Topic: Castlevania 64: Good ending. How?

I've just started to play Castlevania 64 for the first time. I'm trying to get the good ending but I'm not sure how to get it. Some people say you have to beat the game with less than four sun/moon cards and others say you have to beat the game in a certain amount of time.

If you are supposed to beat the game in a certain amount of time- does anybody know how much time exactly it is? And how can you determine how much time has passed in the game (without counting the days in your mind)?

GameFAQs says to get both characters' good endings, you need to beat the game using less than four sun/moon cards. i'm not seeing anything about beating it straight-up within a set amount of time in any of the FAQs available.

I had this game for several years and i never even knew there was a bad ending, always got the good one.

@Faron: apparently if you 'take too long' (e.g. use too many of the cards), someone else winds up reaching Dracula before you and ends up turned into a mini-boss for you to fight. if you have to fight him, you're getting the bad ending.
_{note: i'm trying not to spoil the OP by naming names, he said it was his first playthrough :3}

On the website "The Castlevania Dungeon" (www.castlevaniadungeon.net) they say in the game description:

"...there's also a time aspect to keep in mind - night and day run on a constant cycle. Unfortunately, this barely affects the game at all - a real missed opportunity. Also, if you take too long, and you'll get the bad ending."

I really hope it's the use of the cards that determines if you get the good or bad ending. I don't really like "rushing" through a game when there's so much to explore.

by that 'if you take too long you'll get the bad ending', i think they're attempting to allude to what i just described without spoiling it to people playing through it for the first time. i read through all the FAQs GFs has available, none of them mention a hard time-limit.

I don't mind spoilers. I even checked the walkthroughs on GameFAQs myself.
The thing is... I don't want to fight Vincent just because I kept exploring the first two levels for three hours, searching for hidden secrets, drinking coffee and looking at objects at different camera angles etc.

I would feel better if I knew for sure that I can prevent Vincent reachíng the castle before me when I don't use any Sun/Moon cards. If that's the case, I would definitely not use a single one of these cards if it's not absolutely necessary.

you're going to have to play it through at least twice in order to see both good endings. what's the big deal about seeing one of the bad ones too (if it even comes down to that, haha)? plus, don't you want to fight him just to be able to say you've fought every boss in the game? :3

...its been so long, I kinda remember playing through this game multiple times in order to get all the endings and fight all the bosses. I think its this game that you need to fight the demon shopkeeper if you buy too much stuff from him. ...truthfully, all I can remember is the garden maze and how scary that was.

you're going to have to play it through at least twice in order to see both good endings.
Sure, I want to play through the game twice. Once with Reinhardt and a second time with Carrie.
what's the big deal about seeing one of the bad ones too
The big deal is, that I fear that I never see one of the good endings, because I usually take my time to finish a game. When others say they've completed a game in three hours I usually need ten times longer because I stop at every stone, turn it over and study it.
plus, don't you want to fight him just to be able to say you've fought every boss in the game? :[/
To be honest: No. But I think about it. Let's go the whole hog.

@sykotek: Thanks for the note. I will do my best to spend no more than 30.000 gold.

I just remembered that when i originally had this game, i had no controller pak to save the game data. It was pretty hellish to push through the game without the use of save points. Still, i never had the bad endings, so i guess you can take your time.

@Omega: same here, lol... i don't really want to know how many hours I've spent in games like SM64 or Lego Star Wars just running around and exploring, seeing what i can see, y'know? but games with multiple playthroughs, i usually wind up getting the bad ending(s) first and then finishing with the good ending(s), just because I can. :3

if you're interested, though, you might want to try keeping yourself to only four sun/moon cards anyway, if possible, just to test the 'hard time limit' theory (since it doesn't seem to be definitively confirmed on the internet, not from all the searching i've done this morning, lol).

@Faron: I also had no Controller Pak, when I bought the game last year. And I could hardly believe that such a thing is really needed since my other (four) N64 games have built-in memory. But now I have a used one. And no one can stop me anymore.

@tbd: All right. I'll definitely take as much time as always but not using any sun/moon cards. I'll see what comes out of it. If I was too slow I have to hurry up the second time with Carrie.

@ Omega
Excellent choice for a Castlevania game to play! I've always felt it was highly underrated. It's still better than all the other 3D games IMO. Good to see someone give it a chance. You should check out it's sequel Legacy of Darkness. It's actually more of an expanded version of Castlevania 64. It has reworked levels from CV 64 plus all new areas. It also ads two new playable characters Cornell the wolfman and Henry.

@Link79: I like to play underrated games because they often turn out to be much better than you think. And they are cheap. Also thanks for the recommendation. At some point I'll surely buy Legacy of Darkness too. I'm just about to expand my little N64 collection. Just bought Shadowman which I think is an excellent and often overlooked game too. Already played through it two times on PC and can't get enough from it.

I remember getting good endings on the three times I played through the game, didn't even know there were bad endings. However, I like to think the best ending is achieved by never putting oneself through the torture of playing the terrible N64 Castlevanias.

^ I hope I get one of the good endings too. I already wasted so much time in the Villa, killing skeletons for goodies, running around, looking at mirrors, waiting for Rosa to appear, killing even more skeletons etc. that I can hardly believe that I am in the time limit (if there is one).

What is terrible about this game? I'm only at level 4 (garden maze) but I like it so far. It's a bit hard sometimes for my liking but I am amazed that such good graphics and atmosphere was already possible on the N64. That motivates me to play more N64 games in the future. Too bad that I only have one controller. If it breaks I am screwed.

I have know idea why some people think this is terrible. It's my favorite Castlevania game with Super Castlevania, and has one of the best soundtracks of the era.

^ Yes, I like the music too. The title track and some of the ingame tracks give me the shivers everytime I get to listen to it. Entirely beautiful and intense. I'm wondering why this game isn't on the Virtual Console yet along with Legacy of Darkness.

The major and game-breaking problems with the N64 Castlevania games were the controls and camera. They were both ungodly awful. The only reason the game is sometimes difficult is because of those camera and controls. The soundtrack is decent but nowhere near as good as Symphony of the Night or Super Castlevania IV. I had a Playstation as well as a N64 so when I got around to playing the two N64 Castlevanias (I got them in December 1999), I had already played the better Castlevania of that era (SotN) and better controlling (or just simply better) 3D games (Medievil, Ape Escape, Soul Reaver, many more) which made the N64 Castlevanias' flaws stand out. Chalk it up to playing better polished games and then playing the Castlevanias where the camera and controls were busted. I still have both games though. As a Castlevania fan, it was sad that newer series could do those major aspects right while an established series like Castlevania couldn't. The props I can give those two games are that they were still far better than Nightmare Creatures.