By Jorge D. Fuentes
I did this to try and remember what HTML is like with the coolness of Style Sheets, heh heh... also, this was done with Notepad... with just HTML skill alone! No Frontpage for me! Whee! Anyway, these 'Top 20' are really not listed in any particular order... well, maybe to me they are, but I was mostly insane when I started to do this last night, so some things which should probably be more important aren't... I didn't put too much thought into the order as much as the concept of how cool these things are. Blargh, I am dead.
Be patient, this page takes a long time to load, as it has about a Meg and a Half to Two Megs of pictures. Pass the time by reading this pointless stuff, and hopefully chuckling at it.
Hover your mouse over a picture to see the picture's description. Enjoy!
These dudes are evil as hell. I mean, just look at them! They kick ass with their biker ways. Let alone the fact that they're awesome with their little pals on the side car. I know what many of you are thinking. You're thinking "Hey, Motorcycles aren't supposed to exist at that time period!". Well, to those people... let's put it this way: In Castlevania1 you have Frankenstein's Monster, but the actual time period Mary Shelley's novel describes for Frankenstein isn't anywhere near the time period in which he appear. And Frankie appears in CV3, in CV1, in CV4, in Rondo, and in Bloodlines (and even makes an appearance on THESE N64 games), so before we start pointing fingers, let's not forget that these games are NOT big on time-specific events.
This guy is a menace in the N64 game. Not only does he take Cornell's little 'sister', Ada, toward the end of the game, to use her as bait to lure Cornell, but he's also been killing off Maidens (as shown in the LoD Intro) with his Scythe in front of Actrise and Gilles DeRais in order to prematurely bring about (temporarily) the Prince of Darkness, Count Dracula! Plus, he's just badass in battle, with swooping attacks with his Scythe, and the nasty teleporting little Fast-Spinning Scythes that he traditionally uses to cut up the Heroes.
I mean, that's just hardcore awesome, heh heh...
...oh, did I mention he Summons killer Remora Undead Fish things using Eerie Green Summon Pentagrams? Yeah... I thought you'd like that.
This game, like Circle of the Moon, does a great job at bringing in the Lycanthropes and other Werecreatures into play. I mean, I'm not counting our hero, Cornell. I'm talking about the regular enemies, here! There are WerePanthers, WereTigers, Minoraurs, Werewolves, and other thingies! Just look at the pictures below:
And let us not forget about our friend Ortega... the ultimate Were... uhh... thing...
Unlike the sprite-based games, changing the polygon textures enables characters to have different costumes in this one. They're pretty damn cool, too. These costume changes are pretty fashionable, and kickass, too.
This woman is one of the best plot characters in any Castlevania game. Unlike Maria, Liddy, Mina, or any of the other side characters in any Castlevania game, this woman's tale is actually moving. Rosa, once a normal Human woman, ran away from her parents' home in the village. She became lost and ended up being consumed by the Castle's Dark Magic, to the point in which she actually became a creature of the night. She could not escape the castle, and her body became that of a Vampire's. Apparently, because her spirit was weak and consumed with some sort of hatred at the time in which she ran away, she became a Vampire when she found herself trapped within Dracula's Castle, to be one of his minions.
Because she was never really bitten, the curse affected her body. With the heart of a human, but the lustful desires to feast upon human Blood, Rosa is torn, and continuously fights the Hunger. She becomes weaker and weaker, she is too weak to do anything but perenially watering the roses in the Castle's Annex, known otherwise as "The Villa".
Reinhardt meets this charismatic soul four times during gameplay. The first time she is watering white roses with Blood (it'd be messed up if this is how Venus Weeds are born), the second time, she's in a chamber with Sunlight... and Reinharts stops her from committing Suicide by running into the Light and burning. The next time is in the Castle's Center, where the Grim Reaper intervenes and makes the curse upon her body great enough to give her Strength. She fights you with flying Rose darts (like the VenusWeed), with Fireballs, and with a Sword. You must defeat her to continue on to the Castle's Towers. Near the end of the game, Rosa saves Reinhardt's life at the cost of her own, where she shields Reinhardt's body from the Grim Reaper's Flying Scythes.
If you ever get the best ending with Reinhardt, you will see the Rosa again. Then, she will look like this:
Castlevania looks pretty cool this way. Sure, it's got no Castle Keep in the picture, but it still looks pretty cool. However, what I mean is that this castle is actually gritty. It's not a fancy place with eye candy and pretty things all over (though It does possess those). It is a hauntingly dark place, just like Castlevania should be.
They went out of their way to create a separate Dracula just for battling Cornell. Great stuff. It's a completely different boss, with a completely different pattern.
Just like in Castlevania III, we've got three forms of Dracula ready to thoroughly wipe the floor with Reinhardt or Carrie. Granted, the third form may never make an appearance if you don't do the right thing, but most people manage to make it to the Castle Keep on time. If you don't dawdle, his Third Form, Final Dracula, will await you in a different dimensional plane.
Renon has got to be the most awesome salesman that the Castlevania world has ever encountered. The Vampire KillerMSX Salesmen, the Simon's Quest Salesmen, the Chronicles Salesman, the Master Librarian, and the HoD Shopkeeper ALL PALE in comparison to this demonic salesman. Polite, helpful, but positively deadly given the right (wrong) situation, Renon kicks ass all over the place.
Behind those reflective spectacles, he's got Red Eyes. Kickass.
KCEK has managed to put together a game with four radically different
characters, with four different storylines who go to the Dark Castle for their
own purposes. All their quests matter. None of that "let's put that character
in, but give him no plot in their quest,
whatsoever"
*cough*SotNRichter*cough*
*cough*HoDMaxim*cough*
*cough*AoSJulius*cough*
Hmm...
these are all IGA games. Forgive me if I lack a shocked look in my face.
