/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9960045
>how did people beat it back then if you die after just 3-4 hits
By learning and not getting hit.

>>9960045
Not just trying to sing my dick around, because why would you do such a thing with 30+ year old games, but I love Castlevania and can beat it so quickly I can run through it in like 25 minutes or so with no deaths - and I'm not some gaming god or anything. The key is learning the flow of the stages and hat sub weapons to use on what bosses, which is to say the holy water in nearly all instances. You can easily get to the point that you're good enough at it that you'll start setting challenges for yourself. Easily one of my top 5 games, but I wouldn't say it's in the top ten hardest for the NES, maybe not even the top twenty.

>>9960045
Remember, you see a hunchback you kill it, immediately and with extreme prejudice

>>9960045
Castlevania isn't tough,,, until you get the Ax Armour/Medusa hallway and fight Death who is by a wide margin the hardest boss in the game.

>>9960045
There are definitely some malicious things in this game. I think the walk speed is a good example. Even Ninja Gaiden gives the player a decent walk speed. However, beating a level is especially satisfying because the player moves like a fucking tank.

>>9960045
Abusing save states makes it much harder

Probably one of the more reasonable NES games. Don't play arcade games or the crazier NES games.

>>9960045
Like many retro games, it's more about knowing the proper strategy than brute-forcing through pure mechanical skill. Aside from that just practice the level layouts and you should have it in no time. Compare that to doing like a no death run with no subweapons and that's actually extremely challenging, so don't handicap yourself by not using the proper subweapons.

>>9960045
>Jesus this game is brutal, how did people beat it back then if you die after just 3-4 hits?
>Even with abusing save states the game is still not that easy
>>9960059
>Remember, you see a hunchback you kill it, immediately and with extreme prejudice
lol came to ask this! what part did you give up on op? I remember getting rekt by the bird hunchback drop until I got good. Good times!

imagine its 1986 and you have 1 or 2 video games to play instead of the entire world history of video games available for you to play instantly. you play it over and over and when you get it done it feels like an actual accomplishment

>>9960053
So much of C1/C3 (really almost all Classicvanias except for Bloodlines) is about finding and holding onto the right subweapon.

>>9960174
Other toys existed. TV and movies existed. Music existed. Real life and friends existed. Books and magazines existed. If you've ever extensively played bad games, because "it's the only thing i have" you're a fag. Simple as.

>>9960059
Sound advice in Castlevania and in life.

>>9960261
>Other toys existed. TV and movies existed. Music existed. Real life and friends existed. Books and magazines existed.
yeah but when you played games you were limited to the few you had so youre just wrong. youre gay

Save states just enable little brothers to beat the game.

>>9960045
Castlevania isn't that hard. Except the final part of stage 5.

>>9960045
It's all about knowing which secondary weapon to have and when. Those are key to beating the game. That and the game having infinite continues makes it doable.

>>9960045

Castlevania is probably my favorite NES game. You absolutely don't need save scumming to beat it. It's not too hard once you know some basics and practice a bit. Holy water is crazy good vs bosses because it stun locks and damages and is good period. Boomerang is good all-rounder, especially with triple shot. Axe is situational and the throwing knife is generally subpar. You need to break candles with your sub weapons so you can pick up double shot and triple shots. These allow you to spam your subweapons. There are also hidden roast chickens hidden in many walls, and there are some secret 1-ups here and there. Like, even if you gameover, all it does is send you to the beginning of the level rather than the beginning of the game. I encourage you to stop save-scumming in general, but especially in this game. It won't help you to get better and learn the levels. Look up the maps instead or something and you can learn where shit is. You need to practice to show up at each boss with decent equips and hp. States go against that.

>>9960393
omega based take castle boomer

Reminder if you used Holy Water you didn't beat the game

>>9960413

It's not like the game hands it out very often. You usually have to beat the whole level to actually have it at a boss fight. But yeah, these days I usually opt for boomerang because more interactive and less cheesy

>>9960413
>reminder if you used a weapon the game gives you to beat the game, you didn't beat the game
lol

>>9960261
Sure, every kid in the 80s had parents who would get them all the toys and books and VHS tapes they ever wanted. Everyone had cable TV instead of just 5 channels playing 70s reruns all the time. Nobody ever lived in a boring suburb where everything and everyone was far away and you needed a ride from your parents every time you wanted to hang out with your friends.

I got 1 book per week (usually finished in 2 or 3 days), and 1 movie or game rental per week. Had 2 magazine subscriptions, which meant maybe 2 or 3 hours a month of reading. Most kids I knew had less than that (they read basically nothing that wasn't schoolwork). There were worse ways to spend time than playing Castlevania repeatedly.

>>9960045
It's very consistent and doesn't punish you for continuing in any brutal way (there are infinite continues and you're just put back to the start of the level). You can beat it with brute force once you figure things out and even without continues it's not very hard. Try to figure out what causes problems for you and what subweapon or tactic can help you against it, attempt and once you are skilled enough, persevere.

>>9960045
Easily? CV1 is not "brutal", not by any stretch of the imagination. If you think it is, you're just bad at video games, that's all there is to it.

I remember getting dragged to some gathering at another family's house, there wasn't really anyone my age to talk to so I wandered around and one of them had a NES in his room and he said I could play it so I played CV1 and sat down and beat the whole thing in one sitting in like 2 hours. It's not a hard or unfair game.

>>9960045
I beat it in an afternoon on my first attempt, I don't know why it was so frustrating to millennials when it's clearly easier than most of the NES library. For the record I can't get further than an hour into Dark Souls so I'm not some master gamer or anything

>>9960045
Ah, it's a shame I can't find it but there used to be a good 8~ minute video on all the little tips and tricks to make Castlevania a bit easier. Helped me in my playthrough around 4 years ago.

Honestly, OP. It's not that hard at all, I can finish it in about an hour these days when originally it took me around 6-8 to get through the game. Abuse Holy Water as much as you can and just learn the layouts of the stages and how enemies react, also make sure you're spamming your subweapon on candles and stuff, it can drop the Roman Numeral boxes (II, III) which allow you to fire 2 and 3 of your subweapon instead of just 1.There's a lot of random secrets in the walls and stuff, like Pot Roasts that give you health and sometimes you can find items that give you points (which help to get you 1ups).

The only hard part is the Medusa Head room before Death which you just need to run and jump through pretty much, as long as you have Holy Water you're golden. If the game is really difficult, unironically just look up some tips videos on Youtube to teach you all the secret spots so you can finish the game without Save States.

>>9960045
Games had instruction booklets that usually explained the stuff you needed to know for gameplay. Someone jumping into Castlevania via the collection or Virtual Console isn't gonna be going in with the knowledge that they can and should level their subweapons, for example.
Also, I think people stuck with the game and the more they played, the more of the levels and enemies they got used to and could better play against. For me at least, I struggled my first couple CV1 playthroughs but on the following runs those tough endgame stages and bosses became much less intimidating.

>>9960739
Not to mention, when many games had similar levels of difficulty like, getting good at one meant improving your reaction times and spatial awareness, to the point where it made you better at other games as well.

Modern games handhold players SO MUCH that it literally causes skills to atrophy. Even when they're hard, they let you replay the same content frequently over and over until you brute force through it, and never really learn anything (to say nothing of what quest markers and button tutorials do to stifle critical thinking and memory). I remember my own skills backsliding once after the emergence of the 3D era until I got really hooked on God Hand. Mastering that game, especially on hard "kick me" mode took so much vein-popping eye-bulging concentration that when I finally beat it, I went back and played some other "hard" games in my collection and everything felt like it was literally moving in slow motion. Real "Neo at the end of the Matrix" kind of feel.

>>9960045
It was made needlessly hard with the western localization as always. Jap version is the definitive version.

>>9960823
>CV1
>straightforward linear action game
>localization
see how bad the bait is
they're not even trying
and they'd STILL be wrong even if it was CV2, as the localization did little compared to the writing of the original

>>9960825
Are you stupid? The enemy damage values were jacked up in the western version. Shut up when you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.

>>9960831
Mentally ill retard. One, "damage values" are not "localization", moron. Secondly, there was no CHANGE in the NES version. The FD cart version had an optional "easy" mode that was excluded from the NES. The normal difficulties were equivalent.

So yeah, anon, "Shut up when you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about", you sad, trolling, kneejerk little zoomer.

>>9960836
>The FD cart version had an optional "easy" mode that was excluded from the NES.

It wasn't excluded. The Famicom cartridge re-release came out after the NES version.

>>9960836
So you are retarded afterall. Localization does not mean translation.

>>9960823
>>9960825
>>9960836
your bait got exposed. you post this shit for every cv game. kys zoomer

>>9960840
holy shit you're dumb. still baiting this garbage again and again every thread.

>>9960823
>Castlevania was bad because of.... the localization!!!
Retard.

>>9960848
Yeah the same thing happened with 3

>>9960831
You're wrong. The two games that got heavily changed by localization were Castlevania 3 and Bloodlines, both of which had far bigger changes than just damage values and were generally made to be harder. Castlevania 1 only lacks the save system present in the FDS release, which does make it harder for beginners, but nothing more.

It's tough but ultimately the levels are pretty short and you have unlimited continues, just keep chugging away and you'll have a lucky run eventually. Limited continue hard gameover games are another story, unless it's mario tier you just have to accept each individual game as a long term hobby.

>>9960584
I went to a friend's house once and he had a copy of castlevania, and the controller was broken and the left on the d pad didn't work. I was only 4 years old and beat the game in one sitting, didn't know it had sub weapons either.

>>9961006
nice larp

You can't complete stage 2 without pressing left

>>9960742
I had a similar experience, where i got back into fighting games and by extension retro games. Suddenly every new game with some notable exceptions became ridiculously easy.

>>9960045
NES games were designed to stretch out a 2 hour game in to a 20 hour game. Which usually meant just killing you all the time usually.
My point is don't feel bad about dying 500 times, because thats what happened to everybody their first time.

>>9960045
I'm not even very good at this game and I'm gonna tell you to git gud.

>>9960045
Play the Japanese version on Easy Mode. It eliminates knockback, gives you more weapon energy and more health I think. That's how I beat it anyway. Bloodlines is also easier in the Japanese version but I've only played the US version so far.

>>9961485
That mode only exists because that version of the game was released in 1993. By then mostly kids age 10 or less still played Famicom.

>>9960045
You might like Kick Master. Thanolan is more nimble than Simon and it retains some of the same high quality music and art direction despite being done by a completely different developer and team.

>>9961573
Forgot pic

>>9960045
It elongated the game time and caused what would other-wise be a 20 to 30 minute game into a several-hours-long feat. This allowed Nintendo to make games that felt like they took forever, while also getting away with selling guides.

You see, people give Sierra shit for selling hint books for their adventure games, but Nintendo did the exact same thing, only instead of hints, they sold cheat codes and exploits in their hints books.

>>9961573
>You might like Kick Master. Thanolan is more nimble than Simon and it retains some of the same high quality music and art direction despite being done by a completely different developer and team.
lolwut if op is too retarded to beat castlevania there's no fucking way they're beating kickmaster. are you outta your mind?

>>9961573
Is the KICKMASTER
>Can only do high kick or sweep no medium kick
Some "master" lol

>>9960045
Don't get hit.

>>9960739
Imagine paying Nintendo for a classic to play on switch and they can't even include a pdf of the manual

>>9960045
Weirdly it took me awhile to finally beat Dracula once I got to him. The previous stuff in the game was hard but I guess by the time I finally got to Dracula I was burnt out and he was a little harder than he really should have been. A fantastic game though definitely one of the best on NES. There is no need to abuse save states here or even use them. The only NES game I have quit on so far is Battletoads. I don't know if I have the skill for that game because even with save states it fucked me that badly. I refuse to beat retro games with shitty ass save states.

>>9961767
That sucks, the Wii VC used to have great manuals included.

>>9960045
This game is pretty forgiving honestly. I think it almost perfects "tough but fair". Every obstacle and enemy is very deliberately placed with care and mostly all of them have attacks that are easy to learn and subsequently easy to counter.
Fuck Death though wow I suck ass at that fight.

>>9960739
Virtual Console on the Wii at least did have a manual for literally every game, I've always been fascinated by this. Like there's a fuckton of 80s and 90s games and each has its own manual

>>9960045
OP look for chicken hidden in the walls. You can watch a video but if you just whip at random walls sometimes there's food or items hidden inside. Also use holy water whenever you can, and for Dracula use the cross.

>>9960848
After playing the JP version I kind of agree with him, they did this with Bloodlines as well.

>>9960453
>these days I usually opt for boomerang
The boomerang is the only way I've ever been able to beat death. Spam crosses at death and concentrate on whipping his scythes.

i got the achievement for this game by save stating literally every 0.5 seconds

>>9961021
You just flip the controller over dumbass

>>9960261
No one said the game was bad. It was still more interesting than rewatching your fave movie again and provided for a different kind of entertainment. And your friends were all lit so they also played and shared tips about CASTLEVANIA. And you sucked because you don't like CASTLEVANIA which is based af.

>>9960045
That's why it's fun. Although if you use save-states it kills the fun.

First 2 levels are a joke. 3 takes a bit to learn the crow timing. Use Boomerangs on Mummies. 4th level is a pain cause of the platforming and flea men. Get Holy Water, keep holy water till the boss or you're fucked. Keep holy water all through 5 for axe knights, if you lose it you may as well wait for continue cause you probably aren't beating death without it. Learn Dracula stage on your own it's a right of passage. Watch speed runs and pros if you have too.