Believe it or not, it has been 25 years since Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness launched on the Nintendo 64. It has been even longer since the iconic Konami Code first appeared in 1986’s Gradius. Basically, you would be forgiven for thinking that we have discovered just about everything there is to know relating to both matters. Well, you would be wrong.
As it turns out, there is another Konami code in the classic N64 werewolf title that has remained hidden for the past 25 years. Until some inquisitive fans recently dug it up, that is (thanks for the heads up, Time Extension).
Unlike the standard code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A — for those wondering), Legacy of Darkness employs one that is a little more complicated and makes use of the N64 pad in the process. By entering C-Up x 4, C-Down x 4, C-Left x 2, C-Right x 2, C-Left x 2, C-Right x 2, L, R, Z on the main menu, a sound plays and instantly unlocks Reinhardt, Carrie, and Henry as playable characters.
This variation on the Konami code was discovered by two fans named Moises and LiquidCat (and flagged by Castlevania speedrunner @JupiterClimb). The former reportedly has more newly discovered speedrunning codes up their sleeve too, which will be revealed in the future. How mysterious!
You can check out the code in action in the following tweet:
To be clear, it looks like Moises and LiquidCat discovered the code by looking in the game’s files rather than randomly inputting every button sequence they could think of (though we like the thought of this approach). It’s a neat discovery all the same and we can’t help but wonder if there are any other places it might have cropped up… hey, where’s that Fisher-Price gamepad got to?