Castlevania Legends was originally intended to be the origin story of the Belmont clan. The game is about Sonia Belmont in her fight against Dracula. However, this story has been removed from the official timeline by IGA.
This run aims for 100% completion by acquiring the 5 "Belmont Treasures" (Axe, Pocket Watch, Dagger, Holy Water, and Cross). Getting all 5 unlocks a special ending, viewable after the credits are complete.
In comparison to the other Castlevanias for the Game Boy, there are several changes in how the game is played:
- Sonia is a woman. ZOMG! A FEMALE BELMONT?! UNHEARD OF! (Though she grunts awfully deep...)
- There is no scorekeeping, a rarity in the traditional Castlevania style.
- Sonia has an ability called "Burning Mode". This makes her temporarily invincible and also increases her horizontal running speed. However, it can only be used once per level/life. Also, when executed, it can not be halted.
- When you take damage, your whip power doesn't go down.
- You can get up to 5 Soul Powers, which are selectable from a special menu (the last one can be skipped, if you avoid the hidden level).
- Super Game Boy mode is supported, and is used in this run.
Since Burning Mode is refilled if you die, I take a purposeful death in Stage 4 so I can use Burning Mode on both Medusa and Alucard.
Because there is no score tally, I do not manage my heart count until the end of the game, where I beat it with 0 hearts left.
Runners Notes
Stage 1
This stage is freaken long...about 1/4th of the movie is just this level. If you can handle it, you're home free.
The way I battle the Spearmen sometimes may seem like a mistake, but it isn't. Sometimes damage to move through them is possible (and often I use it since they have 3 HP and one whip hit only does 2). However, if they're close to a wall or are moving in the same direction I'm going, I have to fight them.
Another note is that you'll see (unfortunately) a lot of lag, mostly due to the zillions of bats around. Usually when there's more than 3 enemies the game will slow down. However, since (usually) most of the enemies are behind me, it's 99% of the time faster to suffer through the lag.
During the boss right, you may notice that when he's rising I move to the left, then back to the right. This is to manipulate him to move to the right of the screen...a shorter distance.
Stage 2
Now that I have the Wind Soul in hand, I often use it to stop the skull heads from chasing after me, instead of turning around to give them a glance (much like Boos in Super Mario World). Occassionally I'm able to use this without jumping, caused by jumping on random oddframes that recognize that the A button was pressed, but not allowing Sonia to jump (thus not stopping me when I do use a special attack). There's no real consistancy to when it can be done, however.
A very interesting moment is the pocket watch room. Check out how close I let the skull head get to me. :)
During the boss fight, I occassionally pause to either avoid damage or to prevent the boss from flying to the top of the screen.
Stage 3
"Life is a resource" indeed. While I do have the Ice Soul (which restores health to full) I can't afford the 20 hearts...not in the budget. Sometimes I have to manipulate when I get hit, what enemies to attack, etc. Due to the fact that the level is mostly vertical, Burning Mode really has minimal benefit for being used in level, so I save it for the boss.
This level is really exciting near the end, due to that I'm at 1 life and often times escaping screens by mere pixels.
Stage 4
Similar to Stage 3, this is another fine example of "Life is a resource"...in more ways than one. I use, abuse, and eventually die, all in the name of saving time. Plus this allows me to use Burning Mode twice.
First: Medusa. If I wait one more frame before using Burning Mode, I get poked by that poking stick. Poke Poke.
Second: Alucard. Yes, him. He's such a pansy here though. Probably why IGA wanted this game removed so badly.
Stage 5
This level features several awesome things. One is massive use and abuse of the Saint Soul to hit distant enemies to avoid lag. Second, an awesome mini-boss fight. Last, one freaken bizarre glitch.
The Screen Scrolling Glitch occurs when Sonia moves too high vertically on the screen, to which one of four possible results could happen...
- 1: You die. If you go off the screen, it's like you went off the bottom.
- 2: You jump around like a maniac. This generally happens when you have less than half of Sonia's height between the floor and the top of the screen.
- 3: You make a false screen transition. If you perfectly grab on a rope as you hit the top of a screen, the game will do a screen transition and move you up one screen length. In the case of Stage 5, I can move higher up the long rope, avoiding a bat that would appear about where the "screen transition" is.
- 4: You completely confuse the game, creating a temporary flash of screens, then sending you to Stage 6.
This was very difficult to pull off. Most often I ended up TOO high, but I figured out that if I made some overjumps, that I could get to a proper height. Getting what I got here (result #4) was a complete accident. I had on a prior attempt executed #3, but when I had to redo Stage 5, I was having trouble getting the glitch to go. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, this came into being. It was cool. It was faster. It was kept.
Stage 6
This stage isn't mandatory, unless going for 100% (as it contains the last hidden treasure). It's short, it's fast, and I'm spending some time way too far to the right. But whatever works, right?
The boss falls exceptionally fast.
Stage 5 (the return)
Just like my first trip here, I execute the Screen Scrolling Glitch to climb the vertical section quicker (but only result #3 this time). After this, the rest of the level is pure heart management to its best.
Dracula Fight
The nice thing about Dracula is that he has a set pattern, even on a console. You always know where he (and later, his head) will go.
This is an improvement over the cancelled submission by 6419 frames.
- Takes damage to save time
- Suffers death to save time
- Aims for fastest time with 100% completion
- Abuses programming errors
- Manipulates luck
- Genre: Action
Recorded on VBA Recording-20. (VBA Recording-19 will desync.)
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots
of this movie and placed them here.
Oh! I also corrected the ROM name.
- You indicated
Castlevania - Legends (U) [S].sgb - I updated it to
Castlevania - Legends (U) [S][b2].sgb
Sir VG: Reverting game name, as NESVideoAgent is incorrect. Screenshots are also messed up, since it doesn't know what version of VBA to use. I removed all but one image NESVideoAgent took and replaced them with some of my own. Others are welcome to supplement these with images of their own.
adelikat: Good viewer response, well optimized, and entertaining. I am accepting this for publication.