Tool-assisted movies (3)

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (1993) is an important milestone in the Castlevania series and a predecessor to the even more successful Symphony of the Night. This game was ported two years later to the SNES as Dracula X.

In this installment of a popular TV show, a miserable little pile of secrets known as Richter Belmont is once again called to have it at a savior mankind needs so ill. Armed with his trusty key and a question mark nicknamed 'Vampire Killer', he makes sure no candleholder remains standing in Dracula's castle. Eager to just get it over with, he plows through without as much as a slightest regard to his purple-haired girlfriend and some other people still imprisoned there. It seems what little time one has to spare in a TAS is best spent moonwalking and yelling at the screen, anyway.

A slower version of this run taking only the regular stages is available. Due to this movie being faster, that submission was cancelled, yet there are arguably more entertaining moments in the cancelled submission (the author recommends stage 4 in particular).

Contrary to the other Rondo of Blood TASes on the site, this one not only goes through the hurdles of saving three useless villagers from their prisons (with some of said prisons even resembling their regular habitats), but also plays through all the picturesque levels just to prove that Maria isn't really a suboptimal character. No videogame character fighting dark priests by stoning them to death with small white birds should ever be called suboptimal.

If you want to see a shorter run through the game, we suggest watching these: Richter any% in 23:18, Maria any% in 24:22.

After having been resurrected by dark priest Shaft, Dracula set out to destroy Richter Belmont's home village and kidnap some of the important characters for him to rescue. One of them is Maria Renard, a 12-year-old vampire huntress who is used as the player character in the second half of the movie after getting freed by Richter.

Despite her prepubescent age, Maria is faster and stronger than Richter, and one can only guess how she managed to fall a victim to kidnappers in the first place. Unfortunately, all of her speed advantages become nullified by a lengthy cutscene following her release, making this TAS slightly longer than the Richter mode.

This is a 2.5 second improvement to the previous movie.