The VC Advantage: Spooky Halloween edition
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.
Today is the perfect day to look at some of the spookier games on the Virtual Console, and then help you face your fears and take them on. It would certainly have been a good day to talk about Ghosts 'n Goblins games, as well, but ... we already did that. Uh, as part of our Halloween special, here's a link to that old VC Advantage! It's ... uh, back from the dead!
Luckily, awkward backlinks aren't the only thing we can present for our Halloween edition of The VC Advantage. There are still some gruesome games we have yet to cover!
And that means that it's now totally scary time! Turn out all the lights and stuff! We're making weird "oooooo" spooky noises, but you can't hear it, because we'll have written this hours ago by the time you're reading it, and also we're not in the same room as you!
Splatterhouse (TG16)
Hard mode: What's scarier than a game in which the main character dies, over and over and over again, forced to relive the same horrific period of a few seconds before he's ripped apart yet again by disgusting, nightmarish monsters? Probably a lot of stuff. Dentistry comes to mind. Loneliness. But what's scarier in the context of video game alterations caused by input of preprogrammed button sequences? Probably still some stuff. To access hard mode, hold Select at the title screen until the word HARD appears.
Castlevania (NES)
Hard mode: Yes, it's another hard mode, but this one seems pretty notable. We had no idea that Castlevania even had one of these, and we doubt anyone else ever would have were it not for cheat devices and ROM hacking-- because you access Castlevania's hard mode by completing the game, and that is impossible. Of all the games to put a hard mode in. Also we heard that if you finish the hard mode, Koji Igarashi will ride a Medusa head to your house and give you a million dollars. And nobody will ever know if that's true.
Kid Chameleon (GEN)
Level skip: Kid Chameleon isn't really that scary, but it is about dressing up in costumes. And that is the true meaning of Halloween (also, candy, which is delicious, when eaten.) To skip straight to the last boss, find some blogs above the flag in the Blue Lake Woods level and jump to the last one. Then press down, right, jump, and special.
[Codes via GameFAQs]
