's content. Although if you have the cross or the axe, which acts like the cross in this game, make sure to catch it on the rebound or you'll lose it and you'll be stuck with your shitty whip. You might find a merchant selling a candle; this will highlight which walls are breakable. Don't matter though, since your entire inventory, besides hearts, resets after beating a boss.
So truth be told, I was actually having an okay time with this up until stage 17, where I managed to softlock myself. See this block I subtly highlighted (this screenshot is not from my playthrough; I took this from a longplay on YouTube)? I got here after picking up the white key, but for some reason this block wouldn't break, so I checked a longplay on YouTube, and it seems to only break with holy water? Which I didn't have, so I had to jump off a pit and restart the level. This also reset my hearts, so I had to grind hearts to buy the holy water. Turns out there's another white key in this level close to the exit, so I didn't actually need to do any of that. The fun doesn't end there; Dracula in level 18 has a completely unique second form compared to his NES counterpart. He has a jewel on the top of his head, and to hit it you have to jump up these small platforms and attack from the top. The best method of attack is the knife. Luckily, the very first merchant you see on this level sells them for uhhhh 90 hearts. I didn't exactly get that many hearts back after spending most of them on the previous level, so once again, I grinded for these fucking things. Here's a very useful hint: you'll occasionally find red and white bibles. White bibles make merchant items cheaper, while red ones make them more expensive, so don't accidentally pick one up while you already happen to be holding a white bible, completely screwing yourself over. Play with save states if you really want to play this.
Extremely fucked game with three lives and no 1-ups or continues. Has multiple points where you can softlock and are forced to take a death. Bosses are surprisingly easy compared to CV1. Still fun to play because it's Castlevania.
If you do decide to play this, consider using the Konami Game Master cartridge to get more lives - it's the only way you'll see use of the tens place in the lives counter!
If you do decide to play this, consider using the Konami Game Master cartridge to get more lives - it's the only way you'll see use of the tens place in the lives counter!
Not the elegant brilliance that is the NES Castlevania, but an interesting iteration nonetheless. Levels require exploration and multiple loops since you can only have one chest key at a time, and the stages have a Ghost House feel to them, looping back on themselves as you slowly map out the space in your head. Hit detection for combat is a little lacking compared to the rest of the series, but it’s still freakin’ Castlevania. Love the weirdly remixed reverberating ost.
not gonna lie I thought this was pretty alright
I like the idea of searching throughout the castle to find the key to access locked doors and move on to the rest of the stage, though 1986 was a little too early to be this ambitious. there's also these merchants lying around the castle who have possibly the weirdest way to interact with them. if you want to buy the item that have on them, you have to repeatedly hit them with the whip for some reason. what's with them are they into BDSM and only do business when they start getting down bad??? on top of that after you get the item you can continue to attack the merchants and even KILL THEM for extra points. this would be very awkward if this was canon, imagine a later Belmont researching Simon's history and finding out that he regularly murdered random merchants for fun or something.
interesting enough I feel like I had an easier time beating this than the NES Castlevania, but that's probably because enemies barely do any damage to you, not that I'm complaining I think my views on this game would be very different if that wasn't the case. the first half of the final stage sucks though, if you don't end up finding a key, there will be a point where you can't backtrack to get it and you're basically forced to fall in a pit and die, falling in pits is pretty painful by the way most people usually don't survive. I guess the final Dracula fight kinda makes up for it, the first form is pretty easy albeit padded out way too long and the second form is really easy if you kneel down right next to the block since it lets you easily avoid his only attack. unfortunately, instead of seeing the castle crumble in the end like most of the other Castlevanias, your reward for completing the game is TEXT IN A BLACK VOID. they had ONE job I hope whoever made that ending got fired from making video games forever and is now spending their time contemplating the mistake they made by not giving Vampire Killer a proper ending back in the old days of 1986. but yeah this was fine, NES Castlevania did it better but I can see some good ideas in here, and Konami did too which is why we got Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night, so pour one out for the OG and pay some respects, and maybe check it out if you want to see an interesting interpretation of Castlevania 1. make sure you get the SCC music patch for it because the SCC music goes pretty hard, just as good as the NES music and it'll help motivate you more :^)
Simon can kill random merchants hiding inside walls I still can't get over this
I like the idea of searching throughout the castle to find the key to access locked doors and move on to the rest of the stage, though 1986 was a little too early to be this ambitious. there's also these merchants lying around the castle who have possibly the weirdest way to interact with them. if you want to buy the item that have on them, you have to repeatedly hit them with the whip for some reason. what's with them are they into BDSM and only do business when they start getting down bad??? on top of that after you get the item you can continue to attack the merchants and even KILL THEM for extra points. this would be very awkward if this was canon, imagine a later Belmont researching Simon's history and finding out that he regularly murdered random merchants for fun or something.
interesting enough I feel like I had an easier time beating this than the NES Castlevania, but that's probably because enemies barely do any damage to you, not that I'm complaining I think my views on this game would be very different if that wasn't the case. the first half of the final stage sucks though, if you don't end up finding a key, there will be a point where you can't backtrack to get it and you're basically forced to fall in a pit and die, falling in pits is pretty painful by the way most people usually don't survive. I guess the final Dracula fight kinda makes up for it, the first form is pretty easy albeit padded out way too long and the second form is really easy if you kneel down right next to the block since it lets you easily avoid his only attack. unfortunately, instead of seeing the castle crumble in the end like most of the other Castlevanias, your reward for completing the game is TEXT IN A BLACK VOID. they had ONE job I hope whoever made that ending got fired from making video games forever and is now spending their time contemplating the mistake they made by not giving Vampire Killer a proper ending back in the old days of 1986. but yeah this was fine, NES Castlevania did it better but I can see some good ideas in here, and Konami did too which is why we got Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night, so pour one out for the OG and pay some respects, and maybe check it out if you want to see an interesting interpretation of Castlevania 1. make sure you get the SCC music patch for it because the SCC music goes pretty hard, just as good as the NES music and it'll help motivate you more :^)
Simon can kill random merchants hiding inside walls I still can't get over this
Wasn't planning on playing this for the project but I've been super into modding my shit lately so I figured why not give MSX emulation another try. I tried ages ago to play Metal Gear and I could only play the game at 1.5x speed without the game freezing. Fortunately, it isn't 2015 anymore, and I found a pretty solid answer to playing this game I didn't actually have any interest in playing. But it's a cool game! The lack of a scrolling screen is pretty hard to get used to at first, but they've shifted the style of the game around to play around this limitation. Rather than progress through rooms which test your abilities, Vampire Killer splits levels into multiple blocks where you must search through various rooms to find a key to the next section. It's pretty neat for 1986! What's not neat is that literally every level works like this. Also not neat is that the key is always hidden behind breakable scenery, with no indication the scenery is breakable. The game gets really boring and confusing quickly, and the stages looping back into each other, with the Unnaturally Looping Location trope, merely adds to confusion. It's fine to look back on and recognize the growth shown not only in Simon's Quest, but in future games such as Symphony of the Night, but this was evidently not the strongest effort, and it's probably why Konami has made little effort to preserve this piece. 2/6
Es increíble lo mucho que se puede estropear un juego variando un poco la hitbox y velocidad del ataque.
what the fuck
Released very shortly after the original Famicom Disk System release of the original Castlevania, "Vampire Killer", as it's also known, is an adaptation of the Famicom game made for the MSX home computer system. It's never been released outside of Japan, and this game also is the only one in this post not on the Anniversary Collection. This is one that I bought on the Japanese Wii U Virtual Console to play on Twitch, and I ended up beating it in a little over 2 hours in one sitting.
While this will be uncannily familiar in many respects to anyone who has played the NES game, the MSX version of Castlevania is a completely different game in just about every respect. Some of that is down to the differences in the programming realities of building a game for the Famicom vs building one or the MSX, but there is a broader design philosophy that makes the bridge between the two far far wider. While still a stage-based linear game, MSX Castlevania is much more of an adventure game than its predecessor. In many ways, it's a kind of missing link between the first two Famicom game, and playing this explains a lot of why Castlevania II was just apparently an adventure game for no reason when the first entry was a straight-up action platformer.
Some elements of this game are just like its Famicom counterpart. Your whip upgrades when you collect power ups and that power resets on death, there are six stages with generally the same bosses at the end of each, and you collect hearts as you go through the castle. However, there is a LOT here that is utterly alien to the original Castlevania experience. You have hearts to collect, sure, but they don't power your subweapons (not like the other games, at least). In fact, this game doesn't even have subweapons at all. You use these hearts at merchants in the castle to buy things like health refills, new weapons, maps of the areas you're in, or even a shield to block incoming projectiles. There are more weapons, yes, but they replace your old one. If you get the knives (which are REALLY good), they replace your whip, but you can throw those things infinitely and they take no ammo to fire. The only subweapons that are here are the holy water and stop watch, which are both very very finicky to use, and seemed to require jumping in the air and then holding up and then pressing B to actually use. I could never get them to work reliably.
Additionally, each of the six stages are separated into three areas, and in each area you need to find a silver key to open up the gate at the end to access the next area. There are also normal keys to collect to open chests that hide everything from passive items to maps to just bundles of hearts you can use to buy stuff. The keys you need to progress are often hidden very well, and some are eventually even outright fakes or red herrings that are only there to try and get you to kill yourself trying to get them.
That brings me to my ultimate gripe with this game. While the first Castlevania is difficult to the point of not being very fun, I wouldn't call it outright unfair more often than not. Its level design is unforgiving, absolutely, but it's never meanspirited. MSX Castlevania, on the other hand, is a VERY vindictive and unfair game. It is riddled with traps to kill you like the aforementioned false door keys, and that's not to mention the slimes that are hidden in ever so many candle sticks, the enemies that are so close to the edge of the screen that you cannot enter that screen without getting hit, or how if you miss the return on boomerang weapons like the axe or cross that weapon is just GONE and you have nothing but your weak default whip again. Even your map has limited uses for some inexplicable reason. And this is all on top of how this game has no continues, no passwords, and no extra lives. You have THREE whole lives to get through the entirety of a very labyrinthine Castlevania and kill Dracula with, and should you lose those lives, it's back to the start of the entire game for you. Thankfully, Simon is pretty beefy and he can take a lot of punishment, but even with save states it was pretty difficult at times to not die before getting to the bosses.
The bosses, paradoxically enough, are super duper easy, but this mostly revolves around how this is an MSX game and not a Famicom game. Like most MSX games, the screen doesn't scroll with you as you move. Like in Zelda 1, when Simon gets to the edge of the screen, the next screen forms ahead of him as he transitions to it. It doesn't move along with you as you move like the Famicom version of Castlevania does. Another interesting thing is that, while Simon himself has a knockback SO huge that it actually knocks you farther than you can physically jump forwards, enemies themselves don't freeze upon being hit and have no invincibility frames at all. Simon can also whip his whip REALLY fast, so if you just get close to a boss, you can let it hit you, tank the hit and just lay into them while your invincibility frames keep you protected. While this is otherwise a very difficult game, the bosses are easily one of the least difficult aspects of it. This also has one of the easiest Dracula fights by far (at least if you buy the very cheap knife weapon being sold right near his boss door), although it does drag on and gets a little boring after a while. All that said, the most unfortunate thing about this being an MSX game is that the slowdown affects the gameplay far more than in the NES games, meaning there were a lot of times where the game simply didn't recognize an input because it was stuttering so badly and I ended up getting hit or dying as a result.
As far as the presentation is concerned, it's still pretty decent. The music hardware of the MSX isn't exactly up to the standard the Famicom could produce, but they're still quite good renditions of the tracks from the Famicom game. The graphics are also good recreations of that, although I wouldn't say it's quite as pretty as the Famicom game. There are some quite odd aspects to the presentation though. Particularly, that not only is the epilogue to this Japan-exclusive game all in English, is also doesn't even call you Simon Belmont O_o
Verdict: Not Recommended. I can say very safely that this is the worst Castlevania game I've ever played and almost certainly the worst in the series. It honestly wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for the lack of continues or extra lives, but even then it'd just be a below average adventure game. Even with save states, this game is really only ever worth playing if you're just THAT curious about how it fits into the overall evolution of the series, and even then, I'd advise just watching a playthrough on YouTube before spending any money on it (let alone 800 yen like I did XP).
While this will be uncannily familiar in many respects to anyone who has played the NES game, the MSX version of Castlevania is a completely different game in just about every respect. Some of that is down to the differences in the programming realities of building a game for the Famicom vs building one or the MSX, but there is a broader design philosophy that makes the bridge between the two far far wider. While still a stage-based linear game, MSX Castlevania is much more of an adventure game than its predecessor. In many ways, it's a kind of missing link between the first two Famicom game, and playing this explains a lot of why Castlevania II was just apparently an adventure game for no reason when the first entry was a straight-up action platformer.
Some elements of this game are just like its Famicom counterpart. Your whip upgrades when you collect power ups and that power resets on death, there are six stages with generally the same bosses at the end of each, and you collect hearts as you go through the castle. However, there is a LOT here that is utterly alien to the original Castlevania experience. You have hearts to collect, sure, but they don't power your subweapons (not like the other games, at least). In fact, this game doesn't even have subweapons at all. You use these hearts at merchants in the castle to buy things like health refills, new weapons, maps of the areas you're in, or even a shield to block incoming projectiles. There are more weapons, yes, but they replace your old one. If you get the knives (which are REALLY good), they replace your whip, but you can throw those things infinitely and they take no ammo to fire. The only subweapons that are here are the holy water and stop watch, which are both very very finicky to use, and seemed to require jumping in the air and then holding up and then pressing B to actually use. I could never get them to work reliably.
Additionally, each of the six stages are separated into three areas, and in each area you need to find a silver key to open up the gate at the end to access the next area. There are also normal keys to collect to open chests that hide everything from passive items to maps to just bundles of hearts you can use to buy stuff. The keys you need to progress are often hidden very well, and some are eventually even outright fakes or red herrings that are only there to try and get you to kill yourself trying to get them.
That brings me to my ultimate gripe with this game. While the first Castlevania is difficult to the point of not being very fun, I wouldn't call it outright unfair more often than not. Its level design is unforgiving, absolutely, but it's never meanspirited. MSX Castlevania, on the other hand, is a VERY vindictive and unfair game. It is riddled with traps to kill you like the aforementioned false door keys, and that's not to mention the slimes that are hidden in ever so many candle sticks, the enemies that are so close to the edge of the screen that you cannot enter that screen without getting hit, or how if you miss the return on boomerang weapons like the axe or cross that weapon is just GONE and you have nothing but your weak default whip again. Even your map has limited uses for some inexplicable reason. And this is all on top of how this game has no continues, no passwords, and no extra lives. You have THREE whole lives to get through the entirety of a very labyrinthine Castlevania and kill Dracula with, and should you lose those lives, it's back to the start of the entire game for you. Thankfully, Simon is pretty beefy and he can take a lot of punishment, but even with save states it was pretty difficult at times to not die before getting to the bosses.
The bosses, paradoxically enough, are super duper easy, but this mostly revolves around how this is an MSX game and not a Famicom game. Like most MSX games, the screen doesn't scroll with you as you move. Like in Zelda 1, when Simon gets to the edge of the screen, the next screen forms ahead of him as he transitions to it. It doesn't move along with you as you move like the Famicom version of Castlevania does. Another interesting thing is that, while Simon himself has a knockback SO huge that it actually knocks you farther than you can physically jump forwards, enemies themselves don't freeze upon being hit and have no invincibility frames at all. Simon can also whip his whip REALLY fast, so if you just get close to a boss, you can let it hit you, tank the hit and just lay into them while your invincibility frames keep you protected. While this is otherwise a very difficult game, the bosses are easily one of the least difficult aspects of it. This also has one of the easiest Dracula fights by far (at least if you buy the very cheap knife weapon being sold right near his boss door), although it does drag on and gets a little boring after a while. All that said, the most unfortunate thing about this being an MSX game is that the slowdown affects the gameplay far more than in the NES games, meaning there were a lot of times where the game simply didn't recognize an input because it was stuttering so badly and I ended up getting hit or dying as a result.
As far as the presentation is concerned, it's still pretty decent. The music hardware of the MSX isn't exactly up to the standard the Famicom could produce, but they're still quite good renditions of the tracks from the Famicom game. The graphics are also good recreations of that, although I wouldn't say it's quite as pretty as the Famicom game. There are some quite odd aspects to the presentation though. Particularly, that not only is the epilogue to this Japan-exclusive game all in English, is also doesn't even call you Simon Belmont O_o
Verdict: Not Recommended. I can say very safely that this is the worst Castlevania game I've ever played and almost certainly the worst in the series. It honestly wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for the lack of continues or extra lives, but even then it'd just be a below average adventure game. Even with save states, this game is really only ever worth playing if you're just THAT curious about how it fits into the overall evolution of the series, and even then, I'd advise just watching a playthrough on YouTube before spending any money on it (let alone 800 yen like I did XP).
It's clever but can get tedious. I liked the last fight mechanically but once you knew what to do Dracula's phase 1 is just tedious.
I'm not gonna give this game an official score since I didn't beat it (or get very far at all). But it's awful. The music is like if they took the Castlevania 1 OST and removed everything great about it. Simon's whip has such a weird hitbox and it always goes through enemies. And the new structure is just abysmal. Here, break every single tile in the level searching for a key so you can move on. From what I've seen, this game is a 2/10. I might come back to it, but I'm not gonna play this before I move on to Castlevania II anymore.
this game is ass
The game ever
It's cool that they tried to make a platform adventure game early on, but Konami's first attempt with Vampire Killer sucked. The levels loop forever until you find the key which is such an annoying way to do this type of game. Maybe if the levels were closed off instead of looping so they made more sense to navigate, it could actually be kind of fun to navigate them...but it's not. It's nice that it has the graphics and music from the NES version more or less, but they're terribly downgraded and the game can't even scroll between screens because it's for the MSX. Save your time on a better game.
Vampire Killer is more notable as a historical document than as a game. Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night did not come out of nowhere; design concepts for later explorative Castlevania titles originate here. Its proximity to the original Castlevania and concurrent development indicate that explorative gameplay was being considered as a primary gameplay style from the series' inception. This revelation is fun to think about, but the game itself is awful. Game feel, design, mechanics, all are unacceptably poor. Watch a gameplay video, stroke your chin and think "huh, pretty cool how far back some of these ideas go", then move on. I managed to finish it with save states, and would not consider doing it any other way.
As a side note, Backloggd's description of this game is hilarious. I have no clue where it's sourced from, but it's so funny and SO inaccurate. I love it, and I hope it never changes.
As a side note, Backloggd's description of this game is hilarious. I have no clue where it's sourced from, but it's so funny and SO inaccurate. I love it, and I hope it never changes.