Hello everyone and welcome to Round 2 of the Winter Tournament!  Round 1 saw some exciting action with Galaga and Round 2 should bring even more exciting action!  This week's game is going to be Castlevania 3.  Contestants, please read the rules very carefully for your tier.  Failure to play by the correct rules could result in your score being disqualified.  Here are the rules for each tier:

Tier 1

• 1 life only
• US version only.  If you play any other version, your score will be disqualified
• Get as far in the game as possible
• Whenever you are given a choice to choose a path, always take the lower path.  You may not take the upper path whatsoever
• Get as low of a score as possible
• No looping the game.  If you beat the game, take your picture when the game starts over
• Entering the name "Help Me" at the beginning is forbidden
• 1-up loops will not be allowed
• No backtracking on the stairs whatsoever
• Furthest progression with the lowest score wins

Tier 2
 

• Play until you reach Life 0.  You may not play any part of the game on Life 0.  As soon as you reach Life 0, you must stop and take your picture.  If it is suspected you played any of the game on Life 0, your score will be disqualified.
• US version only.  If you play any other version, your score will be disqualified
• Get as far in the game as possible
• Whenever you are given a choice to choose a path, always take the lower path.  You may not take the upper path whatsoever
• Get as low of a score as possible
• No looping the game.  If you beat the game, take your picture when the game starts over
• Entering the name "Help Me" at the beginning is forbidden
• 1-up loops will not be allowed
• No backtracking on the stairs whatsoever
• Furthest progression with the lowest score wins

Tier 3
 

• Play until you reach Life 0.  You may not play any part of the game on Life 0.  As soon as you reach Life 0, you must stop and take your picture.  If it is suspected you played any of the game on Life 0, your score will be disqualified.
• US version only.  If you play any other version, your score will be disqualified
• Get as far in the game as possible
• Whenever you are given a choice to choose a path, always take the lower path.  You may not take the upper path whatsoever
• Get as low of a score as possible
• No looping the game.  If you beat the game, take your picture when the game starts over
• Entering the name "Help Me" at the beginning is forbidden
• 1-up loops will not be allowed
• No backtracking on the stairs whatsoever
• Furthest progression with the lowest score wins

As you can see, everyone in tier 1 is going to play by different rules than tiers 2 and 3 in Round 2.  Remember, the top 4 scores in each tier will advance to the finals.

The contest ends Sunday, 1/12/14 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed.  You must take a picture of your computer monitor.  There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers.  Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, or save states if playing on an emulator.  Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests.  The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed.  Good luck everyone and have fun

Here's the official tournament thread for all the details on the tournament itself, plus a place for smack talk

http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=31&am...

THE CONTESTANTS

TIER 1
bearcat-doug
CLAYB1RD
gutsman004
mattyjmania
Notrevania
rdrunner

TIER 2
babywuchki
Caleb47
dev(2)
EgasKrad
sunsetflip84
Thundercat08

TIER 3
fatalfuryspecial
Logo1285
MegaMartyr
ookii_risu
treismac
TWarwick07

Oh wow! Nice! Love me some Castlevania!

I work until 11 PM again next Sunday, so I'm giving you guys an extra hour again for Round 2

Do we all have to take the same path? Some paths are longer,so if those are taken you would think if 2 players complete the game,the one who took the longer path would have a higher score. I don't know if this is actually true,but just a thought.

Nope, you guys can take whichever path you wish. It will be part of the strategy of maximizing your score for this game.

NO! My cart is all jacked up, it has letters and it looks like I am walking on nothing.

Removed due to being an invalid score under the new rules.

34,810 (BLK 7-05)

This round is going to be interesting.
Which path are you going to take ? The easy 1 or the hard 1 ? ;-)
Which path gives you the most points?
How much time can and are you willing to spend ?
Can you kill some more respawning enemies before the timer runs out? <- This is allowed ?

etc etc

Oh gee wiz. This is where I get knocked out of the tournament. Castlevanias have always been my Achilles heel. I will give it my best shot.

If you enter the name "RDRUNNER" at the beginning, the game admits defeat and skips straight to the ending with a score of 999,990 that has been looped ten times.

I had my first attempt derailed by a bat knocking me off a platform. At least it doesn't seem anywhere near as bad as Ninja Gaiden II was.

Couple of rules questions:

• Is it okay to spam holy water/boomerang kills against groups of enemies?  The score multipliers are much lower than in CV1, but still noteworthy.  (400 + 700 + 1,000 if you kill 3 at a time, versus 1,000 + 2,000 + 4,000 in CV1)
• I assume that we can keep playing if we beat the game?
• Can we reset candles by backtracking on stairs?
• Biggest reason that I bring up the above questions: There is a money bag in Stage 1 worth 7,000 points that can be collected over and over by climbing the stairs, but only if you bring Grant or Alucard after beating the game.  Do we care if people do this?  Tiers 2 and 3 could use this to quickly max out the score.  Even Tier 1 can get a boatload of points here with a single life.

HEY! I tried out this special name and it didn't work. I'm calling shenanigans!

Good point there, Tom. I am actually going to wait until we hear Kevin's reply about the things Tom brought up before I begin planning out what I am going to do. Still going to practice.

i never try and "cheat" the system

im just going to go straight forward, and hope i can get far

i seriously doubt i can beat this game in 1 life...but...i guess i always surprise myself...i did have this game as a kid so who knows

I'd rather just go with the same low score/no looping rules that were used during the Castlevania contest. That seems like it would be the easiest solution.

^That would be cool with me. Doubt I can beat the game in one life right now,because a couple of stages late in the game usually kick my butt. I think I can get pretty decently far in the game with 1 life.

^3rd

I doubt I'm going to advance either way, but I think this would be more fun. I'd love to challenge myself and see how far I can get straight up. Plus, though I didn't get to play much of it, I agree the rules worked great for Castlevania week. I wish I had more time then.

I'm going to keep the contest as a high score contest, but I'm going to add a couple rules.  First of all, no looping the game.  Second, no backtracking on the stairs whatsoever.  Third, point racking will be okay for this contest since there is a timer.

^That seems okay to me,although I doubt I'll point rack too terribly much unless I do the multiple kills with the holy water or boomerang for multiplier points.

Fair enough and I respect those rules. I'll give it my best shot and good luck to all.

That was my plan. I don't know what the point racking/timer bonus differential would be, but I'll just play normally and see how I do. I remember how frustrating it was to spend 90% of the time point racking during the Ninja Gaiden II contest only to get knocked in a pit and lose the entire run.

Today i did some test runs and with the new rules Bimmy explained . I would advice going for point racking and doing your homework . How much time does it take you to clear a level etc.
doing level 1 without point racking 10K with 16K

Sounds good. Should make for a fun challenge!

Sorry to bring up all these crazy things, but you can see how this stuff can impact the scoring on a game like this.

So I've been practicing a little at work on my jailbroken iphone using this nes emu app (couldn't wait to make some more practice runs ) and going by the adjusted rules I've already broken my old score on the first level. Can't wait to be able to do this on an actual nes....but I'll have to wait until thursday to be able to do so....sigh.