Castlevania time!
I have had this idea for awhile now and now I had some time to do it.
The biggest problem with this game is the day and night thing. It's a cool idea for a NES game but it's annoying when to time attack the game.
Because of this I had to do certain things.
First: I did get both the holy water and the white crystal before heading towards the second town. This forced me to kill a bunch of monsters to be able to afford em both. It's possible to skip the water but I need it later and also the timing with the second town was pretty good. One thing here you might wonder about is why I not stand where the person with the blue crystal appears at day when the day comes. This is simply because if I am on the same screen he won't be there. So I have to be a screen away from him.
I also bought two whips, the first I buy is after the second mansion and this is necessary because else I would have lost a huge amount of time by killing enemies slower.
The second time I have to wait for day to come is when I'm about to pick up the red crystal. This is good though because then I could collect some necessary hearts to be able to afford laurels and the Morning Star. I entered that town with 202 hearts and the Morning Star costs 200 so that was good.
Ok, so for the main improvement.
This game has a really cool glitch! Falling through floor. I use this as much as possible where I can profit from it. However, this is without question the hardest and most stupid glitch ever to perform! Even after doing this time attack I can't fully describe how it works. I noticed a couple of things though which might help if anyone wants to learn more about it:
  • First, to perform it you need to find a place where there are a ledge exactly 2 block higher then the level under it. Stand on this ledge/whatever, walk out, and the moment you start fall, hit the air with your whip. If done right you will fall through the floor!
  • When you start to fall from that ledge Simon (the hero) can fall in 2 different ways. Either he stands tall and falls orelse he is sort of crouching in the air and then starts the fall.
To be able to fall through the floor you MUST be in this crouching form, else I found it impossible to do.
  • Third, it either works or does not work. This helps actually when testing it. So if you are in crouching form and think you are gonna start falling through the floor but you are not, then you don't have to try another 1000 times.
  • Forth, to affect this you can try to do some small changes. For example is hitting air with the whip a good thing. This might affect whatever keeps you from succeding. And I do this quite often in my run.
In the fifth mansion I don't use the floor glitch while earching for the boss. This is because the screen scrolled down so fast so if I were to do that I would end up at the top of the screen. And that seems kinda useless :D
There are a few other tricks I use which might look strange. For example, when jumping and cracking your whip at the same time you will jump a bit higher than usual. This is good because then I can reach blocks I normally wouldn't be able to reach. Also, if you crack your whip or toss a water while you are near to land you will gain an extra pixel so I can reach blocks/platform I normally wouldn't do. One example of this is right after I get the flame whip.
I think that was it. It's about 3 minutes and 30 seconds or something faster than Bisqwits attempt and I'm satisfied with this. It's HARD to perform that glitch.
Enjoy it!
  • As fast as possible
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
/Walker Boh

Bisqwit: Even though I might see some places where this movie could be improved, at least I'm not going to do it because this game simply is so much work to play.
And the floor trick... nobody has yet figured out how it quite works, thus it requires thousands of retries per situation.
Finding the exactly right frame to whip and fall is only part of the trick - you also need to affect some unknown variables in the game. These variables might have something to do with subpixel movement, the game timer, or maybe something else.
I'll now process this movie.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #503: Walker_Boh's NES Castlevania II: Simon's Quest in 35:00.98
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Congratulations! I talked enough on the IRC channel already. Simply said, this video rocks.
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yes... very well done... i couldnt BELIEVE that was 35 minutes... so very entertaining!!
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I thought there was some glitch called the deborah cliff glitch that saved time but I don't see it mentioned in the description. Was it used?
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no
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Why not? Was it determined that it didn't really save time?
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Michael Fried wrote:
I thought there was some glitch called the deborah cliff glitch that saved time but I don't see it mentioned in the description. Was it used?
It wasn't, but Walker Boh will do some more tests about it. So far nobody here has been able to use it in the way claimed - to warp into near the end of the game.
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That's the hardest glitch I've ever tried to perform and so far I've had no success. That will be another run if I or someone else ever succeds I believe.
/Walker Boh
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Well that's no excuse, you have to keep trying. I assume we do know for sure this glitch really works, correct? Have any of you ever done it? Edit: Oops, I missed what Bisqwit said about you doing some more tests about it.
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Well, I see it as a warping version and a non warping. Maybe I'm alone with that but if anyone founds out how to do it please explain it and I will gladly do it.
/Walker Boh
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Maybe you could email David Wonn about it to see if he can give you a better explanation than what's currently on his site.
Post subject: *laugh* that was a very well-timed level up in there.
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Not much for me to say about the run quality. There were a couple of times where I saw what I thought was a suitable two-tile drop and wondered why you didn't glitch, but I assume you've tested all possible drops to death. Basically, this is a large improvement to what was one of the most entertaining runs on the site. Proper job!
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i thought this run was great. i'm not a castlevania fan at all or even like the games but this was done real well. yes from me
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I like it... and it looks like it's obviously going to be published. (Is it just me or are the color palettes of some of the castle backgrounds completely wacked out?)
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I tried performing the floor glitch before I played back the video and succeeded on my second try. It wasn't difficult at all. Or at least so I thought until I tried to do it again, and found it absolutely impossible. Anyway, the run: every time Walker Boh posts a new submission I get this "It came from nowhere!" with 50s horror movie voiceover in my head. Did anyone know he was working on this one? There were some spots where it looked like you could have jumped before whipping the first time, and some which looked like sloppy jumping, but I trust Walker Boh enough to vote yes anyway. Besides it's both faster and more entertaining than the last version.
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Truncated wrote:
Anyway, the run: every time Walker Boh posts a new submission I get this "It came from nowhere!" with 50s horror movie voiceover in my head. Did anyone know he was working on this one?
Besides that he had notified me personally, I knew it from the Simon's Quest discussion thread in the NES games forum.
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Thank you Truncated, and you other guys! If I didn't jump outside Mansions it's to delay my movement forward actually. Else I would have been forced to do some waiting before daylight in towns (for example where the guy with the blue crystal appears). If I didn't jump inside a Mansion I probably would have been hit if I were to jump.
/Walker Boh
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Bisqwit wrote:
Besides that he had notified me personally, I knew it from the Simon's Quest discussion thread in the NES games forum.
I've found one post from Walker Boh on October 9th saying that he might do it in the future. ...And that's all.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I've found one post from Walker Boh on October 9th saying that he might do it in the future. ...And that's all.
Indeed, that's what I was referring to.
Post subject: Movie published
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [282] NES Castlevania II: Simon's Quest by Walker_Boh in 35:00.98
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This is one of the most entertaining runs i've seen in a long time. there are a few minor improvments i see, for example in the first castle as you're jumping up the blocks (the area right after killing the gargoyle) you kill both skeletons as you're jumping, the first one would have hit you but the second one was pointless to kill, you didn't collect the heart he left...is this for luck manipulation? a few times you could have jump attacked when you didn't, most notably on the two headed creatures or in the swamps, stuff like that. when you did the floor dropping trick in the 3rd (? i think it was the 3rd) castle and dropped down 2 screens like that my jaw dropped, that was great. landing on top of where those bats are you went through the wall to the left, was it impossible to go right directly into the reaper's room? i suppose if it was, you would have...
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I will do an improved version. I'll fix that in the first Mansion you mentioned. As for everywhere outdoors I ahve to get the timing right when I need it too. For example be at town exactly the moment day comes so I can get crystals/whatever I need. This is a huge problem. Well, I'll see what I can do. In Mansion 3, if I walk to the right where I fall down two screens I died in a water animation. Comments and suggestion are appreciated.
/Walker Boh
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Just watched. Great movie! The critics I had was already mentioned above. So I save some time and just glorify you instead! :D Eager to watch the next version. *applauds*
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It feels longer than it really is, but this is still really fun. Loved when you timed a level up to refill your energy as you jumped into the marsh.
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Very nice looking movie. BTW, would it be possible to use the fall-through-the-floor trick to warp sometimes, like at the very bottom of a mansion? Or wouldthe screen keep scrolling down when ou fell through the floor?