The VC Advantage: Treasurevania

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.

Score used to be important in video games. With the rise of Guitar Hero and the Xbox Live Achievement system, it's coming back, but it went out of style for a long time. High scores made a lot of sense in the arcade (which has also gone out of style) since other people played the machines and could thus compete to overtake your three-letter tag as that machine's leader. Home games adopted scoring for two reasons: first, in the older games, there was no other way to determine progression. After twenty minutes of Asteroids, without a score there'd be no evidence that you'd done any better than someone playing for thirty seconds. The game never changes, never reveals new content, and never ends. Score was a very simple way to allow you to progress. Of course, competitive sport-based games like Pong required scoring as a basic gameplay mechanic.

Later (NES and beyond) games adopted scoring mostly as a holdover from classic arcade games. Games like Super Mario Bros. were more about experience than performance, and progress could be tracked by ... actual progress. You moved from place to place, and didn't need some arbitrary number to tell you how far along you were. Even the first Mega Man game had a score display.

The first Castlevania arguably didn't need a score counter at all. Not dying was more than enough of an achievement to wear as a badge of honor. Besides, it already featured another counter in the game (hearts) that also incremented by picking up items. Later Castlevania games adopted experience points, which are exactly like points except that their accrual actually improves your avatar's abilities, but pre-Symphony of the Night games all awarded points for killing enemies and collecting items.

Some of the items, in fact, did nothing but improve your score.

Money bags have been a persistent feature in Castlevania, with different colors of bag representing different amounts of money. Symphony of the Night actually adapted the money bags into its own gameplay systems, trading the point values for actual money. But in the NES games, it was pure score, completely irrelevant to completion of the game. 100, 200, 400, 500, and 700 point bags could be found by whipping candles, but there were four "money" items that could not be found in candles, and in fact had abstruse and seemingly nonsensical -- but not random -- conditions for their appearance.

The flashing money bag can most easily be found in Stage 02, at the far right of the lower merman-filled room. Kneel on the end of the lowest platform (watch out for mermen, who will drop onto and kill you) and a money bag will appear on the upper platform. It awards you 1000 points.

The crown is found in Stage 04 in the very first room. Whip the wall just at the top of the first staircase, and stand in the cavity. A crown will rise up from the ground and award you 2000 points. Just in the next room, standing on the most elevated platform for a few seconds will trigger a flashing treasure chest that earns you 2000 points.

Of course, this is Castlevania, and Konami thus had to leave the possibility of being brutalized even to these bonuses. Well, relatively. You always have to be distant from the bonus's location to trigger it, and it goes away quickly. If there are any enemies between you and the item, you're pretty much not getting it. The most brutal thing about the hidden items? There's one that you'll never get. You can trigger a Gradius Moai head on the first moving platform in the same area as the treasure chest. Just stand on it and a Moai head will come out. The trick? This only happens when you're playing through the game for the second time.

The secret items reappeared in the DS game Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow as cute, useless tributes to the first game. You can get a Bell, a Crown, and a Konami Man in the game, none of which do anything. Since Dawn of Sorrow has no score, they do even less than the secret items in Castlevania. The item descriptions, which normally detail the function of the item, instead just note how many points they are worth.