" Yo, peace, peace, peace. I'm uh,...I'm Streets Belmont. Originally, I was gonna be in that Rondo game as that Rich kid, but they kicked me out and used the 'Rival' guy instead. I'm rather new to the DCTP scene, so I'll start by explaining this section.

"Because so many odd and mysterious things about CastleVania were found out this year, and especially during the spring and summer times, the image-heavy 2001 subsection of Groovy-Type Stuff ended up being 60% of the entire page's size. As a result, Eric decided to isolate it in its own section, here. Peep it."

"Uuuhh...hhi. I'm Nate from CircleVania. I'm not sure why I'm here. Peep."

"Shutyertrap, fool! Yo E, where's my humor comics?
You said people would put me in funny comics! You son of a..."

I I 0 0 1 : The Year in Groovy-Typeness.

Here's the 'Funk DOC' with even more of the Grim Reaper's career highlights!
"Yep, our ol' blasstardy pal Death is one of the starring characters in the Playstation series Twisted Metal.
In TM's 1 through 3, he is known as 'Mr. Grimm' and his vehicle of choice (for those not in the know, this is a vehicle combat game) is a motorcycle. His special weapon is a flaming, screaming skull that flies across the screen. Kinda like the Flame Ghost, 'cept without any appendages.
In TM4, he was changed completely. Now he's known as "Captain Grimm" and he drives a pirate ship. Yeah, he's become a pirate, complete with funny dialect and pet parrot. His special weapon is a flaming cannonball.
TM4 also has another CV-esque character. His name is "Mr. Zombie" and he drives a car. His special weapon is a skull that sucks people in and then explodes. What makes this guy so groovy is that he named his car 'Dracula'."

I found this spraypainted onto the hull of a space-themed ride during a visit to Rye Playland in 1998. Do these two remind you of anyone? Click for a larger picture! (108kb)

Yeah, I just wanted to shout out the Grim Reaper YET AGAIN! Now he's in a commercial for gum. The tag line? "Bad Breath? You're DEAD". You go, reapie!
Stoning update! THIS is the radical gargoyle statue you can become when you get hit by some yellow Medusa Heads in Symphony of the Night! Is that radical or what?! The Gaibon influence is sprayed all over CastleVania with Dracula's Hideously Evil Form, and now Alucard! Whose side is that wacky blue gargoyle bat really on?

I've been playing (the Japanese version of) Symphony of the Night recently, wondering what else I could find out during the Allies fight, and I wasn't disappointed. Grant DaNasty fans rejoice! If you wipe out Sypha and leave Trevor and Grant, after a little while, Grant will draw a SWORD! After you hear the "ching!" he'll try to SLASH you when he drops from the ceiling! Wipe out Trevor, and Grant will GO, tossing two daggers from above, AND on deck! Block those with your shield!

Yes! As you can read, I DID MAKE THIS! BWA HA HA HA HAAAA!
Take a look at this very bizarre screenshot someone, whose e-mail I unfortunatley do not have, sent me. I'm...not...sure, but it looks like there's a hidden part in CastleVania III in which two armored zombies carry this half-Dragon Skull Cannon. Reminds me of the Bone Ark from Symphony of the Night. It's been HTML-stretched to double size in hopes of easier discernability, but hmm... Looks fake...but who knows?

IIIIII

That evil Sypha-like spirit in our CastleVania 6, Dracula X, is actually Shaft, the 'Dark' Preist, or whatever you wish to call him to disgiuse the reference to the madd cool 70's movie dude. The hands of Exhibits I and II just give it away. Apparently being the only African to ever appear in a CastleVania game, why does some old European dude's head pop in when Shaft speaks his lines in Symphony of the Night? Exhibit III, provided earlier by Joey V, provides a more accurate depiction.

Postscript. I wouldn't at all be surpised if Shaft indeed came from the motherland. Africa is pretty close to Europe on the map.

I bought this Plastic Little soundtrack CD because of Asahiya Bookstore's reduced price of $5.95, since I'm a fan of the artist Satoshi Ushihara, and because I was just curious about the whole thing, the title of which rang a bell. The other night I'm sketching and listening to the nice orchestrations and drama skits on the CD when I realize that the "Plastic Little" type on the cover...

...is identical to the typeface used in the "Dracula's Curse" logo! For the 'nth time, my typography image training has made itself useful outside class...

Since the time I first noticed this in early 2001, I've been successfully able to track down the font which closely resembles this, Deutsch Gothic, so here you go!
-- 4-7-2002

Not long after... As if that weren't enough, the logotype can be found on the CD cover of Randy Neuman's Faust and is used as the logo of legendary rock star Meatloaf! Not that I listen to him,...

And as if THOSE weren't enough, I saw the same logotype in my own neighborhood up in the Bronx! It was on the sign of The African Art Merchants! Hmm...inquire within, indeed. What do I want with this font? I want to make snazzy logo-text header images for DCTP's sections, of course, and when applied properly, I can do some real damage graphically. I repeat: can anyone identify the font used for the "Dracula's Curse" logotype?

For what reason do Simon Belmont and that guy from Kung Fu share the same "oof!" sound effect?

And for more suspicious Rye Playland '98 CVness, check out this ghost house called Zombie Castle! Click for a larger (130k) image.

I vividly remember the 1992 artwork on it looking much better. They must change the schemes every year, I suppose.

In their 1991 flyer of Super NES launch titles, which also featured a picture of Dracula's chubby CastleVania Adventure visage, Konami noted for Super CastleVania IV that there were "three hidden levels of terror, packed with sinister surprises". They couldn't have been referring to the two bonus areas I found in early 1992, could they?

(Click the image for a 209kb closeup of the CV4 spot, and notice that they're all early screenshots from the Japanese version! Note the nude statue and a VERY different-looking Simon Belmont and stages.)

Please phrase your cry for enlightenment in the form of a question;

"Where are the secret stages in Super CastleVania IV?"

So one Saturday (?) night in early to middle January of 1992, I wrote to Nintendo Power asking where I could find these "three hidden stages", and this was Kwong Shek's reply (click for a 40k image). Man, how I wanted to work at Nintendo...

You can imagine my dismay when I realized that the bonus areas WERE the "hidden stages". At least I learned about the one in Stage 6-2.

(I made a spiffy drawing of Kooky Von Koopa, Yoshi and Mario on the envelope I sent out)

I was fortunate enough to visit Orlando Florida's Walt Dizknee World in the glorious year of 1992. Because this summer of THE year was mostly dominated by Super Scope 6, listening to tape recorded episodes of Super Mario World high in the mountains of Yabucoa between breaks of Joe and Mac Caveman Ninja, I had come to affectionately refer to any of Disknee World's (and actually, in May 1992, Westchester County Fair's) 'scary' rides as "Ghost Houses" after the challenging boo-men stages in Super Mario World.

If I remember correctly, the main Ghost House was a cache of Super CastleVania IV references (or should I switch that around...) There were translucent dancing spectres, translucent ghosts endlessly floating from the floor to the ceiling, and what really stood out, this old man carrying an oil lamp with his creepy old dog, just like the one found in CV4's Stage 6 bonus area!
Click for a larger (92k) image!
As Simon goes about powering up in the game's second "hidden stage" (see previous), on the floor below him are these two flickering spirits. The dog, borrowed from the earlier dog zombies of the stage, will go around trotting back and forth, and leaping with some MAJOR Michael Jordan-envying air time. But don't be fooled by its gymnastics; Simon can still get hurt if he connects with it.

The old man, who can't harm you, in turn can't be killed, but if you strike the dog out, he'll shuffle over, drop his lamp, and the poor sap will cry, dripping tears as his old friend vanishes in a plume of flame. The old man would soon follow.

Then Simon can obliviously get the rest of the bonus stuff. Did someone say fan fiction?

(The "Rebel" in the ALT tag is a personal
reference to my pit bull Rebel, who was
'put to sleep' in the late 80's.)

For even more CastleVania-ish Dizknee fun, track down a copy or ROM of the NES game Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, which has an entire stage devoted to the Ghost House.

You'll encounter flying books and other 8-bit stuff which foreshadows Super CastleVania.

Another cool feature of this game is that you can name your cowboy-hatted character anything you want, so when you press pause, Mikkey Mowse says "WUSS, FIGHT!"

Yup, that there's a statue of Sypha in stage 5-2 of Super CastleVania IV.

And with many of the elements in the game derived from Dracula's Curse, how can't it be?

Simon can moonwalk! In Super CastleVania IV, have Simon ascend a staircase, and as you've got Up+forward pressed, quickly switch it so you're pressing Up+reverse, and Simon will walk backwards up the staircase! Freaky-deeky, Simon! This is probably good for assaulting an Axe Man or something above and behind you ahead of time.

As mentioned in the Links section, the Cave Trolls in Symphony of the Night were originally named Chupacabra. Why the name was changed is beyond myself, who lives in the country which owns the island in which Joey V battled the beast on numerous occaisions...

Man, I love CastleVania. That and Mega Man are the two greatest series ever.

Visit Plant Castle in CastleVania II Belmont's Revenge. You know that area where there's a bridge and below that are "vines" that'll slow you down if you try to walk in them? I've got reason to beleive those are actually ARMS trying to reach out and grab you! It's a long shot, but check out the way Chris' arm is drawn when he uses his weapons, and compare that to how an individual arm might be drawn in dot matrix. Then multiply by 79, and you've got the arms of Plant Castle! Creepy! Evidence against this: it's a PLANT Castle, so they MUST be plants, right? Analyze this.

Were there two versions of the Super CastleVania IV box art? Rather I say, there WERE two versions of the Super CastleVania IV box art! (Only, 1 never made it.) In the one we're familiar with, Simon Belmont is swinging on a chain whip, and a Sir Grakul-looking dude plans an ambush behind a pillar in the background. Now in the artwork Game Players Nintendo Guide was handed (Vol 4 No.13), an extremely constipated Simon Belmont is swinging on a leather whip, with a Skeleton peeking from behind the pillar. What's up with that?!

 Click on extremely constipated Simon Belmont for their already pixellated version which looks mysteriously better after the scan (178kb). The article was titled "INSIDE CASTLEVANIA IV", which explains the non-official Adobe Illustrator 1991 title effects. Stephen Poole was the reviewer.

Who was the artist who worked on box art for Super CastleVania IV, CastleVania III Dracula's Curse, CastleVania Bloodlines, Monster in my Pocket, and various other Konami titles? If anyone has any idea, drop me a line!

There's this hit song from the summer of 1999, entitled "Kiss Me," ("kiss me...beneath the bearded barley, ring ring, yadda yadda...") sung by Sixpence None the Richer, and for some reason, the first, like, 9 notes of the harmonica interludes are EXACTLY IDENTICAL to those from the Stage 1 themes of Dracula X, SNES and Rondo!!! Dare to compare with this 337kb, 9.97 seconds WAV! Now you KNOW why I called this HTML file whatthe.html! WHATTHE?!

+
=

    

Jason Gaines has noticed that Firebrand's Aerial Gargoyle form in the Capcom game Demon's Crest looks exactly like a combination of Slogra and Gaibon! He DOES, too! Aerial Gargoyle was patterned after a Pteranodon after all. Radical.

  
                                                                     (Phalanx)


Gaibon Actually is Pretty Cool Part II. I don't know if you noticed this, but Gaibon, whom Demon's Crests' Phalanx resembles, is actually an in-joke/advancement on Dracula's ghastly second form from CastleVania 1. Think. Arm attached wings. Fire spitting. Lands with a THUD on the floor. Only this one CAN fly. Leg positions during flight. Wait...BLUE! The body on the original apparently denies the ability to fly with those low budget wings of his, along with a body shaped like a blasted stone avocado. Losing your stomach gives me less weight!, says CastleVania IV's Zombie Gargoyle while Phalanx just stands there waving to no one in particular. The X68k (not to mention Rondo) Dracula beasts just make it straight up conclusive when compared to Symphony's buffed-up, six-pack Gaibon.

Oh, and P.S., CV3's Leviathan also is a reference to Drac's second CV1 form. As you know, our orange pal hops three times, causing earthquakes before launching three orbs from the hole in its abdomen; a hole our Blue Gargoyle friend has, too.
 

Ever wondered what the deal was behind Konami's ULTRA division? The Funk DOC explains...
"I found this from reading The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games. Pretty simple: In their licensing agreements, Nintendo limited all the third-party companies to five NES games a year. Konami asked for a second license, and Nintendo granted it. They named this second license ULTRA, and they immediately made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles under that label. "
They also released the Gradius derivative Nemesis under that label, too, which isn't based on any cartoon or anything. (see also: Capcom's tie with Dizknee).

Well, maybe not. In CircleVania, there's a familiar which you can summon through the Dual Setup System who looks vaguely similar to Slogra, but as I deduce is more of a nod to the good ol Flame Ghosts from CastleVania III and IV.

Here you see a Belmont, not wearing Trevor's cape, posing with a cloaked lady (Sypha) at the opening of CastleVania Bloodlines. That's the same guy posing on Haunted Castle's title screen and on the Vampire Killer and CastleVania 1 box shots, by the way. Haunted Castle's in-game hunter has purple hair. Additionally, just about everyone in Haunted Castle sounds like Kraid/Crocomire/Phantoon from Super Metroid. The hero screams like a girl when he, I mean, it, dies. I feel the cheapness.


And speaking of cheapness, there's a craptacular 3D movie coming soon to a giant screen near you, titled Haunted Castle. Don't expect it to do too well, according to some reviews I've read. See the site or browse my Google returns for reviews. You might as well watch the trailer and see how many CV references pop up. I got 2; when the guy says, "...dwelling of doom..." and when the bats fly out from the castle up to the title. According to the above arcade screensnap, Haunted Castle is a trademark of Konami, copyright 1988. I've counted a number of ZERO Konami acknowledgments across the Haunted Castle site.

There is, for whatever reason, yet another episode of the Vampire Hunter D remakes already in production (at least that's what I assume, seeing it in May's NewType Express).

This one stars Camilla, donning a bizarre headpiece on the left and a 3 inch waist in this picture, and yet another Alucard lookalike, looking more like a combination of CircleVania's Nate Graves and CVIII's Al.

A brown-haired Lisa dead-ringer is also present. Featured creatures are a Werewolf, a woman with a sorta Queen of the Fish Men thing going on, and what appears to be a Mole Man on a unicycle.

Here's a staggering stat about the site. As of this writing on May 30th, 2001, 12:09AM EST, I've noticed that over 60% of the Groovy-Type Stuff on this section was added in this year alone! AND IT'S ONLY MAY! But that originally isn't the only thing that makes me consider moving this section to the Title Screen's options. It's a strongly growing, and very, very cool, area of the site.

As a followup note, the above was written when this whole section was still attached to the 1997-->2000 Groovy-Type Stuff.

There's a new...eeehhh...lovemaking simulation game out in Japan, "Yoru ga Kuru!", the english subtitle of which is "Square of the Moon." Apparently, the only way this is a reference to CircleVania is its secondary title. Translated from Japanese, "Yoru ga Kuru!" means "Night is Coming!"

Click the anime chick for a scan of the Comptiq magazine plug!

Now for something completely different.

Guess who I found on Konami's Japanese site during August, 1998! Yup, it's Chibi Alucard and Maria (on the left) along with the cast of Tokimeki Memorial and characters from other contemporary Konami releases!

A rare find indeed.

I've always had my doubts as to the look of this pest in stage 7 of Super CastleVania IV. This weird dog leaps from his frame and starts knocking down candles before you get to them. So anyway, on my way to get some fresh screensnaps of Sir Grakul, the master of this level, I took a picture of it, and I realized...it has 6 legs?! Bizarre. Well, it did come from a painting after all. I've decided to call him, "Buster; Reddish Puppy from Hell"! Romp, Buster, for great justice!

Is it me, or are there NONE of these types of enemy in Symphony of the Night? (Sorry, Hell Hound doesn't count.)

Skreek! Skreek! Skreek! Did you know that the sound it makes when you hit an invincible object (such as Dracula's crystals) in 1991's Belmont's Revenge is 92% identical to the sound of a thrown shuriken in 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan? In Belmont's Revenge, the sound effect is 'softer'. Dare to compare a shuriken with a strike.

In addition to that, the sound of Dark Side's wand opening up is just like the sound of a switch being pressed in 1992's Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break. They're all Game Boy games, and all by Konami, of course. Cheapness or continuity? You decide, but I opt for the latter.

In other audible news, Josh 'Funk DOC' Ballard has pointed out that the background music for Rugal, of the SNK instant classic King of Fighters '98, gets mysteriously CVish at times. Check it out in this 1.58MB, 18 second WAV. Thanks, Funk DOC!
You know how we're always talking about how Gaibon and friends are actually throwbacks to the Drac's second CV1 form? Well here's one version Gaibon DOESN'T take after, coming direct to you from the Amiga edition of CastleVania. Credit goes to Xorcist for tracking this one down. He's referred to this ugly bum as a "Giant-Sumo-Chicken-Beetle". Apparently the Amiga sprite artist missed the point of what the original was trying to look like.

Oh, and can guess who CastleVania Legends' Creatures Bat really is...?

"Who?"

On a note leading to the answer, check these out! At the CastleVania Dungeon's Message Board, a guy named Byron discovered the true magic of The CastleVania Adventure and explained his case. Unexpectedly, many heads in the audience finally began to agree. Over communications, Byron sent me a few Adventure sprites he'd colored. Suddenly, I was overcome with an Adventurous rush (even though I was moving things out before reformatting my computer). So I began making my own color customizations, copying over colors from Symphony sprites.

First off, the honorable Death Bat. I used the SotN version of THE MAN color him, and added its bluish eye and placed more emphasis on its talons.
Next, Gobanz, one of the most exotic CastleVania masters EVER. It's not every game you battle a hulking armor-all weilding a retractable arrow blade! I used Hall of Shame '97 favorite Sword Lord (SotN edition) to color him. I placed emphasis on its horns and other trimmings, and added some more colors to his weapon.

After those episodes, I finally settled in to my revirginized computer.
On the flipside, I brought Gaibon into CastleVania Legends, a terrible game filled with remarkably-sized monsters, using the Creatures Bat as the base. Added to the original are the horns and claw accents, as well as his maniacal grin. The colors were traded between both console versions of the man blue.

So I will ask you again. Can guess who CastleVania Legends' Creatures Bat really is...?

"Ummmm.....uhh..... Bat Who?"

Axle the Red has pointed out that Konami might've regarded Nintendo's SNES game Kirby All Stars, in that you can change into all sorts of stuff when you become a stone statue, including a statue of Samus in her armor, remarks the Metroid fan. Thanks, Axle!

Need I remind you how cool the monster designs of Digimon really are? Axle the Red also noticed the following: "Myotismon from Digimon and Dracula from Circle of the Moon are insanely similar; both of them in their first forms throw out bats from their capes as their attack, then in his second form Drac's weak point is the eye in his abdomen. Now think hard, Venom Myotismon's weak point was that weird round creature in his abdomen! They also both fire funky lasers, then Malo Myotismon (Myotismon's other Mega form) shoots out acid mist from those wierd mouth/shoulder things! Now Drac's second form shoots out poisonous gas from the two mouth things that look eerily similar to Malo Myotismon's shoulders!"

This must've been Axle's lucky night of noticing.

1. Also I think that Necromancer in Circle is based off of that cloaked sorcerer guy from CV6, they both call up skeletons from the ground in their first attack pattern and throw bolts, and in their second forms (they both have two forms) they summon up different creatures (not both mudmen but still) and they dress the same too! Cept you cant see necromancer's hands.

2. Also, even though its a stretch, I think the ferryboatman (from Symphony and few other CV games) makes a really short cameo in Legacy of Darkness. If you watch when Cornell, Carrie, or Rienhart, is being rowed to the pirate ship (first level) the guy rowing the boat looks exactly like the ferryboatman!

3. I also think that the half rotting bull thing that chases you in Rondo of Blood and CVX for SNES was the basis for the giant raging bull you fight in the castle center in CV64/Legacy, if you whack him enough his whole back side even rots away like the previous bull's.

4. I was talkin with a friend of mine about this next thing once, if you take too long to get to Dracula in CV64, you hafta fight this guy who was a friend of yours earlier on, he was this old bearded man who came to kill dracula, but if you get there too late Dracula turns him into a vamp and you hafta fight, his main attack is to throw holy water... an i thought... why would your character, a Belmont, or the descendant of Sypha Belnades... be effected by HOLY WATER? I mean aren't they people of the Church/Holy themselves? And my friend pointed out that if its true that Trevor (son of Sonia) is the love child of Sonia and Alucard, that means that ALL Belmonts have a LITTLE bit of vamp blood in em!

5. Oh yah, the last boss in the first Kirby game for NES (Dark Matter'ss second form) looks like a Dracula rip off! he's got a funky vampire face while wearing a large black cloak! he even attacks similiar to Drac-man, he teleports around, swooping at you, and at times shoots energy attacks out.

6. LOL!!! Ijust realized sumptin, if the theory about all the Belmonts having vamp blood in them cuz Sonia and Alucard got it on, that makes all belmonts ('cept Sonia) DESCENDANTS OF DRACULA HIMSELF! Oh my god! they totally warped up the CV world when they did that!

7. I think it's sort of a kick in the a$$ for dracula that Nathan Graves uses bats, ghosts, clouds of poison, devils, the ability to turn into a skeleton, and a black dog against him, and the fact that his last name is GRAVES... I mean isn't that everything DRACULA throws at HIM?!

Eheh,... thanks for joining us on Axle's Curse THE PAGE!!!

In Japan's Saturn version of
The Symphony, you get to enjoy:

1. Maria and Richter playability from the getgo!
2. Sarcastically countless remixes of the theme "Vampire Killer" most Americans whined about not having in the first Symphony!
3. Dithered transparency graphics!
4. TWO new areas with their own menagerie of grim ghosts, gruesome gargoyles, and terrible trees!

One of these areas in particular is quite mysterious. It's the Underground/Poisoned Garden (one of those...), and is located just beyond that hidden room beneath the gate you may have accessed using Richter, if you performed the glitch* right in Symphony.

*The glitch is: dash IMMEDIATELY after your Richter game starts. If you timed it right, the gate should close on Rich and drop him into a 'hidden' cavern below. Nothing special here but a rocky shaft leading to a save room. You'll need to do Rich's uppercut a few times to escape.

Anyway, one of the cool things about this brave new board can be seen in the above screensnap. See that blotchy black thing sitting on top of the fountain?

It's the terrifically awesome, overplayed-for-this-year Leviathan statue Alucard occaisionally becomes when stoned! "Leviathan? I thought you said it was Gaibon...!"

Stick around, and I'll defuse your new confusions in a minute...

      

Another potentially groovy thing about the Underground Garden of Cursed Poisonousness is that the master of this stage appears to be none other than...The SKULL KNIGHT??? Call it wishful thinking, as this enemy has been speculated as such. However, its name, the Japanese katakana visible only to te trained eye in the taudry screensnap above, reads as SUKERUTON-RIIDAA for "Skeleton Leader." Whatever the case may be, if indeed the Skeleton Leader was intended to be a 32-bit version of THE MAN known as Skull Knight, I think the designers should've stuck to his classic CastleVania III look. That's basically what they did for the Zombie Allies, anyway.

Hey now! Recently, I figured out that the awesome demon statue (which is apparently the Grooviest-Type-Of-Thing for the 2001 season due to its numerous appearances on this page alone) Alucard sometimes turns into is in actuality based on the Japanese version of our Ultimate Evil, Leviathan! Check it out! Like the Japanese Leviathan, the statue dons long horns, a scaly tail, and some fearsome wings. Vic Rattlehead, of CircleVania site infamy, offers us some red color treatment of the Al statue to make it conclusive. What do you think? (Hold your pointer over the pic to check out the color change and amusing ALT tag, but don't expect anything to happen when you click it.)

The DVD preview of Sakura Taisen 3, or Sakura Wars 3, is certainly one piece of filmmaking I lusted over just days before The Virus Incident. In this splendid sequel of the Sega-loyal import-only series, which usually mixes stocky robots with pre-World War I Japan (and in this episode, France), there's this one goth character with a PHAT cowlick named Lobelia. Aside from her stubby mech with its wicked claws, her weapon of choice in person-to-person combat is a chain. And from where does Lobelia hail? Alucard's hometown, of course, Transylvania!

"Ew, I don't want that spooky chick around me!!! Get her away!!! Stay baaaaack!!!
I have BALLS OF DESTRUCTION!!!"

The opinions of "AL" are solely his and do not reflect those of Konami Inc. or of DCTP. Personally, I really love Lobelia's theme music.

Walk on water, Sypha Man! In Dracula Man III you can equip Sypha Man with Jesus Man's Water Walk ability without having to fight him! All you have to do is make it to Doppelganger Man's (stage 9's) waterfall room with Frozen Water Man's Snowflake Ambush intact. Use it and it'll naturally freeze the waterworks, allowing you to traverse the solid surface for a few slim ticks. If you keep using the spell and reach the other side of the room, you should be able to still walk on top of the waterline after it thaws! I'm not sure about the frequency of this glitch, but try it for yourself and see if it works. If I'm able to make it to the area with Sypha again, I'll nab some screensnaps. (Jesus Man is a Seanbaby invention.)

CircleVania Nate bonus! Very similar to the Trevor bonus alluded to in the Cast: Allies section, you can strike two foes with one swing! Just jump, have Nate draw his whip, let it lash out, then IMMEDIATELY change your firing direction for dual damage! Oh, and good luck against the Dragon Zombies...heh heh heh...

Hmmm...I just learned that Capcom used the same sound effect for landing impacts in the DarkStalkers series as Konami did for SotN. They must've been using stock sound effects after all, eh?

What a radical reference! Check out the August 2001 issue of Sonic the Hedgehog comics for a keen surprise! A news headline in this panel reads "News with Simon Belmont".

I wonder if this had anything to do with CastleVania Chronicle, which was well on its way to the states at the time this issue was pressed. Thanks to the CastleVaniac Legendary DCTP Fam member, Luke Jones, for scanning this for us. Click the image for a slightly larger, 85k version, keeping your eye trained on the area in the circle.

"And this pretty much wraps up one absolutely outstanding year of Groovy-Typeness, the best ever, without comparison as of the time of this closing. It is due entirely to the enormous surge of Groovy-Typeness-spotting during early 2001 that caused the section to be coralled into its own, which you are now finished exploring, but as Zippo said in Megaman X4, 'It's not over yet!'

Proceed to II00II!!!

--Eric Roman, March 20, 2002, 11:46PM EST, when this section was at last completed.

"Aight, for now, that's it for this spot. If any of you CastleVania Worldwide cats catch some bugged out CastleVania joints goin' down, just drop the Eric Roman a line at Sinyaso@aol.com.

"An if you just can't get enough of that weird typeness, check the Weirdness section of The CastleVania Dungeon and the Miscellaneous section of the Dance of Pales CastleVania Quarters. That's word of the Streets.

"C'mon, Nate. Let's bounce."
                                 "Er...um... Word."

BACDAFLUFFUP...
Last Edited: April 7, 2002 8:17AM