Vampire Killer (MSX2, 1986)

 

The MSX2 adaptation of Castlevania, this game pre-dates almost the entire series. Released in Japan, Europe, and Brazil, but not the U.S., it's pretty much a lost footnote at this point. For whatever reason, it hasn't been ported to any modern collections. They forgot about Vampire Killer, much like people once forgot about Dre.

Gameplay-wise this is much closer to the NES game than the arcade Haunted Castle was, and follows the Metroidvania formula that later games in the series would frequently adopt. Well, sort of. It still takes place within confined stages, they're just more of a maze than a simple point A to point B. Which makes this...the first Sorta-Metroidvania in this series. The Protovania.

Note: Castlevania Bloodlines on the Genesis was also called Vampire Killer in Japan, but it wasn't a remake of this game or anything.

The toughest part of this game is finding a way to play it at this point. Without it being on any modern collections, playing it means either buying an MSX2 on Ebay or finding an emulator that works. BlueMSX is what worked the best, but none of them have controller support.

No matter which way you go, if you're gonna play an MSX game, you have to use keyboard controls just like it was back in 1986. Makes the game tougher, but hey, at least it's genuine. I'm sure there are ways to get a controller properly sync'd up with it using third party programs, but I'm alright with this.

Push the space bar to start the game. Also, push the space bar to swing the whip. It's like I'm back in time 30+ years here. The title screen having a "film strip" theme is noteworthy because at this point in time Konami was drawing heavily from old monster movies for this series. This looks like the title of a classic movie that might not even be in color yet. ...which is a bit like what playing MSX feels like.

A few things here. There's no timer, which is great, and gives you the leeway you need to actually explore the levels. The gameplay loop here is to scrounge around in every level for the exit key without the enemies whittling you down. A timer would kinda kill it.

Lives are limited, very limited, and running out of them sends you back to the title screen. Queue up your save states if you want to play this like a normal post-1990 game.

Hearts are used as currency to buy special weapons (Knife, etc), which in this game replace your whip as your sole attack and have unlimited charges. However, at the beginning of every new level you reset back to the basic starting whip, which is super weak. The chain whip is usually found quickly and is a decent enough upgrade, but what you really want in this game is the Knife whenever possible.

There are also special-special weapons, like Holy Water, that fire in addition to your main weapon but can only be fired every few seconds.

A few not-great things stand out about this immediately. 1) All of the screens are single-screen, no scrolling in any direction. Leaving a screen will move it over to the next screen in one pass (which can be good for escaping enemies that traditionally pursue you). This is because the MSX2 couldn't handle screen-scrolling and would have pretty extreme juttering if it tried. 2) The whip swings super fast and doesn't linger out at all, so it can be tough to actually hit things with it unless it's a direct hit (making it seem like the hit detection isn't good). 3) The jump button is up. That's right, UP. This conflicts with climbing stairs, and makes jumping hard to rely on in general.

As for good things... the graphics are better than the first 'Vania on the NES, and the sound is just as good. Most of the music is the same as what you'd find there.

The objective here is to find the white key (seen here, hidden in a wall I had to whip). Gold keys open treasure boxes, which have various upgrades.

One thing you can find in chests is an area map, which...oh my God, an area map?? They figured out something Metroid didn't a year later.

There are TONS of things hidden in walls in this game, and whipping every wall in sight is a good idea. It's a big scavenger hunt more than an action game. Even merchants lurk in walls. Interacting with them is weird; you have to beat on them for a few seconds before they'll offer to sell you something. You can either accept (Spacebar) or decline (Ctrl...or maybe Shift, I dunno, I would hammer both until something happened), and they don't offer anything else.

Keep beating on them and they eventually poof, giving a huge amount of points (which I was hoping eventually results in extra lives but it doesn't seem to)

Get The Knife is all you need to know about special weapons in this game. It changes the basic attack into a quick knife throw and makes the game play more like an early Mega Man. Things are MUCH easier with this weapon. Too bad it gets reset at the start of every level (each level consists of 3 stages, and each stage functions as a checkpoint essentially). Game has 18 stages so that's five times where you'll get robbed of your powerups.

Find the door and it goes to the next stage, like the NES version. Difference is that these stages aren't left-to-right, and you can move around in them freely. The gameplay loop is just to find the white key and then find this door, 18 times. And yeah, you always want to be looking out for The Knife.

The main threat, and the thing causing me to take almost all of the damage I'm taking, is BATS. Specifically BATS ON STAIRS. You're basically stuck when climbing up or down stairs, and combine that with the already ultra-specific hit detection and you're gonna take damage.

"Our time has come!" yell the Sahagin as they leap out of the water.

Morgan Freeman VO: "Alas, their time had not come."

The white key in Stage 2 is so hidden that I'm guessing a lot of playthroughs ended this early. It's in the floor in the right corner, so I had to shoot from the side here while ducking to actually break that floor.

First boss is the giant bat, just like the NES version. It's a nice iconic fight, but you won't have the benefit of the overhead axe special weapon here so it's noticeably tougher than on the NES. Knife spam worked pretty well at least.

While the first level is very similar-looking to the first level on the NES, the second level is very different. It's a muddy dungeon and they went way overboard with wave-flight enemies (bats, medusa heads) here.

Health gets restored every 3 stages (i.e. after every boss) so that's a small relief in a game with no continues and only 3 lives to get through everything.

MEDUSA HEADS charge you one after another and the game gives you basically no breaks, which gets frustrating fast. They travel in varied patterns too, so staying in one "safe" spot won't be safe for long. You just have to advance slow and whack them as they appear.

This room is the single most frustrating room for like the first half of the game. Have to go from the upper right to the upper left, with medusa heads flying at you and two moving platforms in the middle. The time/room you have to leap from one to the other in the center is very meager, and you've got enemies flying at you while you're trying to time it. Get knocked off and it's either a death or having to climb back up in the next room, depending on where you land. This room was seriously ass and the first time I questioned playing this game. Had fun up until this point, but this is very much a "what were they thinking" room. Have I mentioned that UP is the jump button? Indeed.

These spike-traps are awful in the NES version and they're awful here. Especially when you have 3 lives, and especially when game overs send you back to the beginning of the game. These games were MERCILESS. And people think Souls is "hard"

The game has gotten into the habit of hiding the white keys in floors, so now I have to be on the lookout for slightly-raised sections of floor that can be potentially chewed through from the sides (this entire room was floor besides an indentation on the left).

Next boss: Medusa. The knife continues to be the go-to for making this game much much easier. Just stay off to the side and pummel away. Kinda depressing that I lose it after every boss fight, though.

The next couple levels are full of jumping skeletons that function like Hammer Bros from Mario. They're probably the most annoying foes in this game (besides medusa heads and bats, of course).

Note that I'm down to 00 lives. Even with save states to save between sections so I don't have to start the game over, there have still been points where I had to die because I just didn't have enough carryover health left to finish a section (and heals are incredibly rare). As a result, even with emulator states, I'm in very real danger of losing this run and having to start the game over.

MSX2 emulators also tend to only allow one save state, as well, so I can't do backups as I go. There isn't even a file to copy. I seem fated to run into a bad end here and have to scratch and claw through the game a second time...let's hope not.

The castle tower is in sight! Technically this is the end of level 3 if we were going by the NES version. Which means...

...next boss is the Twin Mummies, who defeat their opponents by getting them in a Night at the Roxbury double-hump. I win the fight easily by firing knives from this step.

Tony Schiavone: "It's the YET-TAY!"

The game gets a lot harder at this point (as it should, we're nearing the end), with lots of platforming, bats, and chests/keys everywhere. The core gameplay loop is the same throughout of finding the white key and then finding the exit. Sometimes the key will be next to the exit, sometimes one will be near the beginning of the level with the other on the other end of it, and so on. Once you have the location of all the white keys written down/memorized (especially if you have maps), this game is much easier to fly through. Nintendo Power coverage would have been hugely helpful for this.

The Sahagin have returned from the dead as Red Sahagins.

"Our time has come!" they say while leaping up, before falling back into the pit. I've never met a more deluded foe in videogames.

The worst part of the game at this point are these flying eagles that drop jumping hunchback-men (...I'm not sure what I'm looking at here) that proceed to jump all over the place like maniacs. I try to intercept them on incoming, but it isn't easy when the game took away my knife. Hell, even my morning star is nowhere to be found after dying.

One thing I really don't miss about old games: Losing weapon upgrades from dying or getting hit. That's gotta be one of the most annoying and obnoxious mechanics ever. Nearly ruined Castlevania Adventure outright.

Next level is a repeating maze that could probably trip some players up because it loops forever. What you have to do is go through these tunnels (which were in the NES version, but only background, so it's cool that they're incorporating them into the stage design now).

But how? Pressing up doesn't work. Holding down doesn't work. No, turns out, you have to hold down and then press up. Like ducking to go through. Makes some logical sense, but you don't have to do this anywhere else in the game. Good luck, players with no internet in 1986!

Frankenstein's Monster is a beast as usual, with his invincible little friend jumping all over the place. Whip damage does little to him, but what I found to work great is Holy Water. It leaves a highly-damaging fire pool for a few seconds that chews through his HP. Not real sure how to fire it through. I hammer attack while jumping and sometimes it throws the special weapon.

For the last few stages, the main threat is consistently enemies congregating at the top of stairs with no way to go up without getting hit.

What were the level designers THINKING with this? Especially with no Axe in this game.

At the top of the castle, we see numerous paintings of noted warhawk John Bolton Dracula.

Next boss: Death. He's pretty easy in this version, and moves very slowly around the screen.

I get in the center and just pummel him with knives, taking a lot of hits in the process but whatever, I'll get my health back after the fight.

The final level on the NES, level 6, starts now. We've got the iconic collapsing bridge leading to Dracula's thro... wait a minute, where the hell is my HP?

That's right, the game bugged and didn't restore my HP after the Death fight, and it's too late to load state and fight him again. I could have taken WAY less damage on that fight if I wanted to.

Not sure if I can get through the final stages with this small amount of HP, even if I find all of the hidden heals. This is like when Disco Inferno and Bam Bam Bigelow ran in and attacked Goldberg during Starrcade '98.

While most of the drops in this game just bring you down a level to the next room (due to the screens mostly looping in this game), these final stages have some drops that are actually instant death. What a dirty trick at this point in the run.

And now, on the second-to-last stage, I find myself trapped. That's right, trapped. I fall down a non-death pit to get the white key, which was in the wall here. The problem is, the blocks down and to the left of me were supposed to be broken already so I could get back out of this room. There's no other way out. And since I didn't already break that wall earlier in the level, and don't have the Knife to be able to break it here, I'm literally perma-stuck. The only way out is to go to the dead end to the right and jump in the death-pit, which isn't an option because I have zero lives.

This is like when Scott Hall zapped Goldberg with the cattle prod at Starrcade '98. Despite me being extremely careful on this run, doing everything I can to not get stuck or trapped with low health, the game completely screwed me at the 11th hour. Between this and the bugged lack of a heal after Death (which doesn't normally happen with that fight, you're supposed to get a heal there), it's clear that the universe just wanted to inconvenience me on beating Vampire Killer.

However, there is one more option: Game Master.

This is a cart similar to Game Genie that was developed by Konami and only works with Konami games. The MSX consoles had two cartridge slots, so you could put a second game in alongside whatever you're playing, and that's what you'd do with the Game Master.

For an MSX2 game like this, you just need a ROM file of Game Master II (Game Master I is for the MSX1). Load Game Master II in cartridge slot 1, then load the game in cartridge slot 2. Start Game Master II (not the game), then when it pops up, choose "Modify" to alter the game.

Game Master allows you to modify your starting stage and number of lives. For Vampire Killer, this is a must. Start the game with 99 lives and actually have fun. In my case, I just need to warp back to Stage 17 and finish the damn game!

It took me a while to figure all of this out and get it to work correctly, and now I can pass the knowledge on.

Back at the offending screen, this time I made sure to clear the blocks from the left first before clearing them from the right, so as to not RUIN THE RUN.

However, I lost all of the hearts I'd built up, along with all of the books I collected (which reduce shop prices). As a result, shops were at maximum pricing, and I had to farm hearts for a good 15 minutes to be able to buy the Knife. This is a must, because it's your last chance to buy it before the final boss.

Another must is this full-heal right above the final boss' door. Had to grind for another 15 minutes for this.

Ya know, though...I went through so much trouble to play this, and make sure I finished it, that 30 minutes of grinding hearts at the very end isn't really the end of the world or anything. At this point I'm just glad to be here at the end of the game and want to make sure I win.

Final boss is two forms. First form is a traditional Dracula fight, where he teleports and throws trios of fireballs.

Second fight is unique to this game. Dracula inhabits the painting in the background and blasts out hordes of bats. Firing knives at his third eye from the upper corner results in a quick victory. Definitely looks like one of the easier Draculas in the series.

Yeah, let's pray that humanbeings don't revive Dracula. Which nobody would, until that hot little minx Elizabeth Bathory did in Castlevania Bloodlines circa the 1910's. WOMEN, am I right fellas?

Interesting game here, was worth playing/looking at, though it's a real dick move the way it trapped me in the 11th hour. It's a game that's held together with duct tape, so I expected there to be some impasse at some point.

It's still better than Simon's Quest, but other than that I'd probably take any other Vania over this. I prefer straightforward gameplay to key-hunting. That said, this game is actually pretty solid if you do the Game Master thing and give yourself 99 lives so you have a decent chance and can relax a bit. Having no continues is the game's main sin.

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