Topic: Nintendo Power Lied to Me: A Retrospective.

[Ridureyu]

...Well, it did!  

Castlevania (NES) was one of my very first Nintendo games. It was, in fact, one of the group my parents bought (Along with Super Mario Brothers, Sqoon, Metroid, Donkey Kong Jr., Contra, Alpha Mission, and a few others).  I absolutely loved the game, but it would be a few years before I would finally conquer it.  I was a wee tyke, you see, and Castlevania is not an easy game.  I also had not discovered the carnage you could cause with holy water(or a "Fire Bomb," as we called it back then) and triple shot, instead usually opting for boomerangs.  Stage One was always easy, with only the occasional slipup if I did stupid things and jumped in the water.  Stage 2 was mostly fine, but gave me my first stumbling block in the form of medusa heads and those spike traps (I cheated and used the stopwatch).  With the watch, Medusa was easy!  Stage 3 held me up for a little while with all those drops and the fact that I had to deal with ravens and bone pillars (remember when they were viable threats? Oh, those were the days!).  And the mummies, of course, but they were at least killable.  For some stupid reason I'd almost always grab that dagger and gimp my attack power against them.  Now, Stage 4 was when the game really started getting trough.  if it wasn't fishmen drowning me or flea men dry-humping me, Frankenstein and Igor would kill me every time! I eventually got a nice rhythm going with the axe (Oh, if only I had learned the Holy Water trick!), which randomly drops from flea men earlier in the stage.  And then there was STage 5.  Axe Men who were a threat, flea men, bone pillars, red skeletons, and it was a long time before I ever got to fight Death.  You can figure out how that one went, of course.  After a long while I finally managed to squeak out some victories against the Reaper, and Stage 6, although difficult, was nowhere nearly as nasty as 4 or 5.  And so, Dracula!

Now we get to the part about Nintendo Power.

See, way back in their first issue, the Counselor's Corner section had a question devoted to Castlevanioa, specifically its "five" bosses:



Let's analyze this little piece of advice, shall we?

Queen Medusa - she can be stopped by the Watch.  This is actually pretty good advice, although if you've got holy Water you can do the same thing for fewer hearts.

The Mummies - Besure to take them out, one ata time.  Ignoring the fact that the typist seems to have had a seizure... no.  The best thing to do in my experience is alternate attacking each Mummy, and aiming more for taking out their bandages than hitting them.  Keep yourself out of harm and wear them down.  But thanks to Nintendo Power, I always wasure to take them out, one ata time.

Frank - The Dagger or a Fire Bomb will take the spring out of his step.  Guess who tried daggers?  Silly me!  And here we seen an example of the Nintendo Power editors trying to be witty at the expense of gameplay advice.  "Take the spring out of his step."  Look, "Frank" is not the springy guy you have to worry about.  At least a little bit of advice on Igor would be helpful.  How about, "If the dwarf hits you, just give up."

Grim Reaper - A Boomerang or Dagger will make sure that he doesn't come back to haunt you.  I would like to take the time to point out that in all these pictures, the player is using Holy Water.  Somehow that escaped me when I was seven.  Also, the dagger is a really stupid idea, trust me.  Crosses were kinda nice, but I ended up doing my best using just trhe whip and maybe an occasional boomerang to clean up errant scythes.

The Count - A Boomerang to the head will cool his jets.  Nintendo Power lied to me.  First, they made it look like a boomerang was all that was needed to "cool his jets," not 16 careful strikes to the head timed to dodge his fireballs.  Also, he doesn't have any jets.

Anybody notice what's missing?  Well, besides the Phantom Bat, of course.  Poor guy always gets ignored.  Come on, anybody?  Bueller?  Bueller?  Oh yeah, that's right! Dracula's Second Form.  In a way, it's kind of nice that Nintendo Power didn't spoil that little part of the fight, because this means I had no clue what was coming.  After fighting and dying against Dracula about twenty times (Come on, I was seven. Consistent timing for sixteen hits its haaaaard), I( knocked the count's head off, stood up, and cheered, "I DID IT! I BEAT CASTLEVANIA!"

And then I died painfully.


In light of Dracula's second form, the very specific strategy needed to beat him (Since you can't run under him when he jumps, you pretty much need holy water), and the fact that using the Cross will pretty much get you killed against him, I think that it's now time to propose a new entry to Nintendo Power's "points" on defeating "the five boss characters."

[X]

Yeah Nintendo power wasn't the most accurate for giving out solid advice. I even fell for trying out the daggers to get rid of Igor and then finding out just before I died that 'I can't KILL Igor!' so the monster finished me off right there. The phantom bat and Medusa are fine with using the stopwatch so there's no real false info there. to kill the reaper I personally use the axe with a triple shot and *BOOM!* he's dead. The mummies I generally use holy water as well with the Monster although the Monster fight can be a little hit & miss at times. With Dracula I use the boomerangs. I try to conserve as much ammo as possible and have a triple shot with me before facing him.

-X

[PFG9000]

...Well, it did!  

You're very funny.  I didn't read Nintendo Power until way after the fact, and I sucked balls with Castlevania when it first came out because I was something like seven years old, so I don't have much to add to this thread.  But it was a fun read.

[Vampire Killer]

Literally lol'ed when I read the caption for the second form. Good show old bean, good show.

Yeah, sometimes Nintendo Power got a bit GamePro'ish, if you know what I mean.  Still, i used to love the mag when I was a kid. Was like my bible (sadly).

[Ridureyu]

Addendum: Dracula Form 2 was how I learned the holy water trick.  I already knew it was useful (one-shotting axe armors is nice), but hadn't connected the dots to freezing boss characters yet.  That was the one that taught me what to do.


It certainly cooled Dracula's jets!

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Yeah he certainly couldn't do his JetJump with that cooling 'em! xD

[Ridureyu]

To this day, I still don't know any other strategy that consistently works on him. Not being able to go under when he jumps definitely complicates things.

[X]

Not being able to go under when he jumps definitely complicates things.

Actually you can. I've done it occasionally. But you have to wait for Dracula to jump off-screen before you make your move and make sure you are as close to him as safely as possible before he jumps or most likely he'll land on top of you.

-X

[Ridureyu]

Well, he has two types of jumps, low and high. You can go under a high jump, but it's random which one he does, and it's more likely than  not that he'll just do low jumps until you're cornered.  Without holy water, it's a completely random crapshoot.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I always thought his third jump was always the tall jump.
Interestingly enough, the Leviathan Gargoyle in CV3 follows that rule as well.

However, I'd have to replay CV1 and actually allow Drac's 2nd Form (which I call 'Phil') to move around & whatnot.  A dangerous thing to do!

[Vampire Killer]

However, I'd have to replay CV1 and actually allow Drac's 2nd Form (which I call 'Phil') to move around & whatnot.  A dangerous thing to do!

His last name wouldn't happen to be "My'crakin" would it?

[Ridureyu]

Yeah, I might be mistaken. I haven't tried to count his jumps in years.

(EDIT) just tried.  It took five jumps before he did a high jump, and he had alreadyc orner-pinned me from thebeginning of round 2 (it started with Dracula in the middle of the arena, which is three jumps long).

[Harrycombs]

I don't know if I wrote this before, but you can win that fight really easy with the boomerang. After grabbing it and all the hearts outside of Dracula's room, go back down the stairs and up again. The candles will all be back. Rinse and repeat. During the battle, aim at the fireballs with crosses and you'll destroy all 3 at once getting a crazy amount of points and there is a very good chance he'll drop the 2 and 3 power ups. Then just throw a bunch of crosses anywhere and the chances are you'll win. On the second form you'll be able to hit him so many times so quickly he probably wont be able to jump on you. This is ridiculous cheap and not intended, but you can beat him without holy water...

[X]

During the battle, aim at the fireballs with crosses and you'll destroy all 3 at once getting a crazy amount of points and there is a very good chance he'll drop the 2 and 3 power ups

I always camp out at the tower entrance to Drac's throne before facing him. However you don't need to fight Dracula in order to get either the Double or Triple shots. Just use your boomerang to take out the candles and they will drop the shots. Once you've got the triple shot and 99 hearts, you're good to go!

-X

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

You risk running out of time if you try to grab 99 hearts.  You're fine after 64 or so.

And yeah, just in case, I try to deliver the final blow to Dracula's Face when he's in one of the edges of the screen, so that when Phil comes out, there's plenty of room to move back and back and such.