- Started playing it on my new Asus EEE emulation box. The first few levels (out of 11) go by easily. So far, this game is easy and smooth, with great graphics and music.
- Completed level 5/11. I died alot on level 4 - due to cheap jumps and running out of time. Time? Why? It's not an arcade game, why would they stress you out like that? Anyways, I'm still liking the cool style of this game.
- Today, I 'transferred my savegame' from my ZSNES emulator state to my console, meaning: I died in the emulator, got a password consisting of a 4x4 grid of squares which contained axes, hearts, and holy water bottles. I saved a screenshot, printed it, and brought it home, booted my newly purchased real SNES, and entered the code. It didn't work. Then I figured out that I had to enter my name from the emulator game, 'Jakob', to get the code to work. Then it worked, and I can now continue my quest for Dracula, that most evil of vampiric fictional characters. So I guess that the code was the number of the level encrypted with the name of the player...? Pretty clever :).
- Completed stages 6-7/11. That annoying ghost at the end of stage 6 was horribly annoying, but at least there was an extra life, I could get every time I died. Stage 7 wasn't bad.
- Completed that evil spiky stage 8/11. Now I'm in the money.
- Yes! Die, stupid money-bat and your stupid cheap death-inducing gold skeletons. So many cheap deaths... Completed stage 9/11. Actually, I got a bit scared when the game wouldn't boot up. However, after cleaning the connectors on the cartridge with a Q-tip, it worked fine.
- Completed stage A (10/11). And now for the beast that is stage B with 4 bosses.
- Traversed the jumpy puzzly part of stage B and defeated Slogra, that ugly bird-thing. The game is nice enough to let me continue (and get a password) before each boss in the end boss rush. Thank you, game.
- Defeated Gaibon and Death; Not too hard. Saving the 'main feature' for later tonight.
- Completed the game. Yes! Defeated Dracula, that old bloodsucker. I learned a lot of skills on that last stage, I wish I had some need for them. But no, the sequels re-stupified the controls. Why?
- Erik and I started playing the SNES classic on the Mednafen emulator. Both of us had played it before, but the game still surprised us with its difficulty. Unlike some of the other Castlevania games, the levels are usually harder than the bosses. When compared to Rondo of Blood, which came out 2 years later, everything feels a bit more random and less a designed experience. All of the bosses so far, we defeated using brute force and not understanding any specific tricks, and the levels are a bit messy in their layouts. Still, we find the game very playable and enjoyable due to its very nuanced controls. And the music is just great (apart from that jazzy/random flute solo, damn, that's annoying).
- Completed the game. Erik and Jeppe visited, and we took turns finishing the last couple of levels, continuing our game on the real hardware. After some degree of frustration with annoying jumps, collapsing staircases, and that particularly nasty sequence of diagonally floating platforms, we reached the boss rush, and I quickly defeated Slogra and Gaibon. Death was more tricky, Erik ended up beating him and finally Dracula.
- Got the Beating A Dead Horse achievement. - Got a retroachievement in RetroArch using the Snes9x core.
- Bjørk visited, and I demonstrated the MiSTer for him. After watching the Castlevania animated series on Netflix, Bjørk wanted to check out a classic Castlevania game.
Nothing like a few levels of Castlevania on RetroArch when on a work break.
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