Castlevania: Rondo of Blood Cheat Codes & Secrets
Complete collection of cheat codes, passwords, unlockables, and hidden secrets for Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (1993).
I’ll write this content now, drawing on my knowledge of Rondo of Blood’s secrets and mechanics.
Playing as Maria Renard
Maria Renard is the game’s hidden second playable character. She is not selectable from the start — you must rescue her during a normal playthrough.
In Stage 3, before the mid-boss encounter, search the prison area for a locked cell. Strike the cell door with your whip to break it open. Maria will be freed and joins the quest. Once rescued, she becomes selectable at the character screen when you start a new game or continue.
Maria plays significantly differently from Richter. She uses animal familiars as sub-weapons, can double-jump, slides faster, and her hitbox is smaller. She is widely considered the easier character and opens up different routing strategies across the stages.
| Unlock Condition | Character | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rescue in Stage 3 prison | Maria Renard | Selectable after rescue on any future run |
Stage Select
At the title screen, hold Select and press Run repeatedly (up to five times) to cycle through a hidden stage select option. On some regional versions, the combination is Hold II + Select, then press Run. Once the stage select activates, use Left/Right on the D-pad to scroll through available stages, then press Run to begin.
This gives access to the main numbered stages. Note that alternate-path stages (marked with a prime symbol, such as Stage 2’) must still be accessed through in-game routing unless a password grants entry from a run that already branched.
| Input | Screen | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Hold Select, press Run (×5) | Title Screen | Stage Select menu |
| Hold II + Select, press Run | Title Screen | Stage Select (alternate input) |
| Left / Right on D-pad | Stage Select | Scroll through stages |
Alternate Routes and Warp Zones
Rondo of Blood is structured around a branching stage map — one of the first Castlevania games to do so explicitly. Each split leads to a “prime” alternate version of the next stage, which has different layouts, different maidens to rescue, and different paths to the final confrontation.
How branching works:
- In Stage 2, find the hidden exit hidden behind a destructible wall in the lower route. Taking it leads to Stage 2’ (the ghost ship alternate) instead of the standard Stage 3.
- In Stage 5, find the exit in the lower catacombs section to access Stage 5’.
- Alternate stages contain unique maidens and sometimes unique sub-weapons unavailable on the main path.
Rescuing all four maidens (Tera, Iris, Annette, and Maria) across both route variants is required for the best ending.
| Stage | Branch Condition | Destination |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 2 | Hidden lower-route exit | Stage 2’ (Ghost Ship) |
| Stage 2’ | Completion | Stage 3’ |
| Stage 5 | Hidden catacombs exit | Stage 5’ |
| Stage 5’ | Completion | Stage 6’ |
Password System
Rondo of Blood uses a symbol-based password system tied to the PC Engine CD’s continue screen. When you receive a game over, the game presents a password composed of a grid of icons drawn from a set of Japanese-influenced symbols and item imagery.
Enter passwords at the Password Entry screen, accessible from the main menu. Use the D-pad to navigate the symbol grid and press I to confirm each character. The password encodes your current stage, the maidens rescued so far, and Richter’s or Maria’s progress state.
Because the symbol set is visually complex and not romanized, copying passwords accurately requires care. Take a photograph or write the symbols with their grid positions (row/column) noted — substituting a visually similar symbol will invalidate the password.
General password entry:
| Action | Button |
|---|---|
| Move cursor | D-pad |
| Select symbol | I |
| Delete last entry | II |
| Confirm password | Run |
Sound Test Mode
To access the Sound Test, go to the title screen and hold I + II, then press Run. A sound test menu will appear listing the game’s BGM tracks and sound effects by number. Use Up/Down on the D-pad to select a track and I to play it.
Rondo of Blood’s soundtrack by Akira Souji and Tomoko Sato is a highlight of the PC Engine CD library, and the sound test lets you listen to tracks like “Divine Bloodlines,” “Slash,” and “Bloody Tears (Rondo version)” in isolation.
| Input | Screen | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Hold I + II, press Run | Title Screen | Sound Test menu |
| Up / Down | Sound Test | Select track number |
| I | Sound Test | Play selected track |
Hidden Items and Room Secrets
Rondo of Blood hides a number of items and bonuses inside destructible environment tiles and off-screen ledges.
- Meat in walls: Multiple stages hide roast chickens and large hearts inside brick walls. Strike suspicious wall sections with your whip or sub-weapons to reveal them.
- Richter’s back-dash: Press Back + Jump (away from your movement direction + II) to perform a back-dash. This is not hidden per se, but many players overlook it — it can dodge attacks that tracking projectiles would otherwise hit.
- Cross sub-weapon + Holy Water combo: Throw Holy Water at a group of enemies and immediately throw the Cross boomerang through the fire column. The boomerang gains a fire effect and deals additional damage, useful against the werewolf and fish-man bosses.
- Spike pit recovery: In certain corridor stages, if you fall into a spike pit, rapidly mash I + II during the death animation. On some versions, this can trigger an immediate respawn without losing the item you were holding.
Beneficial Glitches and Exploits
Heart Farming Loop: In Stage 1, several candelabras and enemies respawn when you scroll the screen. Position Richter at the right edge of a candelabra cluster, collect the hearts, walk left to scroll them off-screen, then return. This is slower than later-stage farming but useful early for stocking sub-weapon ammunition.
Cross Sub-weapon Softlock Avoidance: If the Cross is thrown off-screen toward a wall and gets stuck in a return loop, pressing Select to switch sub-weapons cancels the stuck projectile and prevents a screen-lock situation.
Boss Rush Damage Window: Most bosses in the game have a brief invincibility frame after being hit, but the Shaft fight (the penultimate boss) has a hitbox inconsistency — hit him at the very edge of his orb barrier with the Axe sub-weapon during the rising arc. The axe can clip the barrier’s edge before his invincibility registers, allowing two damage ticks per throw cycle instead of one.
Maria’s Cat Familiars Stun Lock: Maria’s cat familiar attack has a faster recovery than most sub-weapons and can stun smaller enemies into indefinite stun loops. Against mid-sized enemies like axe knights, spamming the familiar in close quarters prevents them from completing their swing animation entirely.
Developer Notes and Easter Eggs
- The game’s intro cinematic features voiced Japanese dialogue — a rarity for 1993 console releases — with Richter shouting “Die monster!” to Dracula, which became the source of the famously mistranslated quote in the later SNES localization of Dracula X.
- Clearing the game with all four maidens rescued and reaching Dracula with the best ending route unlocks a longer ending sequence showing each maiden’s fate, a deliberate narrative reward the developers programmed to require full exploration.
- The Stage 0 prologue (the burning village escape) is technically skippable on a stage select start, but completing it normally sets internal flags that affect the maiden count — skipping it via codes and then attempting a 100% run may result in a missable flag state on certain emulators that don’t emulate the CD load saves correctly.
- The PC Engine CD version contains unused audio tracks partially present on the disc that were cut from the final stage assignments, audible via a CD audio player on tracks beyond the standard game index — these are commonly referenced in Konami internal materials as rejected stage themes.