Castlevania 1 NES vs. Harmony of Despair R. 10

[Ridureyu]

So, I was looking at the new Harmony of Despair's Round 10, which essentially mashes together all of the original Castlevania for the NES into one big Metroidvania stage:
The Castlevania Wiki's image of the Round 10 map

Now, I noticed that they took a few liberties, namely flipping 4-2 around or adding a few transition elements where there were none, or just generally filling in blank space. So I said to myself, "Why not see how good their map was?"

The sprites for this came from this site, thanks to Badbatman3's rips. I absolutely give him credit for the original rips, and when I make a finalized version of this image, I'll stick his name on it. This is kind of a work in progress, though:

9928x1908, 852 KB

So, there it is. I barely had to fudge anything to make it fit. In fact, the only "iffy" segments are:

-Stage 2's stairways do not line up properly. All of the background, floor, ceiling, and wall tiles do line up flawlessly from vertical screen to vertical screen, but not the stairs. I fixed this, but that is a flaw.

-The stairways in every other stage lined up perfectly.

-The pit between stages 3 and 4 does not line up with the pit in the boss room. I gave it a little step down, but I think the idea is that the whole floor collapsed and dropped SImon. More on that below.

-I had to estimate the drop between stages 3 and 4. I chose to line up the water level, which ultimately made the ground level between 4-2's courtyard and 1-1's front gate ALMOST equal. There's something like a tile difference in elevation, but not much.

-The stairs don't actually continue from 4-1 to 4-2. I added them to line things up, and you do see Simon "stair-walking" up out of the background, so they are there, just not in the foreground like in this pic.

-Stage-ending doors are double doorways, as there is a distinct change in tile patterns between them.

-There is no stage-ending door for 4, nor a stage-opening door for 5. I put them in just so the transition doesn't seem as strange and sudden.

-I had to estimate the length of Dracula's stairway to his keep. I lengthened it, with the result being that it doesn't brush up too closely with the Mummy room (the ONLY TIME rooms threatened to clip into each other), and also so that it matches the between-stages map.

-Likewise, the background clocktower face by Dracula's Keep does not line up unless you shorten the staircase below what it is in-game. tzherefore, I manually lined it up with the wall.

Other than that? Wow. Just... wow. The stages do not clip (exception: mummy room and Dracula's keep MIGHT), the whole game matches that between-stages map, and it's even laid out like a Metroidvania, sort of. I love tiny details like the clocktower and keep being visible in the background of stage 3 (why had I never noticed that before?). It even shows a little bit of continuity for why Simon jumps down a pit to get to Stage 4. He had made it almost to Dracula's doorstel (just needed a ladder! Or, if I kept the stairway short, all he had to do was knock a hole in the wall), but the floor collapsed as a trap, and dumped him in the caves. Iiiinteresting.

To-do:

-Add in tiles where there are obvious walls, ceilings, and floors that simply were not on-screen (Dracula's chamber, Stage 2's roof, etc.)

-Make the "sky" midnight blue replace the empty white space.

-Add Badbatman3's logo, so people can give credit.

-MAYBE add in sprites of the enemies where they all were in-game.

-MAYBE do the same with candles, if I'm not insane by then.


So, there you go! Special thanks to TSR and Badbatman3, and I just wanted to show off how well the CV1 map meshed.