Ultimate Castlevania

Hack of Castlevania

This patch intends to offer the definitive version of Castlevania for the NES for its 30-year anniversary.
The 1.1 version completely changes all of the game's graphics, including backgrounds, font and item sprites.
ATTENTION: It must be used exclusively with the standard American ROM: Castlevania (U) (PRG0) [!].nes
THE GRAPHICS: it aims to stay as close as possible to the original concepts, but with a better presentation. Lots of graphical upgrades and clean-ups were made, including enemy, item and boss sprites. All backgrounds were touched up to make the castle looks nice, dark and architecturally consistent. Fonts and items were redesigned too.
THE SKINS: The patches offer 3 possible skins for Simon Belmont for you to choose. Check out the Skins Guide file included in this folder to see the options.
THE GAMEPLAY: everything was a little rebalanced. Overall, the idea is to make the difficulty progression a little more gradual, and to make the gameplay even more strategic and thoughtful than it already was.

• You start with zero hearts, so you keep the short whip for a little longer, and you should really learn to survive with it.
• Big Hearts now are worth 3 units, and they're more rare, so you'll have to really use you Subweapons toughtfully.
• Candle placement was completely changed. There are much less of them (and their position is now more coherent, no more weird floating candelabras).
• Subweapons were replaced to really help you. With a few exceptions, you'll always find the perfect weapon for each situation… somewhere.
• All enemy attacks deal 1 less point of damage than normal. This makes the last 3 Blocks a little more forgiving. You'll notice that the bosses now put up some fun fights, instead of butchering you instantly.

CRAZY MODE: The same as above, but all enemy attacks deal 2 more points of damage than they did in the original game.
EXTRA STUFF: I've designed a digital new version of the original American instruction manual. It's included in this folder.
Huge thanks to Dan for his tool Stake.
YYCHR helped a lot too, thanks to whoever created it.
Hope you like it!

• KHEFZ