It’s Draculas own fault for keeping holy water in his throne room.

"Just don't die" strat of the century

For the last boss I’ve heard that if Dracula’s second form gets you cornered you should kneel before him and he jumps higher so you can get under him.

One thing Ryu missed, that it applies to every level regarding Medusa heads, they fly in the same pattern everytime. So, for instance in Stage 5 (Level 2, screen 2) when you have to platform around them, if you find a safe spot where you are not getting hit by them, that will be a safe spot the entire screen. That was a huge tip that helped me move around them.

A few things to point out: 1. When an enemy is frozen using the holy water, he actually can't hurt you, so you can just walk past him without taking any damage. It is especially useful during the final phase of Dracula, as you can completely avoid taking damage in 18:32 by simply walking past him while he's frozen (instead of attacking his head like Ryu does here) You can also use this technique during the hallway with the knights. Just walk past them when they're frozen and they'll disappear when they're off-screen. Although the method shown in the video is great too. 2. 16:19 Correction: If you game over you actually respawn at the start of the stairs (just like when you die regularly), so you won't have to come back to the beginning of the stage and deal with the bats again. So yeah. great video as usual Ryu! Keep up the good work!

*Pro Tip for Castlevania 1, 3 and 4:* You can force the Double or Triple Shot item to spawn by killing a certain number of enemies with a single subweapon and then breaking a lamp. The amount of required kills changes between games but it works the same. This is most easily exploited in the hallway before Death, since there are infinite spawning medusa heads and axe armors, allowing you to _always_ get a Triple Shot cross before the boss fight.

“You’re gonna wanna farm as many hearts as possible, that’s gonna apply to every level in the game.” Immediately walks past a falling heart. 😂

Stage 3 boss - don’t break the meat block. Just stand up top and lob holy waters between the mummies and stun lock them in place until they’re dead.

"farm up all the hearts you can" proceeds to not pickup a dozen heart drops

You’re like a Disney tour guide for video games. It’s fantastic. I love it.

That snap into the finger gun after Medusa was hysterical! 😂😂😂❤

genuinely my fav youtube series man, plz do these more!! love u ryu

James Banana is the seudonym for Kinuyo Yamashita, she's the music composer for this game bro. After you finished stage 18, it loops again, but the enemies are twice as fast. There are 99 stages, so you have to keep playing it 6 times in a row.

It's my favorite series on KZfaq, for what it's worth , love what you do Brother and makes the week that much more palatable , so thank you 👊

Surprised you made a debunking the difficulty video for this game thanks ryu.

You can force Double and Triple powerups on your sub-weapons by simply breaking candles with the sub-weapon. The intended way is to kill enemies with the sub-weapon but who's got time for that? Got a cross? Start breaking candles with it. Got holy water? Break candles with it! You'll have II and III in no time.

Original Castlevania(tm) played by original Ryu(tm). Perfection. And kudos to James Banana for one of the best game soundtracks ever composed.

This video was just what I needed, man. Hope you're doing great.

This video made me think back to calling the 1-900 Nintendo tip phone line, where someone with the game and a binder would talk you through parts of levels.

Tripple cross long distance death was my childhood strategy

Can we get a Simons Quest Debunking the Difficulty?? That games music also slaps!

One additional pro tips: You can farm subweapon upgrades faster by destroying 10 things (including candles) with them.

This series is awesome, keep this stuff coming

Great video! I always loved this game, especially the music in it!

Great stuff, I just subscribed.

Great guide! I thought Ryu had already done Castlevania NES in the series previously for some reason. It seems like many NES games have one "broken" weapon. Contra has spread shot, Mega Man 2 has Metal Blades, and this has holy water. I have always struggled with this game, but I might give it another try with these tips! There actually is a game patch for this game that alters the jumping to be similar to Mega Man where you can control your jump while in the air.

Waiting for your castlevania debunking difficulty playlist ... 🔥🔥 ... Good job ryu ..

Thanks Ryu for all the great videos !!! 🙂

Thank you Ryu !!! For inspiring me to finally call this one beat , watched your video and said "screw it!! I'm gettn this one done". I was very close but stuck at death for a few months, but after years, I finally did it , the Cookie Monster is finito !!!!

8:00 ayo why that tower flippin' us off like that

I love this series, keep it up dude!

I’ve been waiting for this.

8:00 the building in the back is flipping ryu the bird

When I was 16, I beat this game on one life (without dying once). It took me several months to accomplish but I did it. I had the run recorded on VHS at one point but it was lost over the decades. I preferred the cross (I think it's actually supposed to be a boomerang) in most levels to the holy water. But most bosses and the one hallway, the holy water works better. I also thought the hunchbacks were monkeys.

Against the cookie monster, you can stay crouched in front of him before he jumps and he will do a high jump, allowing you to pass under him without taking damage. You have to crouch early though, if you do it at the last moment he will already have commited to doing a low jump.

Your commentary is amazing on this! It’s exactly what goes through my head- “stupid skeleton” etc!

I usually preferred the cross (especially with the triple modifier) to the holy water myself. Though back in the day I always called the cross the boomerang due to how it flies out and back. haha. Also because there's already a cross item in the game that kills everything on the screen. :P EDIT: Ok, you gave some love to the cross too. I wrote this before you mentioned it. lol

@8:32 What you want to do is NOT get the pot roast and just get back on the platform and spam holy water from there. They can't hit you from that position.

Would love to see a vid on Blaster Master personally. Keep up the good work Ryu!

Before I even went to put the cart in the system I looked up this specific video just to see if you did indeed do a guide for this game, and by luck you have. Got my ass thoroughly hammered by this game for a good three hours but the tips certainly helped. If nothing else it psyched me up to finally beat this game like a big boy for the first time. I like how you don't talk about every strat and cheese this game has to offer, just what you know from experience. It's very layman

Who the hell is James Banana 🤣 Nicely done dude! Keep these videos up!

Fun fact: Those hunchback enemies in stage 3 are called Fleamen.

Something else on the mummies boss fight which I found useful was that you could jump back up to the entrance way once you started the boss fight (if you didn't break the wall to get the pot roast) and just camp them out from there. It's also even easier to beat with the cross, since it will do damage to them on every frame if you hit both of them at the same time with it. Also, for the death boss fight, something I have seen people claim is that the scythes positions are random outside of the start, which is completely untrue. The scythes will always spawn in the same relative positions to Simon that they do at the start of the fight (so down and to the right, directly above, and up and to the left of Simon as seen at 14:14 when they spawn mid-jump), but after the first volley, if they would spawn fully outside of the screen then they will loop back around before spawning. So for example if the scythe that normally spawns up and to the left would spawn offscreen to the left, then it will instead loop back around and spawn on the right side of the screen, as seen at 14:18. If they would spawn halfway offscreen then they just don't spawn at all during that volley. This means that with the correct movement, (which is very hard) you can control where the crosses are at all times, which can make for a very fun challenge if your doing a whip-only no-upgrades run and want to try beating every boss (or the whole game for that matter) without doing damage to anything except bosses (so no killing enemies, no destroying torches, no getting hit by birds/bats, no destroying axes or scythes, etc) since it turns the Death Boss into a kind of puzzle game where your trying to figure out where you should be standing so you can manipulate the positions of the scythes to open up windows where you can do damage to the boss without hitting them which I find really satisfying to pull off. Lastly, something I found helpful when facing the hunchbacks is that if you are looking right at them and duck around 1 block infront of them while they are looking at you, they seem to always do a large hop. This is both very helpful for casual playthrough and also lets you pull off a lot of really cool strategies like getting through the entire area at 9:44 without killing anything by bunching all the hunchbacks up and repeatedly forcing them to do a full jump as you move forwards which is (once again) very satisfying to pull off. Edit: Oh also that same strategy used for the hunchbacks can be used when facing the Cookie Monster (Dracula Phase 2) where you just duck in front of him after he does a large jump and he will (almost always) do a large jump, which can be used to put the boss in an infinite loop where he can't hurt you while you just slowly chip him down by hitting him as he is landing and then forcing another full jump. Hopefully this advice is helpful, cheers.

As a huge Metroidvania fan, I feel guilty for not having played any Castlevania games. This one in particular has always intimidated me, hoping this video will give the courage to try it!

Music remixes or reimaginations of C-Vania's game music are usually really awesome.

The two reasons why most people considered Castlevania to be hard were: The knock back and the jumping behavior. Games people were used to prior to Castlevania didn't have knock back like that (or only a very tiny one) and had air control. E.g. think of Super Mario or Metroid, which pretty much everyone knew to play. Actually games without air control are exceptional rare. Three other annoying game choices were: Sections with endless re-spawning (most people hate the concept), how weapon control (up + fire = secondary fire) conflicts with stair movement and stairs in general, which are badly designed to begin with and can really mess you up. On top of that, nobody who played that game initial expected projectiles to be destructible by your whip (again, hardly any game has destructible projectiles), so people tried to dodge them which is impossible in Castlevania, so they got quickly frustrated.

One Castlevania game I could never beat thanx for the tips dude

great vid, i hope you someday do castlevania 3

I just started wstching your vids. So far I'm really enjoying seeing you whip through (no pun intended) the games i played as a teenager. A couple things with this one though: That weapon you used to beat Madusa was not a cross. It's a boomerang. The cross is the one use weapon that eliminates all the enemies on the current screen. It makes the little siren noise when you grab it. Also, not sure if you are aware, but there are several treasures you missed throughout your playthrough. Hidden in bricks or that appear when you step in a certain place. Helpful for points/ extra lives. Obviously, you don't need extra lives 😂 but a useful nugget for your viewers. Maybe another playthrough where you show all of them? Just a suggestion. Either way, I did enjoy the vid. 👍

This series is so great, I already know I'm going to love this one before it even starts.

This game is no joke. Yes it is hard.

Three rules for me to beat this game: 1. Get the holy water 2. Get the holy water 3. GET the HOLY WATER

Just what I needed! ❤

The castle in the background on 13:28 looks like it's flipping you the bird lol

Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest was always my favorite. If you're looking for some more bangers and awesome gameplay. I highly recommend it.

There was actually a hidden wall chicken at 11:23, not sure if you missed it intentionally. I advise trying out stages 14-15 with the Axe and save it for Death. The Axe has the perk of flying over the Axe Knights’ shields and hitting them on their heads, which can kill them quickly (1-3 hits). I’d say the Axe is more useful against Death’s sickles than the Cross as the trajectory will destroy projectiles that spawn right above you. Lastly, here’s a helpful tip about Dracula’s second form: if he is stunned by Holy Water, you can walk through him without getting hurt as long as he is still stunned.

"get all hearts possible" said ryu, totally ignoring one heart on screen 🤣

I must be going crazy. I thought he already debunked this game

Great video! You should do a debunking the difficulty of the first gradius on the nes

You did a pretty good guide to Castlevania. You and You Can Beat Video Games should find a game to make a guide together, as he too also makes great guides go retro games.

The game's only 1UP pickup is hidden 1/3 of the way through Stage 13, at the end of the upper level, right before the stairs that lead to the red skeletons. On the upper level, hold right at the wall until the hidden 1UP appears, and then haul ass down to it before it disappears. At the end of the red skeleton section, there's a wall meat hidden in the left side of the raised ground blocks before the door. To those who main the triple cross weapon, the US version of the game often freezes if three crosses are onscreen with too many other sprites; I've had the game lock up many times this way, including at bosses, so now I only play the JP version since I often use triple cross on Drac's final phase (and the post-boss point calculations happen faster in this version too).

Ryu makes me cry. I've spent countless hours as a kid trying to beat this game. And he does it in 10 minutes.

Love it! Just wanted to point out- The pot roast isn’t a dev power up, it’s listed in the manual as “hidden in the background” and appears with “secret whip stroke”.

I like this. Nicely executed. Clean run. One thing I would have liked to have seen you mention was that you can run through things while they’re under the holy water. Nicely done tho

Stop watch is a huge help in stage 17

The challenge was to figure out this without internet or any guides. Just you and some of your friends trying to figure it out...

The way he calls it a POT ROAST when it's a PORK CHOP..............THE AUDACITY!!!

I love this series!! Feels like when you got stuck with a game and asked your brother to beat it for you while you watched amazed and stuned!

Watching this again, extra tips for Cookie Monster (last boss): - You can dodge his jump. If you kneel in from of him, he high jumps and you can safely cross. - If you jump before you throw the holy water, you get a free hit.

You know a game I'd like to see you debunk? Blaster Master for the NES!

I highly recommend doing a "Debunking the Difficulty" video on Castlevania for MSX2 sometime, if you can. Despite having no continues or ability to earn extra lives, I actually find it easier than Castlevania on NES due to the simple fact that it's balanced more for smart playing through the use of its expanded inventory, as opposed to twitch reflexes -- even if you suck as a gamer, you can beat Castlevania on MSX2 simply by knowing where to find white bibles (and avoid black bibles), knowing where the merchants are, and making good use of the hourglass, holy water, and wood shield. It requires a very different mindset from its NES counterpart, and almost certainly multiple playthroughs, getting a little bit farther each time as you familiarize yourself with each stage, but clearing it feels really rewarding as a result (even if the ending sucks!). If you ever do try it, though, READ THE MANUAL FIRST. I can't stress this enough. MSX2 Castlevania (officially called Vampire Killer for its release in the UK and other European territories) is NOT an intuitive game, and a lot of the mechanics in it were NEVER reused in any other Castlevania game, so it's not something you can just jump into and figure out along the way. It's very much its own thing, and that's what I love about it -- it's one of my absolute favorite Castlevania games, and I will die on that hill. ;)

Would love to see you play Bionic Commando. Remember this game being close to impossible growing up.

Never been able to beat the last boss so cheap

I wish the cross had maintained that boss-ass “BOOM-BOOM” sound, instead of sounding more like the flittering axe

"get as many hearts as possible" … immediately walks by one

Great video, but I'm quite surprised you didn't mention "chasing the boomerang". Or, cross I guess you call it. I always just called it the boomerang. Anyway, it's when you toss the cross backwards, jump over it when it returns, then follow after it, letting it kill/damage enemies before you even get to them. Sometimes can really help with Medusa pits.

Tip: When you're going up the stairs to fight Dracula, you can hit the candles and collect some hearts (don't go all the way into the throne room), then go back down the stairs to the bottom screen, backup the stairs again and the candles reset and you can keep getting more hearts! Rinse and Repeat until you have enough for throwing Boomerang/Holy Water! Enjoy!

I usually find it hard to stick with NES games for more than a few hours. I guess I just don't hold any emotional connection to it. I grew up playing the SNES. Love that system.

-You played the greatest role in this story

Contra 4 on hard mode is crazy. I would love to see Ryu play this one.

Welcome to debunking the difficulty, today we'll be swimming nude across a river of molten lava. Now this has a reputation of being pretty difficult but it's really not that bad.

You can earn sub-weapon upgrades by killing multiple monsters with them. Hitting things with a single throw of a sub-weapon 2, 3 or 4 times increases your odds of a candle dropping an upgrade (instead of what it would drop by default). So hit 2 or 4 things with one sub-weapon, repeat this once or three times, then hit a candle or two. I love the way the game rewards you for killing well 😈 Sub-weapon upgrades make you super powerful, especially vs bosses. Also, candles count as something to hit, so line up that axe, holy water, or cross with a monster and a candle or two, and boom.

Hey man been a while how ya doin ,You might remember me from talking to you on one of your live streams ,Good to see you doin more vids that aren't Mario maker been waiting to see it ,hope you do more multiplayer vids I'm sure others would like to see it Otherwise it's important to do what you like and I've noticed people like to complain or talk shit but your so cool about it don't take no crap from anyone man I know what it's like to have to deal with aholes

Jogou demais! GG

In the section around 6:55, and any other with stairs and flying enemies, another thing to keep in mind is that if you're climbing the stairs and you get hit, you won't get knocked back, so it can be a saving grace in some areas.

I just realised that Vampire Survivors is packed with reworked Castlevenia Assets :D Like, the holy water, the ham, the chandliers, Even the mobs, THE WEAPONS. How did i not noticed that man??

I love this game but I have never beat it. Stoked to see it debunked!

Debunking the difficulty... "just don't die." XD

First 2 bosses are vulnerable to the Stopwatch, so you can stick to that as well. It also greatly helps with medusa heads since you can pause them while making all the jumps. 3rd level gives you Holy Water at the start, so it works as a nice transition.

I am forever AMAZED at the people who speedrun this one!

I would use the stopwatch the first 2 levels, go to holy water until level 6, then stopwatch again until Dracula, then back to crosses and upgrade to level 3 by farming with the cross.

“Volgar the Viking” would be a cool game for this series. ❤

"Farm hearts, and get as many as you can" **walks past heart on the ground** XD

trivia: Medusa was the name of the creature in the greek myth. She was a gorgon named Medusa. The flying heads are gorgon heads, not medusa's :)

I was never able to get to Frankenstein in the 80s lol the end of this game was a mystery to me until youtube came into existence

One of my favorite NES games of all time and I’ve always tried to power my way through with the cross! Clearly, the holy water is the way to go! Love these breakdowns of tough games. Also, be honest Ryu……was that a fart at 11:20? 🤨😂

11:26 passed wall meat.

Is it possible to make this video with the NTSC version of Castlevania III?

Earth Defense Force debunking...that game is brutal.

The castle in the background at 8:01 looks like it's flipping you off with a smaller castle hand