This movie is a full, no-wall-sinking run of Harmony of Dissonance using Maxim. Rather than beat Dracula in under 24 seconds, instead each boss is thrashed to a pile of wailing pulp, and the game is beaten "as intended" in order to show off more of what Maxim can do. What constitutes as intended in this run is debatable, since Maxim zooms through the castle faster than Sonic on espresso, and sends shurikens ripping through boss flesh before they realize they have even spawned.

In essence, the only rule is to not get into the walls and 'wall sink' (aka zip vertically and warp to far away places.) I found this only restriction to work very well in helping defining the run. Whip launches could still be used to gain insane speeds and pass through walls occassionally, but the way we did it was with no wall zipping, only passing through walls without warping.

Door warping was used, but it seems that with only using that glitch, you can't get straight to Dracula. It's only used a few times, and saves backtracking, so I think it's ok. If the judges have a problem with it, let me know and I'll try to find a way to phrase it better or something.

This run started out when I finished the glitched Maxim run, and kept requesting/suggestion a full run with Maxim. The truth is that no matter how beefed up Juste gets, Maxim is the superior vampire hunter with better abilities and faster speeds. Maxim has been itching to demonstrate his skills without using 1337 hax to warp straight to Dracula. ANYONE can do that, but only Maxim can defeat all the bosses with style, panache, and pure machismo.

I never quite got started due to a lack of route. I tried using a picture of the two castles to make a route, but never got started. Then, out of nowhere ljffdb2 made a test run following a route that zggzdydp made. The test run was very rough in terms of precision, but the overall speed exactly foreshadowed what a full maxim run would look like. I started over from the beginning, using the new route, and stopped at around frame 2360 (because, get this, I actually forgot how to whip launch off of enemies. I had kept forgetting to not press left or right when doing the down kick). I handed over the .vbm to zggzdydp with the general message "here, have fun." I'd completely forgotten about it, when zggzdydp handed me back the .vbm about 2/3rds done with the run, and asked if I could finish it. How could I refuse? So I picked up from frame 30867, and completed it.

Now the run is not 100% perfect (but for the most part is it quite optimal). There's a few errors here and there, and better shuriken/magic management could save some time. I got careless a few times and almost ran out of shurikens for the bosses. I was nearly out of magic after the skull knight boss, and really began panicking that I wouldn't have enough magic to use Maxim's Mirage on Dracula. It all worked out in the end, and I ended up with 0 hearts. But I'm sure more hearts could have been collected with no time lost, because as I show shurikens have their uses besides just for bosses.

But this was fun to make (especially with a fair amount of it done for me hehe), and turned out to be 1 minute and 57 seconds faster than ljffdb2's test run. If I have the time, I'd love to do a more in-depth run with zggzdydp, getting competitive to squeeze out more frames saved, rather than the movie being handed over to the other author twice.

ljffd2b, your test run was awesome, I could not have figured out the route on my own at all.

zggzdydp, you're the bomb-diggidy at Castlevania. Draculas in all video games fear you.

Moozooh, you're the best for not slitting my throat over submitting yet another movie before Mischief Makers is done. (seriously, please don't kill me.)

Deign, I know you trumped me with the glitch run, but come back buddy.

Maxim is cool.

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.

mmbossman: This run has received good viewer feedback, and the clarification of the goals seem to be appropriate. I'm accepting this as a separate "Maxim - No Warps" category.