Submission #3702: Grincevent's NES Castlevania "minimalist pacifist" in 12:53.41

Nintendo Entertainment System
minimalist pacifist
FCEUX 2.1.5
46481
60.0988138974405
3988
Unknown
Castlevania (PRG 1) (U).nes
Submitted by Grincevent on 9/16/2012 6:29:39 PM
Submission Comments
Simon takes another shot at this castle, but he felt horrible for all the destruction he caused last time. So now he tries to be nice to Dracula and leave the place untouched (even if his intention is to kill the count...). This ends up being quite a stealthy run without subweapons and only using the leather whip.

Goals of this run:

  • don't break the furniture. Candles and walls are left intact.
  • don't kill or even whip any enemy. But go mad in boss battles, they deserve to die.
  • aims for fastest time
  • don't pick up items. They can indeed still drop from projectiles for example.

The other things I do:

  • take damage to save time
  • die to save time

Tricks

The biggest glitch used here is the "critical hit" on bosses. In certain conditions, attacking while taking damage causes Simon to strike behind him and greatly damage an enemy. Also known as "damage transfer" (or something like that).
Damage boost is a huge time saver too. It's just the fact of being hit by an enemy/projectile in the air to gain extra height or extend a jump horizontally.
There was a lot of enemy manipulation too, and some epic fights against lag.

What was hard?

After realizing that bats and ravens die when Simon just touches them, I had to rethink the approach in some places. It meant no more damage boosts in stage 2, 6 and 10; and stage 7-8-9 became harder with the ravens swarming me. But it all ended well.

Emulator used:

FCEUX 2.1.5

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: It appears Castlevania is well suited for a pacifist run like this, as the end result is a quite entertaining run. The run is a clear display of superhuman ability in avoiding enemies and passing by them without needing to whip anything. Viewer response was very well as a result. Accepting for publication.
feos: Processing!
Last Edited by on 1/1/2022 6:14 PM
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