The Castlevania franchise has a rich history and is dear to the heart of many gamers. For this retro game club, we chose to play Rondo of Blood, a game which had previously been denied to the North American audience and came out on the PC Engine (the Japanese equivalent of the unsuccessful Turbo Graphx CD). The game fetches over $100 on Ebay, but thanks to the Virtual Console we can all get it for $9 in all its untranslated, imported glory.

According to some, this game represents the pinnacle of the series. It does seem to take a few steps backward as it loses some moves from the SNES game that came before it, for instance the ability to swing the whip in other directions than right in front of you, but your character remains one of the more agile Belmonts, being able to jump on and off stairs and other feats like that.

The most striking improvement, however, is the game's non-linearity. You may fall into pits in this game, but rather than fall to your death, you will simply fall to a lower level, an alternate course, often with its own boss waiting for you at the end. Some paths are easier than others, so choose wisely.

You also have to, over the course of the game, save three damsels in distress, trapped inside Dracula's Castle. I have to assume this is in order to get a better ending, although... there might be more to it...

The game offers beautiful 16 bit graphics and a fantastic soundtrack. We are in for a treat as apparently, the VC version of the game is one of the best ways to experience it (though PSP owners can also follow along). According to 1up: "The emulation errors that plagued VC's earliest TurboGrafx-16 releases are gone, so this version of the game is colorful, crisp, pixel-perfect, and sounds great. The PSP port was frankly lousy, with muddy color and off-kilter sound. Even the original PC Engine version looks crummy on an HDTV. But here on Virtual Console, it looks and sounds and plays perfectly. This is the definitive edition of the game, or as close to one as we'll ever see."


Why not add Rondo of Blood to your collection, and indicate you are currently playing it? And don't forget to rate it when you're done!


List of Awesome
A list paying tribute to all the brave warriors who play the game to completion as Richter

@nate38
@sirmastersephiroth
@GameDadGrant
@TriforceBun
@Guillaume
@ploot
@roykoopa64
@ludist210
@Robknoxious1
@anon_mastermind
@CPA Wei

List of Awesomer
To get on this list, finish the game with a 100% save file!

@nate38
@sirmastersephiroth
@GameDadGrant
@TriforceBun
@Guillaume
@roykoopa64
@ludist210
@Robknoxious1

List of Awesomest
Attempt a high score and post it!

GameDadGrant - 113,220
Guillaume - 110,640
roykoopa64 - 104,000


Memorable quotes

By the way, you can dodge the stage 3 boss's final attack with a well-timed backflip. I did it earlier today, and it was super manly.
@TriforceBun

URL to share (right click and copy)

@GameDadGrant

There's a boss rush mode?

I just thought people would start from the beginning and attempt to rack up the highest score they can.

@Guillaume

I'm not sure Boss Rush applies to the import, but I think it's in the PSP version.

^ Oh, yeah. Maybe the Boss Rush mode is only in the PSP version (which is the version I'm playing through).

In that case, I'll give the High Score run a shot and see what I get.

I assume we just keep playing until either we beat the game or get a Game Over, (whichever happens first) and we post our score here?

I rescued the fourth maiden, beat Shaft's Ghost (is that even a spoiler?) and I'm on to the final stage. I would have played on, but my lunch break was up. I'm sitting at 80%.

Well, I played a bit and got a score of 99,500 before Richter finally bit it around Stage 4 or 5.

Try and beat that, Negative World!

@GhostofGrant

I'm sad that you're dead...



LIFE 2!

@ludist210

So it is written and so it must be, until the moon runs with blood and the Age of NES Volleyball falls like a shadow over the Earth.

@NESVolleyball
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
NO!

96,910

Took me 4.5 tries.

Hey, I didn't grow up playing Castlevania games, gimme a break!

Protip: Do NOT take the 3' route for a high score run. I must have had 20k less points coming out of it than coming out of stage 3.

Also, the obvious best way to get a high score is to stay alive and have tons of hearts when you defeat a boss. I failed to do so EVERY SINGLE TIME (except for the Stage 0 boss), so the score shouldn't be that hard to beat.

I made it to Shaft's different forms before getting game over'd.

edit - Oh crap, I remembered wrong. I thought Grant had gotten 95,500, not 99,500.

Craving more Castlevania, I went and redownloaded Castlevania Chronicles on my PSP.

Eh. Can probably do better than that. It's not terribly fun.

I've played a bit more, up to stage 5. Really enjoying it Stage 4 kicked my ass, I think I continued four times. I like taking the alternate routes in this stage, but I had a lot of trouble with the boss. How the heck do you avoid his floating head? Anyway, I ended up taking another sortie, funny how the damsel sucks out all your hearts.

@anon_mastermind

In the menu before beginning the game, check out "Technic". You can buy videos of the boss fights, if you want to see the strategies how to beat them.

Stage 4's boss is the headless knight, right? I hate him. The head is hard to avoid but not impossible. Stand on the lower platform to lure it, jump on the higher platform to avoid, jump back to the lower platform...

Just completed the game as Richter. Had Dracula hit me one more time, I would have been killed. Thank goodness for the cross!

EDIT: Finished with 92%, all with Richter. I was at 84%, but I beat Dullahan and upped it to 92%. I think I skipped the main route of stage 3, so I'll knock that out to finish it off. Do you have to beat Stage 5' to get 100%?

@anon_mastermind

When he jumps over you, run to the other side of the room. You can hit him from the ledge if you're crouching. Just jump up to the higher ledge if he uses the icicle attack. You can dodge the falling rubble if you have the Holy Water and use an Item Crush, and you can dodge the head curse by jumping around. Just stay higher than his lance thrust can hit and you can beat him.

@ludist210

*whew!* Thanks much, sir. Much obliged!

@Guillaume@ludist210
Thanks for the tips. I had no idea about the super play videos and the item crash. Going back through the thread I had missed Roy's post about it. This should help!

@anon_mastermind

You're welcome. I struggled with him the first time I fought him with Richter, but I only took one hit when I beat him this morning (I was careless when trying to avoid the head curse). The fight was a lot easier than I was making it out to be.

So I'm at 96% now. I think all I have is 5' to beat (which is no small task) and I'm done 100%.

110,940!

I did an okay run, getting to one boss with a good amount of hearts. But I also beat Shaft this time, which also helped.

113,220 is what I was able to pull off tonight.

Gui, you're totally right about conserving hearts - having a bunch saved up really helps add to the score at the end of each stage!

Woo-hoo! 100% baby.
Using Richter on Wii VC.

And I went ahead and did a high score run, and I'm frustrated because I went through the whole game, beat the final boss, and did not see my final score!

So just a heads-up to anyone at the final boss! Make sure to note your score before delivering the final blow! It's too bad the high score isn't shown in the menu or something. EDIT: OK, man I'm such a fool, couldn't I have just captured my score before picking up the Orb of Win? Dammit...

The last score I remember seeing is 104,000. I may have exceeded it a little, but not much.
I even had my camera ready and everything...
And on top of that, I was pressing buttons trying to skip the ending sequence, when I must have accidentally input the button sequence for a soft reset, because a strange screen popped up for a split second before the Konami logo appeared at the game boot-up screen.

Not quite as good as @Guillaume, but hey, not bad!
Eh, it's ok if this score doesn't count, since I'm not sure about it...

I love this game!

(But I think I still love SC IV better...)

EDIT: Nice job @GameDadGrant!