Castlevania III doesn’t need a hit Netflix show to be an eternal masterpiece… but it does help

Castlevania III is also infamous for a few more reasons. One, history reveals to us in North America that we never even got the true version of the game! More so than just Grant’s weapon, the Japanese version also had an entirely different soundtrack that was far more technologically advanced. Konami’s FC VRC6 chip that is used in the Japanese Famicom carts tapped into more sound layers, meaning more instruments could be generated at the same time within the game.

Nintendo of America banned such chips from the NES cartridges, and Konami had to dumb down the music and lots of other graphical effects to accommodate. For the sake of the music, listen to the differences between the two games with the opening stage’s theme.

They both rock, but there’s no going back once you get ahold of the Japanese Famicom cartridge.

Castlevania III also supports a pretty fair difficulty curve. When I replayed the game last year, I used the Nintendo 3DS emulator for the first time and challenged myself to beat it without save states. I almost accomplished this, relying solely on my dwindling NES gaming skills to practice and beat each boss fight with just enough pattern memorization, but I fell short. The last level and final boss fight proved too much for me.

Castlevania III, like most NES games of its era, is challenging but most of it can be overcome with enough practice.

Not this final fight though. Castlevania III’s final stage is hard enough! And getting to the boss with a full meter of health is nearly impossible. Follow this up with three rounds against Dracula’s three forms, and you’re bound to lose time and time again.

Each time you die against Dracula, you have to run the last gauntlet of enemies before taking on the boss, which means you’re not even guaranteed to make it to Dracula to get a few rounds of practice in. Only then does the true grind begin. You have to practice against Dracula’s first form. Once you are good enough, you have to kill it flawlessly time and time again to get enough practice against the second form. Then, once you are skilled enough at killing both the first and second form flawlessly, then you can fight the third form and get your practice in.

Eventually, it will look like this. (We didn’t have YouTube to help us learn patterns back in the day)

BUT, not without a lot of suffering. Each Game Over means you have to run the entire level again, which is painful enough. If you can beat the stage without taking a hit, and trust me, that’s no easy task, you have my permission to use a save state at the bottom of the staircase to Dracula’s Keep. That will at least save you the hassle of having to replay the level over and over again.

No save states during the fight!

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/07/22/castlevania-iii-doesnt-need-a-hit-netflix/