Castlevania Rondo of Bloodlust

So I love Castlevania. I remember in 8th playing the SNES version of Dracula X. When I was in my sophmore year, one of my friends got a Turbo Duo with a copy of the PC Engine CD version of Dracula X only released in Japan, or Rondo Of Bloodlust as we thought it was called. She said he got it from the local video game store, but to get it she had to do some sexual favours.

We went over to my house since I had an LCD TV and the best sound system out of all of us. We got it set up, and we were blown away by the opening anime cutscene. The soundtrack was badass, so first thing we did was take out the game, put it in my astoundingly powerful Windows 98 PC, and ripped the soundtrack. We put the game back in, and we noticed there was no sound. We were disappointed by this, because the soundtrack was badass as I've said before. But we dealt with it. When the opening cutscene was done, there was music. I could tell what this music was, it was from a Latin mass. It wasn't in the Super Nintendo version. Nintendo probably wanted to sensor it.

When we looked at the save registry, there was one in slot three named Ash. My friend who owned the console and game, was named Ash of course. The game case was scuffed up a bit, so figured out it was a used copy and the person that owned it before had the same name., so we ignored it. We made a save in slot 2 and named it Richter. We started the game, and were met by a battle with Dracula. It went on for much too long as we jumped and hit him. We were there for about 2 minutes as we kept hitting the "II" Button to hit him. Eventually we just used the built in turbo switch. Ash figured it was a glitch and restarted the game.

When we booted it up, our Richter save was changed to Jacob, my other friend present at the situation. We couldn't select that save, so we made a new one, and called it Belmont. We played and we got past the prologue no problem, but after that, there was no sound. We figured something came unplugged and continued on our silent journey with the soundtrack blasting through my PC's speakers. The sound was messed up though, with that Latin mass music playing quietly behind it. We just shrugged it off, not being superstitious, figuring that it was normal, since we've barely heard the sound. We continue playing, taking turns every time one of us dies. Then one time, the game freezes and we have to restart.

When we boot it up, all the saves are gone except for the Ash one. I set up the cables again to get sound. And when it's back in, the game progress went from 65 to 66. We boot up the save, curious what's on it, kinda like getting a used Pokemon game. It's done loading, and we hear that damn Latin mass music. Maybe the sound ripping went wrong, and it's using that as a placeholder. Sounded reasonable. We walk through the castle, climbing up stairs and whipping anything in our paths. Until Ash gets the controller. She starts going, and enemies slowly start to disperse. We thought it might be a part of the game, but there was no telling since the american version is so much different. She continued walking through the level, whipping a skeleton every once and a while. Eventually, there's a boss battle with Dracula. It felt way too easy to be a Castlevania game, and we were right. Ashley got hit on the second phase of the boss battle, and she died instantly.

Afterwards, she grabbed her stomach in pain. She was crying, saying she felt like she was gonna die. We took her car and drove her to the local hospital to see that there was blood on her shirt. I had feelings for her, and couldn't bear to see her get hurt. I remained for the diagnosis, while Jacob left. She got paler and paler until she was pretty much a ghost. I was in tears seeing her that way. Eventually she was breathing really heavily. Jacob could hear it from outside the door of the room she was in. She wrote her will in that room. I was to get the Turbo Duo, and Castlevania. When I went to her wake, the casket was closed. Although she specified that she wanted an open casket. I look inside, and see that her body wasn't there.

I wake up at 3 in the morning, sweating my ass off. I get up, and I feel something go through my waist. Then I hear Ash's voice before I collapse. "Shhhhhh, you're mine now."