Castlevania: Rondo of Blood

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood was one of the few Japan-only installments of the Castlevania series. It was later reimagined as Castlevania: Dracula X for the SNES, localized as part of Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP, and given a sequel, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Prerelease Info Notes

Level Select#

Enter X-X!V''Q as a save slot name to enable a stage select option in the menu. If this password seems familiar, it's also used in Symphony of the Night for that game's High Luck mode.

Boss Select#

After the "Stage Select" option is available in the main menu, choose any stage you want, then highlight "Game Start". Now, hold Left + II + Select + Start on controller 2 and press II on controller 1. If done correctly, you'll jump straight to the boss of the level you selected.

If you enter the same code on Stage 0, you'll trigger an end-of-demo message. The text translates to:

For the PC Engine SUPER CD-ROM²
Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo
Coming Fall 1993
Stay tuned!!

Unused Sprites#

Various icons. The first one has 龍 (dragon) written on it, while the third has 肉 (meat).

An odd little man.

An unused platform.

Perhaps meant for the "Peke" mini-game when the wrong system card is used while booting the game.

Early Maria sub-weapons (with final weapons below for comparison).

Unused Enemy#

To do: The dragon's body can be seen by scrolling past the end of the first area. Does any unused code remain?

Unused sprites for a rather large lizard-like monster with what appears to be a beam attack. The image on the right is a mockup of how it would look in-game.

Partial data for this unused enemy is stored in the first section of Stage 1, and can be accessed if the game is forcibly scrolled past the end of the screen.

Unused Stages#

To do: Finish documenting these.

There are three full stages hidden in the game's data, which appear to be earlier versions of Stages 3, 4, and 5. They can be loaded by altering the game's asset sector address table. These stages are fully playable, but there are sound effect and sprite glitches, presumably due to them not being totally compatible with the newer core game code. There is also a Stage X, but it is not playable.

Earlier Stage 3#

Minor changes can be found throughout the level, but the lower path is dramatically different and far more bland. Interestingly, this less-polished look better matches the design of the Stage 3 minotaur boss sub-stage, which looks somewhat out-of-place compared to the later Stage 3 design.

Unused Stage 3	Normal Stage 3

Earlier Stage 4#

Large heart items mark the exits. Miscellaneous level layout changes.

Stage X#

These sprites show that a stage was in the works with small objects. The hiragana fonts actually form a sentence: "God, give me strength" (神よ力を与え給え), which is the title for the game's second stage.

Super CD-ROM² System Card Error Easter Egg#

If you try to boot the game using a 1.0 or 2.0 System Card instead of a Super CD-ROM²-compatible system, you will be shown a different castle than usual.

After a few seconds, the title will appear. The title is spelled slightly wrong in Japanese, as if being mispronounced.

The "X" has the furigana "ペケ" (peke), which is Kansai dialect for an X mark (a symbol often used to indicate wrong answers or "don't do this" warnings - or, in this case, an incorrect System Card).

Pressing the Run button while the castle is visible starts a game at "Stage X" with a very different art style.

{|class="wikitable" !Japanese !Translation |- |STAGE X
「血の因縁は
SUPER CD・ROM²で
なければ断てない」 |STAGE X
"The fated bloodline will fail without a SUPER CD・ROM²" |}

The enemies consist of these purple guys you can kill with your chain whip.

Maria is present at the end of the stage, saying "ゴメンネ" ("Sorry!") and jumping around. For better or worse, this is the end of this little mini-game.

In the versions of Rondo of Blood present in The Dracula X Chronicles and Castlevania Requiem, the message at the end was changed due to the different unlock conditions of this mode in each of them:

In order to access this in The Dracula X Chronicles, players will need to complete the Normal Boss Rush mode three times, and then access it from the bonus game menu. In Castlevania Requiem, players simply need to enter the Konami Code, hence the mention of extra lives codes.

CD Warning#

To do: Check if any of the re-releases include this, which seems unlikely for obvious reasons. The VC version has been checked already and does not include it.

Inserting the CD into an incompatible CD player will play back a track featuring the voices of Maria and Richter Belmont, warning against blowing out the listener's speakers.

Maria: Waaaa!
Richter: WWAAAAARRRGGGHHH!
Maria: Hahaha! Did I scare you?
Richter: What, Maria...is that really you?
Maria: Oniichan, were you trying to listen to the music?
Richter: Yeah!
Maria: This CD is an H.E. System CD-ROM, so track #2 contains computer data that cannot be listened to.
Richter: Is that so? How do you know this?
Maria: 'Cuz I'm so smart?
Richter: What's this?... "This CD is an H.E. System CD-ROM, so track #2...." Maria... what the heck is this? Were you just reading this?
(noise is heard)
Richter: Ugh! WWWHHHAAAT?
Maria: Oniichan, Oniichan, up next is track #2!
Richter: Get out of here! Don't you know your speakers will be damaged?

Revisional Differences#

Opening#

The port of the game included with Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (both in Japanese and English), the later Virtual Console re-release and Castlevania Requiem replaced the German-spoken intro with an entirely new recording by a different voice actor. In the original release, the narration is provided by Hans Gunther Klaud; in the rereleases, the naration is provided by Klaus-Dieter Klebsch. Additionally, the majority of the sound effects included in the track were redone.

The German text for the original release is also present in the manual, but has been cleaned up of spelling and grammatical errors here (notably "ß" is replaced by "β" in the manual).