Talk about a fangtastic adventure! Let's Play Kid Dracula!

This has been great! I look forward to the final post showing the NES comparisons

EDIT: also Kid Dracula appeared on the SNES in a RPG didn't he?

hint hint wink wink

I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here--Parodius isn't an rpg, is it? (I blame lack of sleep.)

So, the first thing I discovered when I went looking for the Famicom game: There’s actually a fan translation of this game! So, I’ll be playing that. Note that I’m doing a bit more of a “Let’s Tear Through and Summarize” here, with liberal use of save states because goddamn this game is unforgiving.

As a reminder, you can also see maps of all the stages here: Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun / Kid Dracula (J) Maps

The Game Boy game, as noted before, is interesting as both a sequel and a remake: Several of the stages are very similar and several of the bosses recur, but the overall feel is different and there are definite improvements in places.


Attract mode.


Title screen.


And the opening sequence.


As Kishi noted earlier, the first stage is the same: It’s Dracula’s Castle. You don’t seem to have access to the Bat transformation at first, just the normal and charged fireballs. The general sequence is the same, along with most of the monsters, though everything is longer and it isn’t broken up by the “Swoosh” checkpoints. Also, the play is just generally faster—I had to check my emulator to make sure I was only running at 100% speed.


There’s a heart container in the castle; the first of many.


These hopping ghost enemies are new. (I realize there’s a fair bit of mythology behind them, but they always make me thing of Super Mario Land, which was my first exposure to them.)


Also noteworthy: Your normal shots make it almost, but not quite, all the way across the screen; and the knockback/stun animation when you take a hit is significantly longer than in the Game Boy game.


The first level also adds a number of things that make it harder. You need to do a proper pendulum jump, for one.


But also, these flippers (which don’t show up until stage 4 of the Game Boy game, and never appear over a bottomless pit in that) show up in stage 1, with bats in the perfect position to knock you into them. There’s also a series of rapidly falling platforms.


The two ghosts (…klansmen) appear without grandpa as the stinger. In this version, you can duck until the big guy’s fireballs, which makes fighting him much easier.


You get the Homing Attack after stage 1.


Kishi already went through all of the bonus stages, so I won’t bother.

The second stage is a Sky world, opening with vultures flying at you and witches trying to drop things as you jump from cloud to cloud. (Unlike the GB game, you really need to take your time and kill everything before jumping, because the enemies aim for exactly where you’ll end up and the knockback WILL put you in a pit. This game is not forgiving.)


The second segment is “inside” and has three of these spinning platforms.


There’s also a second heart container here.


Well, well, looks like we’ve got our roller coaster here, too.


Plenty of rocket turtles in different formations.


Rod Lightning is apparently joined by a buddy; they fly around in tandem and fling lightning and wind. You can kill them both with the homing shot, though. Then there are a couple of loop-the-loops with vultures trying to knock you off.

(You know what this area doesn’t have? Any checkpoints. Die on the coaster and it’s back to the start of the level.)


This is where the checkpoint is, post-coaster. These clouds actually, rather than always going down, move in the direction they’re looking. There are also more vultures and witches.


Then we’ve got our chicken-ghost.


He fires barrages of chickens at high speed. You need to dodge them and hit him with the homing shot.


He’ll also swoop down on you. Killing him unceremoniously ends the stage.


You then get the bomb attack.


Stage 3 opens with an underwater segment, complete with wonky jump physics. The spiky gray things explode if you touch them. There are also fireballs that move along platforms and seem to be invincible.


Then we get the up-columns that appeared in the last stage of the GB game, which work pretty much the same way.


There’s a heart container here, but 5 seems to be your max and picking it up did nothing.


That segment is relatively brief (and mostly means trying to avoid getting rammed into or dropped on spikes), then it’s back in the water.


First, you need to drop blindly but avoid spikes while big goofy fish try to ram you.


Then there’s a platforming segment with more fireballs and these submarine things (that behave like witches).

Then a bit of climbing and fish-dodging, then the first boss who didn’t get repeated: The bubble-octopus. He bounces on and off the screen; you need to hit him with shots without touching the bubble. Homing works, but Bombs end the fight fast.


We finally get the bat transformation at the end of this level.


Stage 4 is apparently an ice world that didn’t make the small-screen transition, and I’m not upset about that. The floors are slippery, and the icebergs sink as you stand on them. This water is a bottomless pit.


You might be inclined to use the bat to say, “Fuck this noise,” but that would be a mistake.


Because this guy will leap up, throw ice at you, and knock you into the water.


You can fly over the second set of bergs, though—you’ll take a hit from the next snowballer, but he won’t knock you into the water. There’s a long segment of snowballers and snowmen, plus a heart container, after that.


Then down a pit into the next segment. You need to jump across rotating platforms, but that’s actually pretty easy (they aren’t slippery!). The real hazards are jumping too high into the spikes, and these jumping-and-sliding nurse things.


Then there’s an obvious point to use the bat transformation. The trick? The gray spikes cause instant death. This is further complicated by the fact that touching any wall or floor instantly cancels the bat transformation. (Which was NOT the case in the GB game!)


Then we have to climb a zig-zag slippery path with bomb-throwing seals, and slide past some evil figure skaters.


To the flying dragon boss. He flies in little circles and tries to ram you. When you hit him a few times, he’ll dive into the water and burst back up, destroying a segment of floor in the process and giving you much less room to work with.


You get the Freeze power afterwards, which is the first power that isn’t also in the GB game. It apparently freezes enemies and lets you stand on them. There is only one point in the game where it’s required (or even useful).


Stage 5 is the city.


The first segment is jumping along rooftops. The UFOs and Trance Fusions that were repurposed for the GB game’s space elevator are here.


I’m beginning to think there’s a heart container in every level.


Ninjas that climb up buildings, and gorillas that jump and throw trash at you.


At the end, despite every other hole being bottomless death, you need to jump down here.

You land on a subway train. You need to run forward along the train to avoid low-hanging ceilings (which, shockingly, don’t instantly kill you).


Then you get attacked by punks that throw their boomerang hair at you, and the axe-wielding Jasons who became a boss in the GB game. The train ride is longer than in really has a right to be.


The boss is Lady Liberty, who makes a sudden gameplay shift into challenging you to a quiz. The questions aren’t that hard—a few about the Statue of Liberty, a few about the game, a couple about Konami. The only real challenge is that the other contestants can buzz in, and may beat you to easy questions. (Of course, some of this may be the fan translation…)


Afterwards, we learn the UPD. I’ll note that I haven’t really needed the Bomb or Freeze at all, so far.


Stage 6: The desert.


Features include cacti who shoot spines at you, beetles at the bottom of sand pits, and flying worm things.


When we get to the pyramid, we hit things that we previously saw on the airship: Rollin’ Heady, and these instant-death crusher things. (You need to use Hang to clear the upside-down ones, as in the GB game.)


Then the game gives us a long collapsing floor with this stage’s heart container, apparently accessible by falling to your death.


…nevermind, there’s a platform there.


Then you need to run left without stopping until you fall in a hole, lest this ball crush you.


Then run to escape these collapsing ceilings.


Into the arms of this stage’s boss, the sphinx head.


The two platforms will spin around while the head shoots bubbles at you. A single hit is enough to knock you into the abyss, but if you time your Homing shots carefully, you can pop them all before they get near you.


When you beat the boss, it cries and you’re dropped on solid ground.

Stage 7 has the most convenient heart container thus far.


Hey, it’s the space elevator stage. Yay. Except that the knockback is much worse in this game, so the robots on platforms are a much greater threat. There’s very little room for error, here.


Seriously, it took me dozens of tries to make it to the top of this thing.


At the top, there’s no break for fighting UFOs, you go straight into the battle with “Garamos”.


His sword is more obviously a curved blade here, and his line attack is fire breath instead of a laser, but he’s basically the same boss as the GB game. He’s only vulnerable when he raises his sword to strike (because you don’t have the ATT that can pass through his defenses), and there’s no second part to the battle.


He automatically drops the big coin, though.


Stage 8 starts as another cloud world.


But it quickly becomes clear you’re on the airship.


Cannoneers and Witchy Wenches occupy the ships, which move independently from the clouds (so if you stay still on the clouds, you’ll drift left, away from the ships).


They aren’t the only enemies that look familiar.


If you go past the obvious “jump in here to continue” hole, you can snag a heart container.


Belowdecks are stone warriors. Lots of them. They take a lot of shots to kill, or one direct hit with the Bomb.


Then you can run into this guy, a Paranoid Android if ever I’ve seen one. He fires Kid-seeking missiles from his chest.


See that white on the screen? That’s an instant-kill mega-laser that you need to duck under each pulse of. There’s no way you’d know that or even see it coming unless you’ve been killed by it at least once.


(Apparently it’s the airship engine?)


The boss is this guy.


You need to fight him the same way as in the GB game, by hanging upside down and shooting his face.

Stage 9: Looks like a fortress of some sort.


The first thing we run into is My Little Pony, as a mini-boss. The only good news is that she doesn’t drop mini-ponies. There are no platforms to duck under her, she appears wherever you’re standing (making it harder to dodge), and she’s invincible to all weapons except…wait for it…the Freeze shot, which you’ve probably forgotten exists.


Then you need to use Hang to get through this section and past the crabs—but don’t jump, because those spikes are instant-kill and dying means you have to re-fight MLP.


Then we get over here, where the ceiling slowly comes down (again, covered in instant-kill spikes) while enemies flood in from both sides. Die here? Back to the start!


At the top of there is our second mini-boss, Mega-Phyllis Driller. She’s invulnerable when spinning; you need to dodge her drop and hit her after she lands.




Then we have…what is this guy? True Garamoth? Whatever, it’s the final boss.


He only has one version of the lightning, the both-hands version. But he’ll spit a fireball at you while doing it, and his open mouth is his only vulnerable area. So you need to dodge between his arms, fire just before he opens his mouth, then quickly move slightly out of the way to avoid the fireball…something like a dozen times.

And if you die here? All the way back to the beginning of the level!












When you beat him, it’s revealed that all of the monsters are so impressed that they flock to your side.

And the credits roll.


One final trick: You can enter the Konami Code at the title screen.


It gets you this little Easter Egg.

So, overall, I think the Game Boy version of this greatly improved on the original. Yes, it was shorter, but it made much better use of the spells to solve puzzles, didn’t overuse features or enemies, had much better checkpoint distribution, didn’t have the insanely long knockback, and had much better minigames. Also, the cutscenes added a bunch of personality and the manual was sheer brilliance. I can’t imagine having the nostalgia for the NES version that I did for the Game Boy one.

(If you weren’t paying careful attention, the Forest, Fire Pits and Mine stages were new to the Game Boy version. And though virtually every enemy was repurposed in some way, several of them got new schticks and most of the bosses were beefed up or given a second form.)

And with that, we bring another LP to a close. Thanks as always to my readers and the Talking Time community at large, and massive props to Kishi for doing a bunch of my job by comparing the first parts of the Game Boy and NES versions for me.

See you next time on “Let’s Play Beowulf’s Game Boy Youth!”

Some puzzling design decisions in the NES version. Why have so many heart containers if you'll never need more than two?

Some of the art looks a lot nicer in color -- True Garamoth looks especially good -- but Kid Drac himself is kind of plain by comparison.

Also, wow is that a lot of sprite flicker.

You could miss some, and you lose the ones you've picked up if you get a Game Over.

Excellent job, Beowulf! That last post in particular really brought it all together.

And one more thing on my part: everyone knows you fight Galamoth in Symphony of the Night, but anyone without access to both a Japanese copy of the game and Kid Dracula's Famicom manual would probably never guess that the enemies who populate his area are also from these games.




As seen here, the witch from Kid Dracula's roller coaster stage is actually named "Ma-chan."




And in the Japanese version of Symphony, the bestiary entry for Salome/Sausine reveals that "Ma-chan" is her nickname. It's the same witch!




Those enemies from Kid Dracula's ice level are called "Yuki Okama." The name is a pun on the Snow Woman from Japanese folklore, replacing onna, meaning "woman," with okama, which is a slur referring to a pretty ugly stereotype of a gay man who crossdresses and is transgender. (Because those are all the same thing, right?)




Even in the English version of Symphony, the Frozen Half enemy is described as a "new-half," which is a Japanese term for a trans woman with male genitalia. This is presumably a different take on the same enemy.


And just to see the whole gang together, let's get Galamoth himself in here.





He's a far cry from the pudgy dinosaur/alien we know and love, but he still keeps a lightning attack in his repertoire. His bestiary entry reveals he plans to conquer the netherworld, referencing his attempts to oust Kid Dracula for the title of Demon King.

Galamoth is also referenced in the ill-fated Castlevania Judgment. The final boss of that game is Galamoth's own version of Death, seen in the Game Boy game as the boss of the airship stage. It's all part of Galamoth's plan to mess with Dracula from ten thousand years in the future—which, according to the Famicom manual, is when Kid Dracula takes place. (Kid Dracula himself is 10,009 years old, although he spent 10,000 of those asleep.)






In between his Famicom and Game Boy outings, our hero made a cameo as a bonus item in the first Goemon game for the SNES.




After that, he co-starred as a playable character in a couple of Parodius games, as "DRACURA" and his palette-swap "KID-D." Like SpoonyBard mentioned earlier, his theme music is an arrangement of the Stage 1 theme from his own games.




He can shoot the Bat Attack and call upon his bat followers as Options, and what's that he's using for a shield? Naturally, his father's umbrella.

Ah I messed up. I thought The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang was also by Konami and that the protag in that was also Kid Dracula.

I am wrong.

So wrong.

Also, thanks for the knowledge bomb Kishi!

<applause>

Kinda late to the party here, but nice job on the LP, Beowulf!