The History of Castlevania World Records

How do you speed up one of the most difficult games ever created? The original Castlevania has acquired that reputation over the years, whether for its strong enemies and bosses or its tight gameplay mechanics. Castlevania is not an easy game to beat, however, speeding it up or beating it as quickly as humanly possible is on another level. For the last decade and a half a group of players have been working to reduce the

world

record for completing Castlevania. It has been a quest to discover new strategies over several years and work together. the story of his journey this is the story of

castlevania

world

records

so imagine this, it's 2003 and you are tom vadava, a nintendo speed racer who would set world

records

for some of the most famous games, however, one of Your first projects were going to be Castlevania, how would you manage to overcome six of the most difficult NES levels?

It takes most people hours to beat this game. Well, April Tom Vodova completed the entire game in 14 and a half minutes. The way to understand how Vadava is capable. To break down the difficulty of this game is by analyzing it level by level. The first level is usually not too difficult and he made quick work of upgrading his whip and slashing through the ghosts throughout the level, whipping them into the air instead. On the ground it means that Simon Belmont slows down less or not at all, saving a fraction of a second each time Vadava did this as much as he could.

He also picked up the ax secondary weapon before the boss fight and used them to help him slowly but surely. He knocked down the bat at the beginning of level 2, he just jumped on most of the enemies before grabbing the holy water subweapon in stage six, each level is divided into three stages, meaning stage six was the last stage from level two in which he was defeated. I climbed the statues a bit but used the holy water to easily defeat the level 2 jellyfish head boss. Level 3 is where Castlevania is known for taking a big jump in difficulty.

There are hunchbacks that jump on you. Skeletons jumping around. it throws bone statues that shoot fireballs at you and birds that fly around and try to hit you and every time you get hit you often fly backwards onto one of the many ledges that will kill you if you fall, but luckily Tom Vodafone had the water blessed It's pretty well known how powerful holy water is, but vadava was able to take it to another level. Dropping holy water on an enemy freezes them in place, causing them to take damage, and temporarily preventing them from dealing damage to you as often instead of taking damage.

To take down the statues, Nevada simply dropped holy water on them, stopped his shots, and let him walk, which combined with careful use of his whip allowed him to outrun most of the enemies and defeat the dual mummy bosses. At the end of course, there were still some really complicated sections like this part with several birds and a skeleton in stage seven, moving on to level four. Ivanova still had the holy water from her, she deftly rode the moving platforms, whipped the bats, and then climbed the stairs where the birds came in to drop the humpbacks.

When going down these hunchbacks, they would sometimes drop random axes if they were killed, so vadava had to carefully jump over them so as not to lose the holy water from her so that the boss would fight Frankenstein on a hunchback. She stunned them with several shots of holy water thanks to the triple shot upgrade that allowed three holy waters. be on the screen at the same time level 5 is famous for its difficulty, the knights each take 9 hits to kill and they throw axes that you have to crouch or jump on top of that, there are hunchbacks everywhere, jellyfish heads that more statues float and the reaper boss at the end and none of them were a match for vaudiva's holy water, of course there was still a lot of skill involved in what vadova was doing, many of the enemy patterns were still sporadic and had to be whipped or avoided appropriately, had to be an honest game at all times during level five and managed to get through level 6 fairly cleanly.

The final level featured Vodava temporarily abandoning the holy water to take the stopwatch that froze all enemies when activated. This was used against hunchbacks. to stop them from jumping all over the place, then moved on to the final boss fight which has two forums: Dracula and the beautifully named Cookie Monster, Dracula teleports after trying to hit you and every time he teleports he is known as a cycle every time Dracula Vadava reappeared and tried to hit him a couple of times with his whip, it was quite slow and since it took Dracula 11 appearances to kill him or 10 teleports, it was an 11 cycle Dracula fight and then to fight the monster of the cookies, Ivanova used the holy water she had re-collected from the leftmost candle, stunned him in place, and used her whip to hit the cookie monster's head again and again until he was killed.

This process took a while, but once he was dead the final orb appeared and Tom Vadova was done. Castlevania at 14 minutes and 25 seconds was an enjoyable run with some pretty sick use of holy water to get through otherwise difficult enemies and he didn't die once, however there were noticeable slowdowns, especially when standing still to slam The second of those four races would be completed two and a half years later with a retro 2D player, the biggest improvement in his career was the use of momentum in Castlevania, when you are hit by an enemy, you are pushed back a little.

This can be used strategically to get to certain areas faster, for example at level 1 you are normally supposed to do this. go down the stairs, go to the basement and go up to the other side of the wall, but the retro 2d player simply did this, known as bat boost, this trick saved about seven seconds on the first level and as retro would show, the boost could be used throughout Castlevania, the boost was not allowed under the rules of Twin Galaxy, which is where Tom Vadava submitted his run, but since the retro 2d player submitted his elsewhere, he was free to do so.

These pulses added together saved about 30 seconds in total, on top of that, it saved time. Due to even more overuse of holy water, enemies that normally stood in their way were demolished with holy water, including many of the boss fights. It was cleaner than the vodka race, didn't take as many hits, and slowed down less overall in the end. combined with the boosts, it was enough to beat him by over a minute with a 1308. Retro's streak seemed to last much longer than Vadavus's, about five years; In fact, it's very rare for world records to last that long, although in the early 2000s when speedrunning wasn't as big it was certainly more common, but in 2010 a guy called Bablo beat it several times and his time final was 12 21, the third record of the early age, his run was a cleaner and more refined version of the retro record in At level 1, for example, he had a faster bat boost by making the bat appear from the right instead of walking with him from the left.

At level 3, he made more boost at the beginning and went to stage 8 by abusing holy water. more at levels 4 and 5 he was more efficient than retro by not stopping to attack as much but using holy water or jumping and slamming and at level 6 he saved a lot of time by hanging on the cross secondary weapon and attacking Dracula with Retro used the cross one once and then let it go to pick up holy water, but Babylon was able to throw it to the right and then catch it when it returned to the middle, as long as it didn't go to the left, it would.

He didn't hit the candle to generate the holy water, so when Dracula reappeared on the right, Pablo hit him again with the cross to deal more damage, turning a retro 11-cycle fight into an 8-cycle fight. Pablo Bablo's run continued throughout 2010 and then in 2011, Welver's speedrunner funk dock set the fourth and final early age record, 1206, it would attract a lot of attention and was one of the most popular records in the funk doc speedrunning community. Doc's career truly was a technical marvel, his method of defeating Pablo was through very discreet but crucially important techniques, like here in the level 1 boss fight, funkadoc knew that the bass pattern was determined by the place where Simon was on the screen.

He wanted the bat to descend in a specific way so he could receive axes quickly. The position for that pattern is right around here, so Funk Dock intentionally stood still and avoided taking the double-shot upgrade until the bat started moving and the pattern for it was established. The level 3 boss had another technical trick when two hitboxes overlapped in Castlevania a. A strange bug occurs if a secondary weapon hits the overlapping part, it will deal one damage for every frame it comes into contact with, since Castlevania runs at 60 frames per second, that's a lot of damage very fast.

The two mummies in the level 3 boss fight each other. They have their own hitboxes, so a guy known as retrogaming 2084 discovered that if you use the cross subweapon when the mummies overlap, they can be defeated very quickly. Funk Dock used it to his advantage but best of all had to be what he did in level 4, the cave jump was discovered once again by retrogaming 2084 funk dock picked up the time stop secondary weapon at the start of the level and then used it a few seconds later, when the bats appear, they do so according to their vertical position, so when the time comes the stop was over, it was time for the bat to appear and funktoc had reached the right height to time, then froze time again to freeze the horizontal position of the bat so he could do this by doing this boost, the doctor didn't have to wait and ride. on the slow moving platforms below, saving him a few seconds, he continued to abuse holy water at level 5 and then was able to even out Babel's 8 cycle fight against Dracula before taking down the cookie monster with holy water, so there it is where the record was in 2011, 1206 by funkdock.

He was considered the best runner in Castlevania and, as the months and years passed, his record still stood. It was a very clean race set by an extremely talented rider. Over the next few years he directed the game in many of the games that were quickly made. marathons that included one of the greatest races of all time, a funkdoc sprint race while qureshi provided the soundtrack on piano, but finally, in 2013, funk talk was no longer alone at the top, someone was streaming attempts on twitch .tv to surpass his long-standing 1206. Meet Kmack In late 2013, Kmac began pushing his Castlevania personal best close to the world record.

He became good at the same tricks, jumping caves, boss fights, everything increased, his time went from 12 45 to 12 26 and then he did 12 10. four seconds behind the funk doc world record if it hadn't been For a slow level 3, particularly the boss fight, kmac would have gotten it in October 2013. He was in a race that was losing time at the beginning of level four, for example, he ruined the boss fight by miscalculating his throwing holy water, the hunchback jumped up and hit him, so by the time he reached the last level he was five seconds behind funkdoc's world record, but Kmack had a trick up his sleeve on level 6 to come back at the last second.

Castlevania has a nice dark trick called critical hit if you hit an enemy with the whip in the exact same square that the enemy hits you you deal 5 additional damage to the enemy for a total of 6 damage. The most relevant places to use it are boss fights, particularly. The fight with Dracula at the end, Dracula fires projectiles every time he respawns, so Kmac had to jump and get hit by one of them in the same 60 of a second that he hit Dracula. If he could do that, he would have a chance at the record, yes. accomplished in just one cycle, over half of Dracula's health bar was wiped out, the fight would end up being a 5 cycle fight, was she going to be fast enough to beat the funk talk, oh my god, really a World tidal record, couldn't it have been?

It was a great feeling to have come this far and still not have beaten Funk Doc. All he could do was keep trying and the next day he had another chance. The first 9 minutes of this race were lost, but we do know that he was about 4 seconds behind. He tied the record he had set the day before entering the final level. He had time to recover it, although in yesterday's race he did not have enough hearts that are currency for the holy water to optimally defeat the cookie monster, but this time he did. onlyduring years. Players have been trying to find a three-cycle dracula at the end of the race, but it works.

It could be better, this is the Dracula of two cycles. A guy known as a true fake first found a two-cycle setup in March 2016, but it went unnoticed until about October 2017. The first cycle involves skipping the shot and then whipping twice. which deals a total of five damage for the second cycle, you must wait for Dracula to appear near you, which has a 50 chance of happening if he doesn't, a two cycle fight cannot happen, the execution for the second cycle, assuming For you to get the spawn it's really accurate to jump forward and throw across the landing on the double throw to pick it up then jump back while looking forward and throw another cross as you land there I would jump and throw another cross then jump and do a critical Hit if something is off even slightly, two cycle death won't work, but if it does it saves a good three or four seconds.

Once people realized the usefulness of this trick, there was a mad scramble to get a new world. record with it from October to December 2017, there were four people who went for the record around the same time jonthey who had previously held the record earlier in the year findy who had held world records in various nintendo games such as duck tales and batman heirixon who had achieved world records in games like Panic Restaurant and Tiny Two Adventures and Bednak, who practically only ran Castlevania and was very close to the world record. These four guys were top-notch runners and they all had the skill to get the record at the right time. beat was furious paul's 11 32.7 during the last few months of 2017 this was his battle to get one of the most coveted nes world records yeah yeah oh it's so close bam ah that's good you oh no that was a hit i got the holy critic holy oh my god something was lost somewhere in the end it was one damage less one damage less a new world record probably the first sub 11 30 run of Castlevania these four guys did thousands of races between them but after three months of work alone A new world record had been achieved.

Castlevania had become an absolutely brutal speedrun. The races began and ended with two of the most difficult parts of any game, the level 1 jail and obtaining the pattern and executing the 2-cycle Dracula fight and in between. It was a race full of precision tight times and the need to get close to perfection to achieve all of that was so difficult, naturally Castlevania entered an era without new records for a while during the first months of 2018, the record stood at Jonthey's 11 31. The game went from four top racers fighting for the record to none, but then in April a new racer started fighting for the record and this guy had a lot of experience in setting world records.

Jc jc had held the world records. in

castlevania

2, castlevania 3 and battletoads, three of the most iconic nes games and in April 2018 he was ready to try to tackle the original castlevania over the following month, he took the time to lower his bp to 1130, getting very close to the world 1131 of Jonte. register and on May 2, 2018, jc passed this level 1 jail in level 3, got some bad patterns from enemies, was hit by a bone thrown by a skeleton at the beginning of the level and was almost crashed into by a crow. screen later he also botched his cross throw on the mummy boss despite getting a pretty good pattern on level 4, he nailed the cave jump but was knocked down by a bat moments later, no no no I'm not okay, completely disagree with that, so I was just over two seconds away from the world record.

Upon entering level six, but had time to save, he could get the two-cycle Dracula fight, which would save a few seconds over the garbage fight they got. He was also going to go for the machine gun cookie monster strategies that Hirikson first used upon entering. the cookie monster goblin and the jump sub weapon and the whip in a rhythm, it is possible to deal damage faster as the holy water hits the cookie monster's upper hit zone and deals damage instead of just hitting its lower half. Jc was going to try to get all of that and make a big comeback for the album oh no oh no oh my god no death ruler death chance ruler welcome aboard the cruiser j jumps aboard the stern platform and with that jc was done with the first world record with a dracula cycle he was at the top but he still had one more second left jc wanted to lower the record and the sub 11 30 mark was right in front of him a time of 11 29 would represent an important milestone in speedrunning The last time Castlevania broke a 10 second barrier was baze 1139 back in 2016.

This time the number was 11.29, it would take an incredible run. JC kept going looking for that mythical 11 29, but he wouldn't get an 11 29, instead he did this, oh my god, I'm done. Ready, oh wow, and 11 27, this broke the world record. How could he achieve such an incredible time? He pretty much just cleaned up the 11 30's mistakes from him. Remember the slow mummy fighting the enemy's bad patterns and recoil. By the way, none of those were present in his 1127th, and of course, to top it all off, it was a two-cycle Dracula fight in the end. Overall it was a really clean race with a good level six at the end.

JC stopped working for the record after this race and who could blame him, he had nothing left to prove that he was the first to break the 1130 barrier and he completely destroyed it for the rest of 2018. JC's 1127 would remain undisputed, but as of early 2019 everything changed, it's time to Talk about three players who had one of the biggest world record chases of any speed game, first is Snek, he ran almost exclusively Castlevania, he started streaming his attempts in mid-2019. 2017 and slowly improved over the course of 2018. It had a bit of experience running other nes castlevania games as well, but the first game was a specialty.

Next is ouijoi. He ran many different nes games over the years and held world records in games like kung fu, Mike Tyson's Punch Out Dragon Warrior, and RC Pro-Am. lots of experience getting world records and when he started running castlevania in mid 2018 he improved very very quickly finally we have sb dewolfe he was best known for his cuphead races where he was a top contender for many months towards the end In 2018, he made a drastic change and began focusing on a different game, Castlevania. He also improved his personal best very quickly in March 2019. These three players were very close to the world record of jc, ouija and sbd wolf, each had an 11.32, while two snakes had an 11.28.

It was obvious that these three guys were about to make a huge effort to achieve the world record. Two snakes had a chance on March 19. He was using some new little strategies to help him. Probably the most important was when developed by contender weejui, many boss patterns are determined by the number of frames in a turn since the screen started, we simply discovered that by slowing down exactly 66 frames the mummy bosses would always give an extremely pattern. quickly, those frames were lost when standing still. twice to throw two crosses and stay still once the whip worked wonderfully.

He also used a different strategy in level 5 thanks in part to a mechanic used by several different NES games. The frame turning system every time you pass through a door in Castlevania checks every 16 frames to see if you have reached the door or not, if you haven't you have to wait no matter how many frames are left until all 16 are up frames, basically means that you can only gain or lose time in 16 frame increments. between two doors, a good example of this is to imagine that you are waiting for a train to arrive that leaves every 16 minutes, once you get to the stop you may only have to wait a minute for it to arrive, but if you barely miss it , you might have to wait up to 15 minutes for the next one to arrive, this comes into play throughout Castlevania, meaning that it is possible to not play perfectly and bleed a few frames, but still not waste time as if you had played perfectly as long as you get to the door with the same rule or before the train leaves, you won't waste time, sometimes you have a lot of time to play, while other times you had to play very very well anyway, this mattered for a new bone boost . snek used at the beginning of level 5. normally you get the fast or slow bone pattern, but now if you get the slow pattern you can go for a couple of backup strategies or the alternative bone that always works to save a frame rule. or the task bone that doesn't always work but saves two frame rules if it does, if it doesn't work the player could waste more than two seconds on this run.

Two snapshots got the alternate bone, so you saved 16 frames over what you otherwise might have gotten, then you got pattern four and ran the two-cycle dracula and had a fight with cookie monster a little cleaner than JC's. It was enough to barely surpass it and obtain a new world record. Six days after this race, Ouija was dead even with two snack world records upon reaching level 5. The splits are compared to his personal best, of which he was slightly ahead, he had left the level in jail, He nailed his own mummy strategy at level 3 and got the cave jump at level 4.

However, he got the slowest bone pattern at level 5 and when combined with a couple of other small slowdowns, it felt like 2 seconds. behind the world record, but he managed the 2 cycle Dracula fight and it was enough to catch him. quite a nice personal vest, he submitted this race to the speedrun.com leaderboards and in his submission comments he simply said a phrase world record soon, okay, more rng no and jump back, you understand why there we go to shipwreck, well, oh wow, this is it. the cool, well, easily means I still need a track for two bikes, I wouldn't call it that easy, oh here we go, well, triple bones, that's a long time, at least there, oh son, that's a pv and, damn, it's also close to the record coming back. -When timing this race it was determined that he missed the world record by just nine frames, unfortunately for Ouija board us, this is the closest he has come to the world record.

She is a great player and will probably come back to try to break the record again in the future. but for now she's not there yet but of course we're not done yet, they're still one of three record contenders that we haven't talked about yet. sbd wolf spd wolf was fighting for the record all over the world. At the same time luigi and two sneck were in May 2019, he lowered it to 1127.13. He got the critical bat cave jump and quick bone at level 5, but accidentally climbed a ladder he wasn't supposed to do with the two-cycle Dracula in the end was enough for the record, uh, sorry, but spdwolf He wanted more, he knew there was still time to save, so with the help of more strategies he started grinding even more. long wide at level 4, as you could reach enemies from further away with it, however, although it made running a little easier, it wasn't necessary, you could skip picking it up and save three frame rules by doing it for almost a second complete, he also started.

Go for more element manipulations at level three if the opportunity presented itself, the first part was to manipulate this bird's potion drop and this bird's rosary, as long as you can hit another object between them, those were the elements that You would save time by temporarily not having to deal with any enemies. Spd Wolf then took it a step further thanks to a route discovered by twosnick. More manipulation could have been done before the boss fight. It was possible to obtain another rosary and then a potion. of two more birds, he saved himself a lot of time by not having to deal with all the enemies, unfortunately this made the boss pattern random once again as you don't lose 66 frames on the way to the mummies.

Ouija went for the short whip strategy and two snacks were going for level 3 manipulation, however, spd wolf was going for both, so it had potential to take the time even lower and for a few months in mid-2019 , this is what 11 26 did yeah that's the new world record and it's probably at 1125 okay sorry that wasn't a great reaction even apparently it is oh god okay after 15 years of trying, After countless tricks, shortcuts and failures, after world record battles, after heartbreak and ultimate success, that's where the world record stands today. the

history

of castlevania world records thanks forto see you