Vampire Killer (Castlevania) playthrough | Full run (2 loops) | No states |MSX2
1*The game doesn’t properly end unless you complete it twice in a row.
Vampire Killer is the MSX2 version of Castlevania 1. Due to the similarity in environments, if you would look at picture of this game, you be forgiven in thinking this was the NES version of Castlevania 1, but these versions are very different. They took the graphics and gameplay mechanics and ran wild with creating their own game.
The major difference is that every level is a maze made up of single screens rather than scrolling. Each level needs a key to be found to open the exit door. They are always very well hidden, usually inside a random wall. There are lots of chests and power ups to find too but you have to be picky about which power up you get because you can’t take them all and some are not worth the hassle of risking taking damage.
The difficulty in this game comes from the exploration. You really need to have an exact route planned in each level. This is harder than it would seem due to there being 18 levels which are usually very big. You have to memorise the exact path because if you veer off, you could lose the power ups that you have gained that could be vital. Some bosses won’t be possible without the exact power up so you have to know everything in advance. There are even nerf power downs in the candles so you even have to memorise which candles you should hit. The whole game truly is a test of memory. I spend hours going through a guide, studying the maps, and writing my own shortened guide so that I could quickly look at as I was playing without pausing. After many attempts, I finally memorised everything but this was the most efficient way of playing this game and I spent over 10 hours of studying and practicing.
The game is unforgiving with the number of lives too. Normally in Castlevania, you get infinite continues. In this game you have lives and that’s it. That’s for 2 playthroughs that it requires for you to properly end the game. It’s insane. In this playthrough, I died twice on one level and then had to do the whole game again with one life. Once you have everything memorised, it’s not that hard, but there is always something that I hadn’t encountered before that would ruin my run. Like a random enemy that never bothered me before, suddenly knocks me down a hole and I lose my vital power up, killing the whole game. This would happen often and I would have to go to a save state to practise the exact section so it won’t happen again. This happened multiple times and one death usually causes the whole run to be a failure. Especially when the hearts I was saving up for bosses get removed.
The controls are just like the NES except for the secondary weapons. They have a very strange control where instead of pressing up and hit like the NES, you have to press jump then left/right to throw a holy water, or jump and down to stop time. This means you have to jump every time you use one which is always messy. This control scheme also made me accidentally throw holy water, wasting precious hearts. The other crazy control is one level where you have to go through archways. Again, this game doesn’t like you to press up, so it wants you to press Down and Up at the same time. Impossible on a joypad, so I had to plug in a keyboard especially for this level.
This game is very different from any other Castlevania and I would say from any other game I have played too. I’ve never had to memorise a game so well. You need speedrunner dedication to complete this game. This is by far the longest I’ve spent on an old style Castlevania, but I don’t regret it. I just wish I had an MSX2 and the original game but getting them both together is stupid money. So as rare as it is for me, I had to play this on emulator, but I didn’t use save states and did this legitimately.
Rating – 9
Difficulty – 7
Played on retro pie emulator
JPN version
No Cheats
No save states
More like this:-
Castlevania games - • Castlevania Playthroughs
SNES games - • Final fight 3 - SNES playthrough/guide
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