Most arcade games had the decency of making their first level easy as to fool you into a false sense of security, but Haunted Castle pulls absolutely no punches, skeletons or bats.

Love how he goes from wedding suit to old time vampire slaying gear straight away, like the garb was underneath his suit the whole time.

Simon's walk makes it looks like he is holding it in so he can finally reach Dracula's bathroom!

There was a difficulty switch inside this game's motherboard. On the hardest setting, minibosses (such as the _wall_ at 1:18) will kill you in two hits. Every machine they sent to America was flipped to the hardest setting by default. Also on EVERY difficulty, using four continues would send you back to level 1. This was INTENTIONAL

This doesn’t look so bad…first hit takes half his health.

Oh man, you've unlocked a memory of playing this in my local arcade back when I was a kid. The only saving grace is it not being directly named "Castlevania", otherwise I probably never would have touched anything else from the series.

That game is like your GM suddenly going "There's a big rock coming out of nowhere; It crushed you. You are dead."

In the arcades, you had 3 continues total... Yes, 3! After that, it was back to level 1. However, if you hit start, you'd get extra health at the cost of a continue. Also, I recall there being a sword upgrade at some point and you could get the cross pretty early from a hunchback IIRC. I think I beat the stained glass knight boss with it. Hell the cross and stopwatch are the best items in the game. They make boss fights really easy.

Mummy: *appears* Ryukahr: Oh, look. A zombie.

Personally I feel that this is the only game so far where the difficulty has not been debunked. This game looks hard AF.

I want to know what the lore behind the harpies in this is. It sudden teleports you to an alternate world with them and there's just one chilling in Dracula's room for some reason.

Imagine spending your entire life making a bridge for some funny walking dude to show up and have it slowly collapse

Losing the weapons upgrade at stage 3 was devastating. 😰

For the original arcade you only got 3 continues before it started all over, regardless of how many quarters you put in. I love how this game looks, especially for a game made in 1987, but I had never seen the second area until this video.

The game isn't just poop, it's hilarious. Laughed every time the game suddenly decides to screw you over. Aside from that I'd like to congratulate you for beating this punishing game.

Honestly, it's mostly the NA difficulty that makes it so bad. Having a trap deal half your health instead of 1 unit is crazy.

Ryu's determination to stick through the hottest of garbage is commendable.

It's funny how in stage 1 simple zombies and skeletons can nearly OHK, but then enemies after that only hit for like 1 to 3 HP. Def a weird strategy for an arcade coin-eater of its time!

Imagine someone played this as their first ever Castlevania game, and because of it never touched any other Castlevania game in the entire history of the franchise.

its like the entire game is a giant troll level.

I just wanna say, somewhere in the last few years I have for some reason just started to love the concept of picking some random, obscure old game that is obviously poorly designed and beating my head against it until I get to the end. It's like solving a puzzle or something, and by the end you have a bizarre twisted love for something a ton of people hate. Idk, it's just really fun in some weird twisted way. And not only that, you get kind of an idea or lesson on what ideas/ concepts were done legit well or had a lot of potential, and it's just neat to see some of the uniqueness. All of that to say, if you ever run out of more mainstream super hard/ bad games, there's always a plethora of completely random and 1 off bizarrely hard games on SNES and NES. This type of content is some of my favorite, I just love seeing the entire process of problem solving stuff like this. Keep up the great content.

Simon has the walk of someone who just sharted and is trying not to let the crap run down their legs

"Why are there no more upgrades" he says as he runs away from literally every enemy. For real tho the game is difficult to a point. If you learn the patterns (Except the big rock boss) you're basically rolling through it free. Also, the portrait crying blood when the song "Bloody tears" plays is an amazing nod.

Haven't seen a Belmont get ravaged like this since the inquisition

So Ryu, how many quarters did you lose? Also I want you to consider the true horror of this game. Imagine this was the first Castlevania game somebody played.

I would really like to see more videos like this where Ryu plays quarter munchers and sees how much money it would have taken to beat it in an arcade.

Hearts fly away from you. Item drops disappear FAST. Movement is SLOW. Whip reach is abysmal. Whip damage dealt is low. Uninspired enemy designs. Berserk enemy patterns. Brute force and "hurry up" are key parts of... the "gameplay". Yes, this is truly award-winning work. 🙄

So, fun fact about this game: in it's original release, it actually didn't matter how many quarters you put in the machine; if you died 3 times, it sent you back to the beginning of the game. you could, however, put in quarters in the middle of gameplay to get a full life restore.

Just imagine, this game came out a year after Shinobi, R-Type and Operation Wolf. I mean even back then it was just awful

It's like Waterworld the arcade game from The Simpsons.

I was hoping the groom would rip off his tuxedo to reveal his Belmont gear underneath.

They slapped this game together in 20 mins threw the name castlevania on it and let the suckers at the arcade do the rest.

Ah yes Haunted Castle. A fine classic alongside Contrarian Aliens and Sneaky Serpent.

This game is so cheap it should've been illegal. Talk about a coin guzzler. Coin guzzler is a term used for arcades that were ridiculously hard to beat, causing players to throw quarters into the machine to keep playing.

I salute you for finishing this game. It was at my local arcade and I once dumped a roll of quarters into it and only got to the stained glass boss.

That giant normal Castlevania health bar that and you die in a couple hits from the first skeleton. Definitely a quarter thief of an arcade game.

The little dudes right before you fought that glass boss (level3) drop swords...the strongest weapon in the game. It one shots almost everything. You never killed them so you never got it.

Whoa. I was worried. Thank goodness Drac went after a bride who's new groom is the destined vampire killer.

Ryu 24:48 - "K I got a bat up my ass"

Missed opportunity for "That game is dope, this game is nope."

I've heard this game was terrible, but, man, I had no idea! This looks to be one of the few major blemishes in Castlevania history! I feel like they didn't even properly playtest this one as it seems even more BS than usual arcade standards! Simont Belmont doesn't deserve this kind of treatment! Much respect to Ryu for putting up with playing through this hot mess!

"It was an arcade game" That's why it's so stupidly difficult.

12:43 Oh shit, it’s Bloody Tears! That makes the game slightly more bearable.

James Rolfe should make an episode on this game and rip it apart as AVGN

I think if you gave it a couple more playthroughs you could do a debunking the difficulty on this one. A no death run is not very difficult once you have some experience with the game and takes less than 20 mins.

I wonder how many fellow nerds said something along the lines of "Well . .that's Frankenstein's Monster . . not Frankenstein"

Ryu, your face in the thumbnail is priceless! Very AVGN-like.

It would take a kid hundreds in quarters to beat a 15 minute game like this. Good times

Did a quick search there seems to be different versions of the game (possibly based on arcade settings: Ive seen Version M and Version K) that could explain why you lost the morningstar havent gotten a the sworrd,,,, it might be more playable if you can change versions or get a less punishing one

I wonder how many loads of laundry washes didn't get washed because people kept pumping coins into this arcade game??😂

It would be cool if you have quarter counter so we can count how much money it takes to beat this game in arcade.

Wait how do you have infinite credits? When i played this it forced me back to level 1 no matter how many credits I put in.

"I don't even care that I am getting decimated by these old dudes" 😂😂 Dance party in level 3!!

Somehow we never played Castelvania as kids, but we did have 8Eyes. Which I later noticed looks practically the same 👀

You’d walk that way too if there wasn’t a toilet to be found in Transylvania.

It's so odd to me seeing a platformer in an arcade cabinet. I was born in 85 and the oldest stuff I remember are playing The Simpsons Arcade Game and TMNT in Pizza Hut.. (as I wrote that I got a flood of memories of the smell of that place lol) I just can't for the life of me picture this style game being played standing up, with a joystick and buttons.

lol the beginning reminded me of double dragon - someone get kidnapped then you have start screen lol same idea

Oh god, I remember playing this game as a kid. The one I played was set up on those god awful horizontal tables that forced you to play while hunched over AND had a glass cover over the joysticks that would be digging into your wrists the entire time.

The internal rage instead of yelling at the screen when you didn't kill the ghost at the top of the stairs in stage 3 that drops the holy sword... ugh. lol I know from the arcade that you get extra hp if you put in more coins. Up to 4 I think.

Yo, that Level 3 stained glass boss is totally straight from Young Sherlock Holmes, that's wild

That Cathedral stain glass boss was inspired by the first ever fully CGI character in a movie: Young Sherlock Jones.

There needs to be a mod that replaces all those running little guys with boom booms.

“Am I on the floor” had me laughing hard

CEO: so then he gets extra health Programmer: what if we just -- CEO: HE GETS EXTRA HEALTH

This game deserves a remake that makes it more playable and enjoyable to play.

7:21 What the jump scare flying crap , did that came from? Lol.

22:10 love how it makes a fart sound effect as it kills you LOL

omg - I was hoping you would play this, but thought it would never happen. Looking forward to see how this goes, it's horribly unfair, but memorizable. Will it break Ryu??

Haunted Castle is what people who don’t like the Classicvanias think they are like.

This entry should be called Janklevania, love your patience if that was me I would've quit level 1. If I was 6 year old me when this came out I'd be in tears, a little ball of hateful rage.

If you change the region of this game to the Japanese version, it's significantly easier than the North American release.

Ryu: I'm alive!! Game: hold my controller

30:00 - is it where the music for Luigi's Mansion comes from? Sounds weirdly similar...

Back in the day I saw a dude put $50 worth of quarters in the arcade machine and he got to the second stage they designed this game to eat money

Castlevania 101: if you NEED a Turkey leg behind the wall, chances are it’s not there. Good luck with your heart 😂

"Where the hell did that boulder come from?!?!" LOL

This looks rough 😝 but as always, awesome content! Love you man!

You need to upgrade your whip twice before you can take the third stage on because with that you can actually kill those jumping strange little guys

Actually, this was the first Castlevania ever played. I was 7 years old and played it at a Kroger. I noticed the similarities to Castlevania when I played it on the NES, but I wasn't sure until years later the games were related to one another.

This reminds me of Waynes World when Noah Vanderhoff is explaining the Gelatinous cube game that you can't beat "so the kids keep pumpin' in quarters."

Try to play Vs. Castlevania the arcade version Ryu. Keep up the good work

Your video is making me scream, "Nooo!! NOO!" when the bats surround you.

I wonder what developer segment at Konami programmed this mess. They tried to get some high resolution stuff going but instead created a game that could be the final boss of an actual Castlevania game. The graphics were kinda interesting. But the animations are not even beginner level stuff, so bad. Like they had no inspiration. Who agreed to publish a game in this unpolished state?

You're legendary. Love watching your contents. Cheers from Poland.

The grunt sound effect at 1:39, what’s that from? It sounds very familiar.

God damn, Drac's face melting into the floor @34:49 looks SO bad!

Great playthrough. Does anyone know which version this is? The original arcade gives only 3 continues I believe. I would definately work on this version if I knew where it was from.

Shame about the level design, because aesthetically this game is awesome.

In this game you could see the future of Konami as a producer solely of microtransaction and paywall ridden mobile games.

Some of the old cabinet games were one hit kills. Never made it past the first level.

I have to say, the fact you kept that level of control all the way to the end was almost as infuriating as the game itself xD Good job btw 👍

don't remember us or japanese was the easier version but I completed the easy one within 2 days. Once you learnt the patterns it's not hard to beat. Like if you stood in one particular spot, nothing could touch you. But you had to make it with one life , that's when you got all weapon upgrade. If you died midway thru , might as well start from stage 1. Cos it's when the game's become impossible. Same like NES' Castlevania if you don't have the holy water (from the previous stage) upon fighting Frankenstein , but this one was way harder than that . I don't remember exactly what you need ,it's been years. I heard ppl vent alot about 3 continues but it doesn't make much of a difference since it's either you beat it with one continue , or another 50 continues and wouldn't make it anyways. How nice of developer to make you not even trying lol

28:05 new series: Guess What? It Sucks 😂

Most arcade games let you cheese your way through if you were willing to put in more quarters/tokens as when you died, you just dropped back in immediately. This is one of those less common ones where a death has you restart at a checkpoint. I remember another game like that being the original Gradius, another Konami title. Actually it was worst because it was 1 hit deaths.

Theres an arcade cabinet at the galloping ghosts up in chicago

The stained-glass window knight boss was directly stolen from the movie Young Sherlock Holmes (which, incidentally, was the first CGI character in a movie). In the age of the internet, there's no way they'd be able to get away with that without a copyright suit.

Brutal! I laughed hard a couple times lol when are those ff6 randomizers comin out! Love to see the all dragons run

I think this game was parodied on an early Simpsons episode. Milhouse put 4 dollars worth of quarters into an arcade machine and says "This better be worth it." His well animated character takes two steps and he instantly gets a game over, yells "What a rip!", then proceeds to dig out more coins to put in the machine.

That was fun to watch! Thanks for seeing it through!

The start of Stage 2 hurts my eyes. Great video as always!