The VC Advantage: Staircase of the Moon

by JC Fletcher { Nov 28th 2007 at 7:00PM }

The internet has made it easy to find cheats for games, but we miss the tips pages from game magazines, when the discovery of a new code could inspire you to go back to an old game. These codes aren't exactly new, but oldness is the essence of the Virtual Console! We're bringing back the classic codes every week on The VC Advantage.

Super Castlevania IV afforded players more control than any previous Castlevania. You could whip in eight directions, and even let the whip dangle from your hand. You could swing from strategically-placed grappling points. For the first time, subweapons were given their own button. Until the PC Engine Dracula X came along, Super Castlevania IV had the freest movement of any Castlevania game yet. This no doubt left an impression on frustrated players happy to be able to whip up for once, and contributes greatly to the continued enjoyment of Castlevania IV by many over the NES games.

But the move that is most responsible for Super Castlevania IV's specialness, in our eyes, was not related to whipping. In fact, it was probably unintentional. By holding back while ascending or descending a staircase, you could make Simon face the direction opposite his movement, while the forward stair-climbing animation continued. In essence, Simon would moonwalk up the stairs. It's not technically a code, but it is somewhat of a secret that is accessed by pushing buttons in the game, so we feel it's close enough to a code for the VCA.

Once we discovered this, we could never not do it. Much like Dr. Mario is preferable to Mario in Super Smash Bros. Melee because he's slightly funnier, the temptation to take the hilarious way up every stairwell has been too much to overcome (with no reason to try) for these last 16 years. It's just funny. But we think that this glitch has a little more significance for the game than just "it's kinda funny.

Early Castlevanias do everything they can to kill you on stairwells. Without the ability to jump, you're almost completely helpless against tossed bones and Medusa heads. This is especially true before eight-way whipping. Konami knew how frustrating the stairwells were themselves, even mentioning them in Snatcher and joking that "the teenage suicide rate increased dramatically in that year". The moonwalk, then, ameliorates the feeling of helplessness by giving you something to do while trapped on stairwells, even if it doesn't actually affect your progress or your safety in anyway. It is at least a small amount of control while on the stairwell, without violating the strict Castlevania rules that make the game so difficult.

Tags: castlevania, konami, moonwalk, super-castlevania-iv, vcadvantage