The original Castlevania for the NES offered two difficulty settings, "NORMAL" and "EASY."
Counter-intuitively, the default selection was "Normal," not "Easy."
For the kids of that era who barely knew their ABCs, getting into the game meant mashing the "START" button. As a result, 99% of players ended up on the Normal difficulty. In this mode, Simon Belmont had a specific mechanic: [Hit Evasion].
The moment the character was hit, they would execute an uncontrollable backward leap. No matter how hard the player mashed the D-pad, they couldn't intervene.
On the other hand, if one selected "Easy," getting hit wouldn't trigger the knockback. The character would remain stationary while the invincibility frames (Phase Movement) still triggered, allowing players to effectively "swim" through crowds of monsters.
On flat ground, the knockback wasn't a huge deal. The problem was that Castlevania was filled with stairs, pits, and small platforms. Triggering [Hit Evasion] almost always meant a one-way trip into the abyss.
And if you happened to encounter a skeleton's parabolic bone, a Medusa head's S shaped flight path, or a scurrying Fleaman while navigating those lethal platforms... well, the experience was "unforgettable."
The reactions of the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) when playing the original game weren't an exaggeration at all. Every player who heard that death jingle shared his pain.
It must be said that Chris had a bit of a gambling streak. He was the type of player who loved stuffing Ace of Cups and Time Wizard into his deck. This time, he was betting that the [Phase Movement] triggered by the zombie's hit would allow him to evade the Magician's Polymorph spell.
And as it turned out, his gamble paid off.
The Polymorph missile passed harmlessly through him while he was in his intangible state. Furthermore, the forced backward leap acted like a burst of "Nitrous Oxide" for his movement.
This "tactic" was well-documented in the original game's community.
Many speedrunners used the forced knockback to bypass obstacles that were otherwise impossible to jump over, allowing them to skip entire sections of a map and shave precious seconds off their time.
'Gamble big, win big!'
Chris's expression of pure, unadulterated satisfaction at his successful gamble likely looked "terrifying" to the Vampire Magician.
The Magician tried to teleport away to avoid Chris's lunging strike, but his sluggish mana flow gave him the answer first.
The skill was on cooldown. He couldn't use it.
Yet even as the Magician braced his powerful vampire physique for a physical impact from a "puny human," the shirtless Chris passed right through his body, as smoothly as if they were on different layers of a digital image!
The Phase Movement from [Hit Evasion] hadn't ended yet. For those few seconds, Chris had no collision box.
The Magician had never expected Chris's intangibility to last so long. It didn't just allow him to ignore spells; it allowed him to ignore solid objects. Every one of the Magician's calculations had been wrong. One mistake led to another, and as Chris passed through him, the Magician tried to swing his gentleman's cane in a physical counterattack.
But a split second later, a suffocating grip and an agonizing heat enveloped his throat.
Chris's holy whip, the Vampire Killer, had successfully coiled around the Magician's neck!
Chris was taking advantage of a "feature" that was practically a bug: even while intangible, his own attacks could still land. Coiling the whip around a neck counted as a successful strike.
Though only the initial contact triggered the weapon's special effects, it was still a full 20 points of unmitigated Holy damage. Using a relic specifically designed to kill vampires for a "strangulation" was essentially a death sentence for the Magician.
"Axe! Keep the zombies off me!"
Chris pulled with enough force to snap a normal whip, his eyes bulging as he strained to choke the life out of the vampire. He shouted for help from the one-eared student.
"On it!!!"
The student, who realized Chris was calling for him, didn't let the chaos overwhelm him.
Personally, he was closer to his roommate, but logic told him that his "dumbass" roommate was currently useless.
He decisively chose to assist Chris, leaving his roommate to fend for himself.
After fighting the zombie tide for a while, even if most of the work was done by Chris, the student had begun to notice a pattern.
He ducked low and swung his single handed axe, slamming the blunted hammer side into a zombie's knee. The bone shattered instantly. As the zombie lost its balance, the student rose and drove his shoulder into its chest, knocking it aside.
Instead of finishing it off, he spun and charged toward the wizened "zombie duck" that had struck Chris earlier and was now preparing to attack again. He launched himself into a clumsy, mid air "Rider Kick."
Or a "Flying Drop-Kick," if you preferred.
It was ugly, but it worked. His boot slammed into the dry, withered torso of the zombie-duck, sending it tumbling down the hill.
The Heaven's Selection Space contained many dungeons with "all rounder" monsters, but the zombies of Ghouls 'n Ghosts were not among them.
In terms of straight line speed, these zombies were elite among their kind. This meant they were inevitably weak in other areas. In fact, their weakness could be summarized in one word, "Flimsy."
Their "flimsiness" wasn't just a matter of having only 10 HP; their physical strength was also far below that of a healthy adult human male.
In the Heaven's Selection Space, both players and monsters were defined by four primary attributes: Strength, Agility, Spirit, and Charisma. The Strength attribute directly influenced physical attack power, HP capacity, self-healing, carrying capacity, and damage resistance.
It was similar to the systems in Warcraft III or Dota, where an increase in Strength naturally increased one's health.
Strength and constitution were complementary; it made little sense to have one at an elite level while the other was pathetic.
Because the Ghouls 'n Ghosts zombies were driven by magic and were essentially rotting remains from a cemetery, not the "flesh and blood" parkour zombies seen in virus based apocalypses, their Strength was their greatest shortcoming.
The only reason a zombie had been able to break that alcoholic man's arm earlier was a combination of the man's osteoporosis and the dark magic within the zombie itself.
Any mission, no matter how dangerous it appeared, had a "correct" solution. It simply required courage, knowledge, and teamwork.
Notably, different units had different conversion ratios for HP.
As ordinary Earth humans, Chris and the others had a 1:10 ratio, 10 points of Strength translated to 100 HP.
The Ghouls 'n Ghosts zombies, meanwhile, had an average Strength of 5, but their decaying bodies meant they had a miserable 1:2 ratio. They only had 10 HP, which was why Chris could explode them with a single strike.
As a "Mimic," the Vampire Magician could teleport and cast Polymorph, and he possessed the racial traits of his kind. His Strength, Agility, and Spirit were all high, on paper, he was practically a "Mini Boss" unit. However, he was currently facing a man who was wielding a legendary holy relic like his life depended on it.
The Vampire Killer cut through the Magician's neck like a red-hot knife through butter. It was slow but smooth. As the top hat and the head rolled into the dirt, the headless body slumped, its struggles finally ending.
The gentleman's cane, still gripped in the dead hand, began to glow with the soft light of a "lootable" item.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]