Castlevania Legends No-Death Playthrough (Game Boy Player Capture)

This is a capture of me playing through Castlevania Legends for the Game Boy. This is not an emulator. This footage was captured directly from my GameCube using my Game Boy Player with progressive scan mode enabled (you'll need the GameCube's component cables to do this and your model of GameCube must support component out as well). I’m playing on standard difficulty.

Although I started really getting into the Castlevania series around 1999 or so, I didn’t pick up Castlevania Legends until around 2013. By then the game was already expensive, and I ended up paying around $200 for a complete copy, but the price is even crazier now.

Castlevania Legends was the third and final game in the series for the Game Boy. Oddly though, it came out approximately seven years after Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge, yet it didn’t really add anything to the series. It actually detracted from it.

This game was originally meant to showcase the first Belmont, Sonia, who was also going to be featured in the ultimately cancelled Castlevania Resurrection for the Sega Dreamcast. The father of the “Metroidvania” titles, Koji Igarashi, then retconned this game’s story with the release of Lament of Innocence on the PS2 and called Castlevania Legends an embarrassment to the series. After finally beating this game, I have say, I tend to agree.

Despite all the advancements made in Belmont’s Revenge, Castlevania Legends is, for whatever reason, a rather crappy game. The level design is bland and redundant, the graphics are poor, the character animations suck, and the music ranges anywhere from mediocre to terrible. The first stage’s remix of Bloody Tears in particular just plain blows. Also, I don’t like the ending’s plot suggestion that the Belmonts are descended from Alucard, and thus, Dracula himself. So I’m happy about the retcon.

My biggest complaint, however, is the terrible, cheap enemy design. In particular, bats and ghosts are a total pain in the ass because they constantly try to attack you from directly above or below when you generally have no subweapons to protect against this. Also, enemies respawn similar to some NES games like Ninja Gaiden, which only makes problems worse.

However, once you memorize the game, it’s not terribly difficult. It’s just tedious. Unlike Belmont’s Revenge, this game no longer has usable subweapons, which have now been reduced to mere collectible items used to unlock the best ending. This game instead features soul weapons obtained from each boss, which function more like magical abilities. These are actually quite helpful because not only can you freeze or kill enemies on screen instantly, but you can heal yourself as well. However, many of these abilities require quite a few hearts to use.

This game features Super Game Boy enhancements, meaning it has additional colors and sound effects, as well as an available screen border if you’re using a Super Game Boy. Sadly though, these features don’t work on a Game Boy Color/Game Boy Advance, so you won’t see them here. But the original Super Game Boy runs games at a different speed than the actual Game Boy due to the SNES’s own internal clock speed speed, so if I was using a Super Game Boy, the game’s speed would actually be off. The Super Game Boy 2, released only in Japan, managed to fix this problem.

Anyway, in this playthrough I completed the game without dying and obtained all five subweapons to unlock the true ending. Enjoy.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the GameCube's component cables at 60 frames per second. I'm using an original model Game Boy Advance as a controller via a GameCube/Game Boy Advance Link Cable.