Castlevania (1986) / YMMV

Anti-Climax Boss: While the first form of Dracula is insanely tough, his second phase is a joke—he merely hops around, trying to crush you, while you can basically whip him into submission quite quickly. His pattern is mostly predictable, as he jumps twice and makes a huge leap on the third go, shooting easily-dodged fireballs. If not by whipping, you can just use the Holy Water in the boss room to lock him in place. The only real challenge is that you cannot run underneath most of his jumps, making it effectively a timed battle if he corners you.
Awesome Music: Plenty of it. Amazingly, the composers, Satoe Terashima and Kinuyo Yamashita, had never composed a soundtrack before Castlevania and Yamashita intended to work as an electrical engineer.
- Vampire Killer, the theme of stage 1, and generally considered the theme of the entire series.
- Stalker, the theme of stage 2, is also quite a catchy mood piece.
- Wicked Child, the theme of stage 3.
- Walking on the Edge, the theme of stage 4.
- Heart of Fire, the stage 5 theme.
- Out of Time, the theme of the clock tower in stage 6.
- Nothing to Lose, the theme of the boss battle with Dracula.
- Voyager, the credits theme.
Difficulty Spike: Thought the first half of the game was relatively easy? Well, let that absurdly long fall into the fourth area represent your imminent fall from gaming grace, make no mistake! This game is challenging from the get go especially if you aren't used to playing difficult games in general, but the second half of the game is where the gloves come off and its literally do or die (and most likely die and die and die and die again)!
Fan Nickname: Speedrunners refer to Dracula's One-Winged Angel transformation as "the Cookie Monster".
Game-Breaker: Holy Water can freeze most enemies in their tracks. You can abuse this with the Triple Shot item, allowing you to take down even Death with ease. It can also kill any enemies that walk into its blast radius, so you can take out multiple zombies or Fish Men with one throw and rack up some serious points.
Goddamned Bats:
- Literally bats... and Medusa Heads, and Ravens, and Fleamen.
- Stage 16 (the start of the 6th area) has Goddamned Giant Bats.
Good Bad Bugs: If two overlapping enemies are hit with a projectile, it will do damage for every frame the weapon is in contact and rack up massive damage. This can be done to win the boss fight against the Mummies with just one well-timed cross.
Polished Port: In Japan, Akumajou Dracula was re-released on a cartridge (rather than floppy disks) in 1993. This version included an Easy Mode, in which Simon starts with more hearts, lives, and time, takes less damage, doesn't get knocked back, and keeps his Double/Triple Shot items when changing weapons.
Porting Disaster:
- The three home versions produced in 1990 are inferior to the original in several respects. The Amiga version, at least, gave us its own surprisingly catchy title screen theme.
- Not necessarily, but the version of this game included in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection is, unfortunately, the original version that's known for crashing if too many sprites are on-screen at once. This is rather glaring, given that it was ported by M2, a team normally known for Polished Ports.
- The DOS port. Aside from very choppy musical renditions of the otherwise great OST, the sound effect for destroying things, be it enemies or candles, is incredibly loud and overrides the music, so you'll find yourself hearing that sound effect more often than the soundtrack. Some songs got cut, you can't change your control inputs and the movement is a little more sluggish than even the NES version, which makes the game even harder. Overall, it's generally considered to be a disastrous port.
That One Boss: Frankenstein's Monster and Igor, and the Grim Reaper. YMMV on which one's tougher (and some players may not have trouble with one or the other), but let's explain.
- Frankenstein's Monster and Igor are a Dual Boss of sorts. The Monster can be damaged and doesn't do much. Igor, on the other hand, is invulnerable - whipping him stuns him for a couple seconds but doesn't decrease the boss life bar. Igor hops madly around the room spitting fireballs at you. His movement pattern is maddeningly random. You have to kill the Monster while ignoring Igor, and the Monster is just mobile enough that you'll forget to keep an eye on him while dodging Igor and bump into him. If you die, the only subweapon you can get is the near useless Knife, making rematches a lot harder than they need to be. Oh, and you have to go through two White Dragons to even get to them, while only having 4 hits to play with for the entire area, with the only healing coming from where the first dragon is rooted. And when you inevitably run out of lives, you have to go right back to the start of the block again!
- The Grim Reaper summons scythes during the battle. The scythes are much more predictable than Igor in movement (they fly straight at you, eventually stop and hover for a bit, then fly straight at you again), but there's four of them up at any given time. And they appear in the worst place at the worst time - directly above your head a fraction of a second before a jump. Behind you while the Grim Reaper's floating at you and you can't dodge. Inside the platform you're walking on, where you can't attack them and even a pixel's worth of movement will have them bump into your feet. What does not help is thanks to a Game-Breaking Bug, if you throw too many Holy Waters on the screen and you have either the Double or Triple Shot, you might cause the game to freeze if there are too many scythes on the screen.^note The official Nintendo strategy guide for Castlevania outright said that the Grim Reaper is harder than Dracula.
That One Level:
- Stage fifteen (block 5-3). Hello, excruciatingly long and difficult hallway filled to the brim with ultra-resilient Axe Knights and swarms and swarms of Medusa Heads. Hello, Grim Reaper. Goodbye, sanity.
- And the following stage. Bridge with gaps in it + Giant Bats = RAGEQUIT.
- And the stage after that has a swarm of Hunchback-carrying Eagles; they were difficult enough the last time you fought them, but now the space is much more cramped and you're moving vertically. Mercifully, if you pass these two stages to get to Dracula, you won't have to replay them if you use a Continue.
- Block 4 is difficult too. The first part is full of moving platforms, bottomless pits, low ceiling, and ever spawning bats and mermen. Then, you're required to walk through an area spawning Hunchback-carrying Eagles, and finally dealing with White Dragons who kill you in four hits. Oh, and the boss is Frankenstein's Monster and Igor, detailed above. Block 4 is widely considered the point where the game goes from hard to "do or die".
- Stage 9 (before the Mummies boss fight) is not a walk on the park. The whole level is a long walk full of ravens and dragon skulls firing at you, which will probably leave you with at least half your life bar gone. And right after this part, you have the boss fight against two mummies at once, which will drain your life bar easily. A health boost is hidden in the boss room, though.

YMMV / Castlevania (1986)

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