DisplacedGamers

How Speedrunners BROKE Castlevania’s Scrolling – Behind the Code

In December of 2019 after many years of runs, the speedrunning record for Castlevania on the NES was close to 11 minutes 24 seconds.

In Summer of 2020, speedrunners took a new discovery for the implementation of scrolling for the game and used it to skip several screens at a time in various places throughout the run.

Thanks to this development, the record today is close to 10 minutes 45 seconds. It was set by jay_cee in April of 2022. What a difference!

The logic and mechanics behind how the scroll glitches are accomplished by the player can be difficult to explain.

Let’s dissect scrolling and see just how it is done.

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