ROM Hack - Castlevania - Balanced Difficulty

Castlevania - Balanced Difficulty

Original game : Castlevania

Platform : NES

Author : Zimgief

Release date : 03 September 2020

Category : Improvement

Patch version : 1.0

Modifications : L, P

Downloads : 1043

ROM Information

Database match: Castlevania (USA) (Rev A)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20180803-121122)
File SHA-1: 7A20C44F302FB2F1B7ADFFA6B619E3E1CAE7B546
File CRC32: 856114C8
ROM SHA-1: 3DCB69A8C861C041AEB56C04E39ADF6D332EDA3A
ROM CRC32: B668C7FC

Hack description

Castlevania on NES is notorious for its difficulty, the battle against Death in particular.

In order to rebalance the game, this hack makes the following changes:

A multiplier is hidden on the way to Death. This was unavailable on the first loop in the unmodified game

Player damage has been reduced by 1, which means that in the last levels, the player can sustain 5 hits before dying instead of 3.

Pork chops now give 8 units of health instead of 6.

One pork chop is hidden before the battle against Dracula.

An alternative patch is provided where the player loses 3 health units by any hit instead of 2, 3 or 4 depending on the level.
Compared to the unmodified game, this means that level 1 and 2 are more difficult, 3 and 4 the same, 5 and 6 less difficult.

Finally, a bonus patch is included, that fixes the hitbox of the spike traps in stage 2.

Contributions

Contributor	Type of contribution	Description
upsilandre	Hacking	Press_Hitbox_Fix

Reviews

Great hack, though I have one complaint.	Masked Dedede	2020-09-08	Version 1.0
This hack made the spike press section and later stages more tolerable and less unfair, it's great! One complaint that I have is that this isn't compatible with NaOH's Improved Controls hack, which is a bummer, since I prefer playing with modernized controls. The spike press fix works fine, though. Other than that, it's a very good hack for people who don't want to have to deal with early NES game difficulty!

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