Has anyone played Vampire Killer (MSX) ?

[Ziggy]

It seems like Haunted Castle is the more popular of the obscure Castlevania games, it even got a recent digital release, but it's still a horrible game. Vampire Killer on the MSX is much less known, and gets no attention. I don't believe it has been released outside of the original MSX version. It seems like it might be actually fun to play, unlike Haunted Castle. It's a shame it hasn't seen a re-release of any kind because it seems worthy.

So has anyone here played Vampire Killer on the MSX? I was thinking about giving it a go.

[marurun]

Jeremy Parish has taken a look at it and streamed an hour or two of gameplay. Partridge also reviewed it in Games Beaten 2020, I think.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Pidge beat it recently, and I’ve made it to the third level. It’s insanely difficult and not that good. If you want to beat it, you’re going to need to use save states (or set aside 6-9 months to get really really good at a bad game!).

[Ziggy]

Oh wow, is it really that hard? Watching some (no death) playthroughs on YouTube, it looks pretty straight forward. Find a key, find the locked door.

Real hardware is out, I'm not going to be buying an MSX any time soon. So I suppose I could use save states. What's the best MSX emulator to use for this game?

How are the physics? It's hard to tell from just watching a video, but they look similar to the NES game.

[Ziggy]

Up to jump sucks in platformers! But if I'm playing in an emulator, I can just map jump to something else.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Physics are a lot like Castlevania. No scrolling, though; so, you will get surprised a lot as you navigate from one screen to the next. A lot of the mechanics are also really odd; so, you’ll want to read up on it a bit before embarking.

[Anapan]

I played it through emulation a long time ago when marathoning all the Castlevanias. It was hard. - too hard. It plays like the original Castlevania, Nintendo hard, but makes the experience of Castlevania 1 that much worse. I didn't like the game, but the music was enjoyable.