Glitches and Fun Facts

The Lost Sub-Weapons: Those who were paying attention to early previews of Castlevania 64 noticed something interesting: The characters were using sub-weapons that weren't in the final game! As Phil tells us: "The garlic, rose and wooden stake shown here never appeared in Castlevania 64 or Legacy of Darkness. Only screenshots of the prototype show the wooden stake and the rose; we can see their icons in the prototype screenshots. The rose did find use, though: It became one of Rosa's attacks! The garlic only appeared in concept art in which Carrie could be seen eating it."

Garlic (upper middle)
Wooden Stake
Rose

Red Skies No More: As the same Phil tells us: "Castlevania 64's intro sequence, in which the camera circles the castle, once had had a different-color sky and moon combo; originally the sky was formed from a red gradient, and the moon was yellow! In the final version, however, the red-gradient background was transferred over to the main menu, and the yellow moon was replaced by a blood-red one--to fit with the game's horror theme. Strangely enough, the Prima guide's back cover has a screenshot that shows the yellow moon; that's how I found it! I snapped some screenshots with my emulator."

Red-Gradient Background
Yellow Moon
Reinserted Yellow Moon and Red-Gradient Background

When Taking the Easy Path Pays: Once again, Phil fills us in on an interesting fact about the pre-release version: "Did you know that the Castlevania 64's developers once planned to let you see the true final boss in the game's 'Easy' mode? You can see proof of this by doing the following: Use a GameShark stage-select code to start the game from the Clock Tower and beat the game from that point. If you do this, an odd message will appear at game's end only suggesting that you try the Normal mode rather than telling you that you have to play the Normal mode in order to 'face the challenge of more stages.' This was obviously changed pre-release."

Buried in the Ending: Where do the pieces of Dracula's castle go after it finishes collapsing? Phil has discovered the answer to that question. He has discovered the following: "If you rip the ending and view it in Blender (3D creation software), you can see that there are parts of the castle lying just beyond the woods seen at the end of the dirt road on which Carrie and Malus are riding in Carrie's bad ending. Well, now we can see what's beyond there! Also, we can see what's hidden behind the mountain that's in view when Carrie visits here mother's grave!" Click on an image to see a larger version of it.

Blimps Find a Way: While exploring the Castle Center's lowest level, Phil noticed something about its invention room: It contains what looks to be a prototype of a World War I-era German zeppelin. What you may not think to include is that this is the same zeppelin that appeared in Castlevania: Bloodlines 0.5-version beta! It very well may be. It might be the case that Dracula's forces invented this particular model of zeppelin and later sold it to the Nazis. Hell--Elizabeth Bartley, who instigated the war, might have even brokered the deal! We can speculate that one of Bloodlines' developers worked on Castlevania 64 and saw the opportunity to finally sneak that zeppelin into a finished product.

        

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