Topic: Anyone play the second loop/hard mode in any particular vania games?

[Sinful]

The only game I've done this with is Bloodlines for the US & Japanese versions. Don't remember how far I made it, as I was more messing around to see how the two versions differ in difficulty across all difficulty levels?

... Oh wait. Super Castlevania is the only vania game I've beat in both normal and second loop difficulty... but lately I've been playing the normal difficulty of this game still. Figure I'm not that good at this game yet, so I might as well not rush it by playing the hardest difficulty yet. Plus for some reason this is the only vania game that kinda ticks me off in how it's difficulty is designed. For some reason it always feel like I'm robbed cheaply of lives due to pits or spikes... and almost never because of it's enemies (on normal difficulty. On hard the extra meat scathered everywhere comes in handy due to a ton of surprise attacks. Cause if you don't know where an attack/bat is coming from, your gonna take a hit). Heck, I know for one jump, if your too close to the edge and try to jump on one of the spinning platforms, you'll 100% never pull it off. And lol, this drove me nuts for a bit when I first ran into this problem. I was like "How the heck am I not pulling these jumps all of a sudden? I've done tons of times before! And I'm sick of restarting this freakin' level! Roar!! " ... So yeah, I find that kind of strange that only I seem to see this game cheapness? Because I know one of the reasons people like this game is because it's not that hard... so I guess for this game in particular it would be good to ask if people even play the second loop of this game?... Heck, there is also a jump in this game for the second loop that activates a bat too, lol, and the jump involves jumping on a spinning platform to activate the bat too! Only this time you screw up and the bat/spinning platform gets you, your dead due to the screen in this game not being capable of scrolling down again after scrolling up. No plenty of second chances like in Dracula XX (man, I know I say this a lot, but it really bites that all the Rondo related games don't have a second loop/hard difficulty ... someone should create hacks to fix this).


The vania games I'm really looking forward to playing the second loop of the most is both the first & third NES/Famicon vania games. Next followed by the first two GameBoy games too. Really eager to see how they handled the second loop for these 4 classic vania games... for the third Castlevania game I'm almost tempted to use the code to reach it right now ASAP and at least take a sneak peek at it... but I'm gonna try and hold out until I've beaten the game on normal difficulty (sadly the furthest I made it in this game in only reaching the Castle via the two easiest routes... and almost reached it via the hardest route). This way I kinda have an extra drive to help motivate me to beat the game. ... For the first game, once I beat it I'm thinking of making a state save to keep for quickly reaching it, since this game don't have a password or code to reach the second loop that I know of?... Though since the game is not that long, I may just want to start from default difficulty and continue on into the second loop too? Or at least every now and then.

[X]

I've tried playing CVIII after finishing it the first run... it didn't end well  ..those damned floating skulls with the irregular patterns..!

*Goes off and swears illegible profanity*

I also did finished SCV IV...4 times in a row. Three of those were on the hard mode after I had finished my first official run, as I wanted to see if the game's difficulty would get even more harder with each play-through.

[markyjoe1990]

I've gone well over the 4th loop with Super Castlevania
I've done over 5 loops in Castlevania X86000
About 3 or 4 loops with Castlevania 1
1 loop with Castlevania III
I can't remember if I did any more.

[MKKhanzo]

Hi everyone, first post here!

I did lots of loops to CVI, III (wow I really did LOTS of loops here, all char combinations or even Trevor alone), SCV IV, maybe one to X68000, like 4 to each 64 game, 4 to SOTN, one Magician run to CotM, and like 2 to every Metroidvania after. I never replayed LoS.

[Pemburu Vampir]

I did three loops on CV1, two on CV3, two on CV4 and five on CV X68000.

[Chernabogue]

I made it to level 99 in the GBA port of CV1, but the difficulty does not increase.

[Tanatra]

I remember Morgoth saying years ago that he played CV1 until the level counter rolled over. I have no idea how many loops that is. I don't remember if anything happened once he passed 99-100.