THE WHOLE THING

Chapter 10 of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair ended up being the original Castlevania.

All of it.

As in, it is this:

It includes all six boss fights from the original game and a damn near pixel-perfect re-creation of the entire castle. Wall beef even appears in the proper blocks. As far as I can tell, aside from some enemy AI being altered the only liberties that were taken are:

1) Most of what was originally Stage 4 (the dungeon, which is the area after that long vertical drop) has been flipped horizontally, so the level wraps back to the left rather than stretching out to the right, and

2) since The Count’s tower ends up right above the spawn book, it’s somewhat nonsensical to be able to see it in the background towards the end of Stage 3.

The stage comes complete with 8-bit subweapons for the Belmont characters, 8-bit versions of spells for Charlotte and Soma, and even an 8-bit Simon Belmont to play with. The whole package is less than 400 Microsoft points.

Someone at Konami has this map tattooed on their engorged boner. I am certain of that.

We haven’t been able to clear the level on Hard yet. It is long and it is painful. Farming boss drops is going to be torturous here, as the GameFAQs kiddies are already lamenting. But for me? Castlevania on NES is as close as I ever came to being in ‘Nam. This is the shit, here. We’re in it. We’re in it.