Tonight I was going through some ROMs for various reasons, and I happened upon the Japanese Famicom Castlevania. I've heard that game had an Easy mode, so I thought I'd try it out.
Holy crap, it's ridiculous.
In the first few stages, you only take 1 damage bar per hit. And you never take more than 2 bars per hit. On the NES, in stages 1 and 2, you took 2 bars; in stages 3 and 4, 3 bars; and in stages 5 and 6, 4 bars.
You start with NINE lives in reserve! (That probably makes the least difference, since the NES version still had infinite continues) And thirty hearts.
If you die, you keep your weapon and your double or triple shot, if you had them. Not only that, but if you gain a new item, you also keep your triple shot. So, for almost the entire game you'll be guaranteed to have a triple shot.
There is no recoil when you are hit. You pause for a moment, and the enemy goes through you. If you were on a platform, you'll remain where you were. If you were in the middle of a jump, you'll pause, but then continue to make the jump, and probably will land safely.
Simply allowing you to take more hits would ruined the final boss, and having you start with a triple shot wouldn't have helped, either. But that's not enough: HE takes LESS hits to kill, too! Rather than 16, the first form dies with 8 hits. And the second form loses at least a bar for every attack (on the NES, it takes SEVERAL hits to get him to lose a single bar)
Granted that I've beaten Castlevania (several times) before, but I think even if I hadn't, I think I would have found that mode to have been pointlessly easy. I'm talking, "Something like Super Mario Land that you might beat on your first try."
In the NES days, people knew what they were they were doing. They knew to REMOVE difficulty levels like that, because they'd undermine the game if they were left in. Nowadays, they'd either add something like that in, or would even go so far as to take out the harder mode.
Maybe one reason why Konami seemed like such a good company in the NES days was due to their localization offices. At the very least, Castlevania, Castlevania III, and Bayou Billy were all made harder for America than they were for Japan.
"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
-Orwell
Holy crap, it's ridiculous.
In the first few stages, you only take 1 damage bar per hit. And you never take more than 2 bars per hit. On the NES, in stages 1 and 2, you took 2 bars; in stages 3 and 4, 3 bars; and in stages 5 and 6, 4 bars.
You start with NINE lives in reserve! (That probably makes the least difference, since the NES version still had infinite continues) And thirty hearts.
If you die, you keep your weapon and your double or triple shot, if you had them. Not only that, but if you gain a new item, you also keep your triple shot. So, for almost the entire game you'll be guaranteed to have a triple shot.
There is no recoil when you are hit. You pause for a moment, and the enemy goes through you. If you were on a platform, you'll remain where you were. If you were in the middle of a jump, you'll pause, but then continue to make the jump, and probably will land safely.
Simply allowing you to take more hits would ruined the final boss, and having you start with a triple shot wouldn't have helped, either. But that's not enough: HE takes LESS hits to kill, too! Rather than 16, the first form dies with 8 hits. And the second form loses at least a bar for every attack (on the NES, it takes SEVERAL hits to get him to lose a single bar)
Granted that I've beaten Castlevania (several times) before, but I think even if I hadn't, I think I would have found that mode to have been pointlessly easy. I'm talking, "Something like Super Mario Land that you might beat on your first try."
In the NES days, people knew what they were they were doing. They knew to REMOVE difficulty levels like that, because they'd undermine the game if they were left in. Nowadays, they'd either add something like that in, or would even go so far as to take out the harder mode.
Maybe one reason why Konami seemed like such a good company in the NES days was due to their localization offices. At the very least, Castlevania, Castlevania III, and Bayou Billy were all made harder for America than they were for Japan.
"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
-Orwell
