I'm calling it holy water, always have, always will. I don't care what anyone tells me!

Me too! Good luck working on your high score.

Tip for the bats, keep moving and don't stop for anything. The ones up top you need to jump and whip to freeze them for a second, and just keep moving past them. Again, don't stop. Don't even stop to jump and whip, you have to keep moving.

I just played through again and got to Dracula, only dying once along the way. It took me all five of my lives to figure out how to kill him without getting hit, then I died at the monster. I did use the fire bombs on him, but without a II or III upgrade, it is hard to keep him in place. I bet if I had one more life I would have been able to do it on my second try.

When I got to the bats, I decided to just run for it. I only got hit once near the end of the bridge.

Using my points trick, which is technically on "stage 3", I was able to get 120k in points just from that level. My final score was 261310, which means almost half my points were just from level one. Crazy.

I die at the Grim Reaper. Dude is a pain in the ass.

Does the "fire bomb" actually do anything to Dracula? I always thought it was a useless powerup for the final boss, although I never tried using it. Always stuck with the cross/boomerang, personally.

Yeah, I always use the cross-arang.

Point scumming is easy in Castlevania with the Zombies, but I wonder if the point value is worth the trade off contrasted with the points garnered from a speed run using no hearts.

What is the benefit of using no hearts? They only give 100 points per heart. I am talking about 1000 points per second here!

I actually find the Grim Reaper easier than Frankenstein. You can use the boomerang, which is usually at level II or III by then.

As for Dracula, no the fire bomb does nothing to his vampire form. The boomerang is the classic method of killing him. It was mentioned in the first issue of Nintendo Power. However, you can kill him without using any weapons by just jumping over his fireballs and whipping. The fire bomb is useful against his monster form. It doesn't do any damage, or very little damage, but it holds him in place, which makes it relatively easy to whip him.

It's convenient that Dracula's room provides both the boomerang and the fire bomb. The problem is that you can't use the boomerang without hitting the candle holding the fire bomb. So I just grab the fire bomb right away.

Hm, maybe I will try that. I recall having a hard time defeating his first form without getting hit, without using the cross.

But yes, you probably earn many more points by point-leeching at the beginning of the game. Maybe we should do a tally on how much points the timer is worth as well? I have a feeling that leeching will still earn you more than that though.

I've always wondered, how much the Refs at Twin Galaxies allow you to milk points before they disqualify it. I think as long as your moving forward it's ok, when submitting a high score.

Of course if your just playing for fun, none of that matters.

Wait a minute, Castlevania is timed isn't it.

If that's the case, spam away.

Interestingly enough, the Castlevania world record score was just beaten recently.

Mog's right, don't bother fighting the bats, just keep moving. Don't use the boomerange on the count, either, it's worthless. Save your holy water and chuck like mad. It will slow him down when he's in werebat form. Regular count, just belt his head with the chain.

Yes, the game is timed. I have yet to find a place where you could truly abuse it. The zombie areas do not have fire bombs or boomerangs. So if you die, you can't harvest them again. I get several 1ups when doing this, so if you could get a firebomb/boomerang in the same section, you would have infinite 1ups by harvesting until you die over and over.

I also discovered that trick recently. having the time limit kinda makes it like a race against the clock while you score massive points/extra lives. It does get agrivating when the zombies dont spawn in multiple numbers though.

They only reappear when you collect any items they drop. So if you kill three, and one drops a heart, only two will reappear until you collect the heart. Then the third appears.

Oh, and my final score was 404040. Odd coincidence.

Thanks to this thread I booted up Castlevania on the VC and played with farming in mind. The first level is certainly good for farming. Just time it right to where zombies continuously come out in groups of three and you're good to go (I used the wall beneath the very first door. Position yourself properly and groups of three will come out of the far right wall).

Another way to farm is to use the bone pillar enemies. They shoot two fireballs, and sitting back at the right distance, you can throw a fire bomb in anticipation of the first fireball. It will hit it, then plow through the second one as well. I think you earn 1,800 points each time you do that. You have to time it perfectly though, and if you don't, your fire bomb will go through the first fireball (even though it clearly looks like it hits), and you will get damaged.

The best point for farming is on Death's stage. You can get the red skeletons (three max from what I was able to do), group them together in one sport and use the fire bomb repeatedly. Their respawn rate is about twice as fast as the reappearing zombies on the first stage. I had nearly 600,000 points by the time I finished this stage, and that's only because I got bored and decided to move on.

I went by the recommendations here and used the fire bomb on Dracula's second form. It worked like a charm! Defeating his first form without the cross though was tricky for me at first. Normally in the past I would use the cross to attack his fireballs, then whip his head. I found last night though that if you wait for him to open his cape and *then* jump, his fireballs will always shoot straight and if you distanced yourself properly, you will clear them without a hitch.

Last night was the first time I really bothered to play the second quest. God damn is it hard! The original Castlevania has been "easy" for me for well over a decade, and actually having to WORK to get through it is proving to be a shock to my system! I got a game over at the cave and had to continue three or four times, maybe more just to get past the water part. The increased numbers of merman and flying bats makes it extremely difficult. Using the stopwatch helps, but you only have a very limited amount of hearts.. d'oh!

I think if you work it right, you can actually get more than three blood skeletons to appear near the crypts in the lab on Death's level. If I recall, you can scroll the existing ones off the screen where they spawn, and then coax them back and when you do another skeleton will appear in front of the crypts.

Yeah, I tried that, haha. Didn't work for me.. That's actually how I got three on screen at once.

ok, three might be the limit, but I knew it could be done.