8 BIT GODS AND MOUTHBREATHING MILLENNIALS

Castlevania. Level 5. Stage 15. Grim Reaper.

Oh man. I've spent a buncha of time with a buncha different Castlevania titles and this stage + boss combo still haunts me. The image above is likely a ROM capture with a game save feature enabled (save whenever, whereever you want). Just way too many hearts, full life, and III Holy Water. Yeah, no.

The stage leading up to the Grim Reaper fight is pretty rough. Way too many erratic little Igor bastards jumping around and pain in the ass regenerate-o red skeletons. Though the stage is loaded with secret hidden treasures and a rare 1up, so it's point heavy. But, points are secondary to survival here. Once you manage to survive the level and meet the boss, often beat to shit, it gets worse. Sure, it's a breeze if you've made it this far with Holy Water and II or III throw, since there's a one hit glitch that pins the undead bastard in place while he burns. But, that's pretty rare stuff and you need a pile of Hearts to fuel it.

Generally you make it there with a boomerang and a few Hearts. And even with the super useful boomerang, the Grim Reaper is a mafucker. So much so that if you do kill him, his animated scythes still remain and continue to do damage until the magic glow ball finally appears to end the level. Which has happened several times. The high of victory coupled with the horror of defeat, seconds later, is too much to bear. You basically go tin there and hoped he'd fall into a bouncy pattern on one side of the screen so that his accursed scythes would appear on the other.

Castlevania is a game of pixel precision and the Grim Reaper hucks so much crap at you from weird angles, it makes for an unpredictable maze of doom. If you fall to the floor below, you're done. Get hit and bounce in a bad direction - done. Poorly timed jump - done. I break into a sweat thinking about battling the guy. But there are those who would walk among us mortals as 8 bit Gods. The video link above is one example. Initial whip form. No sub weapon. No damage taken. Grim Reaper - toast. Amazing.

Then, there's the sloppy bastard nerds who need to get the fuck off the internet and stop clogging it with their sticky, hair covered, thumb ridden, poorly quoted pop culture video content.

This particular special person has 4 videos, totaling about 35 minutes of some of the worst Castlevania skills I've ever seen - complete with mouth-breathin' bad nerd commentary. I've linked out to one choice hunk of terrible gameplay above. It also contains piles of lovely evidence that nerd culture needs to fucking die already. It's been glommed onto by the lowest common denominator that I don't even know where to draw the line anymore. This particular videodude makes several boasts about how Castlevania was great "back in the day" (he sounds 17) when he played it and how it was his first game.

Well, I call bullshit. No one who has played Castlevania for any amount of time can wipe the 1st stage of the game from their memory. It's ingrained like breathing. Yet, this toad has difficultly hitting the first fucking candle. See below.

The rest of the damning evidence includes: several incorrect "Whip It" references, 307 jokes about the absurdity of candles producing hearts and treasure, barely completing the 1st stage, fluent verbal use of "Oh Noes" and the "I Can Has Cheesburger?" language, hand eye coordination of a salmon, Medusa sound effects, a plea to not leave negative comments about his voice, and actually uploading these videos for the world to see.

Finally, there's the fact that this shitheel is playing a friggin' ROM (which is fine, not completely hating on that fact) that has a game save feature engaged. Wow. Just, wow. Even with a mega-cheat in place he has no clue. Oh, and he complains about the lag his shitty computer produces while running the damn ROM.

I had a point to this, but lost it in the bile somewhere. Meh.