Vs. Castlevania (Arcade) Playthrough
307A playthrough of Nintendo's 1987 arcade game, Vs. Castlevania.
This video shows two runs through the game. The first is on the machine's default difficulty. The second, beginning at 27:00, is played on the hard setting. At 53:22 you can see a _very_ short-lived bit of gameplay from the hard mode's second loop.
I think I'll let the game's promo art handle the introduction here:
"ENTER ITS DARKNESS, IF YOU DARE!
Welcome to the shadows and horrors of Vs. Castlevania, the newest addition to Nintendo's Vs. System. Its dark domain is home to some of the creepiest creatures you'll ever find among the living... or the dead."
Thanks, poster. Sounds exciting!
Vs. Castlevania was part of Nintendo's Vs. series, a line-up of arcade cabinets that featured (sometimes enhanced) ports of popular Famicom and NES titles.
Whatever might be implied by the title, there's no multiplayer gameplay to be found in Vs. Castlevania, but there are a few important differences between this and the NES version of the game (https://youtu.be/gev1_Qwjze0) that make it worth checking out.
Since this is an arcade game, the difficulty level has been given a huge bump. Enemies do far more damage than their console counterparts -one hit by a fleaman in the final area on the hard setting wipes out 2/3 of your life gauge! - and you're given way less time to complete the first three areas so you're forced to sprint through those to avoid a time over. You also get fewer bonus points at the end of each level.
And if you thought the first loop was difficult, just wait until the second loop starts throwing enemies at you from the very first screen! If anyone ever thought that Castlevania was too easy, this will quickly change their minds.
The graphics are also a bit different. The colors are much brighter owing to PPU differences between platforms, so the darker gray colors in the NES game become vivid shades of pink in the Vs. version.
Those differences aside, it's pretty much the same as the NES game, but added challenge does make for a fun twist on the original formula. If you want to play it yourself, its available on the Switch and PlayStation as part of the Arcade Archives series, and it can also be emulated through MAME.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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