This is a tool-assisted speedrun. For more information, see tasvideos.org/2753M
TAS originally published on 2014-12-29
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (originally known as 悪魔城伝説 or Akumajō Densetsu, meaning "Legend of the Demon Castle") is the story of Trevor Belmont's battle against Dracula from the times before Simon's battle in Castlevania. In this complex and difficult game, there are three playable allies whom Trevor can recruit: Alucard ( tasvideos.org/3357M ) (Dracula's son), Grant DaNasty ( tasvideos.org/1979M ) (a pirate captain), and Sypha Belnades ( tasvideos.org/3360M ) (a mystic warlord). TASVideos has runs playing through the game with each of these characters.
Unlike those other runs, which are played on the Japanese Famicom version of the game for its superior soundtrack, this run uses the USA version. This is because the USA version has a hard-difficulty mode you can access by naming your character "AKAMA" at the start. In this difficulty, you cannot recruit any allies, and there are more enemies that generally do more damage. To make this even harder, Fortranm takes a route that visits the Sunken City as Stage 6, showing off a difficult stage that no other run of this game shows.