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Score mechanics in relation to lag
For a practical example, with the standard strat of entering Dracula's room without losing any frames, Dracula's pattern will be determined with the frame counter reading 0xC7.<br />
On this frame, the possible values are either 0x87 or 0x7A. If it reads 0x87, this will make Dracula do the fast fireball pattern, while if it reads 0x7A, this will make Dracula do the slow fireball pattern. This essentially makes either pattern a 50% chance that is impossible to control in an RTA setting.
=== Score Management ===
In some games, having certain scores can cause more lag due to the game having to spend more computations to display it on screen.<br />
In Castlevania, this is not the case. The current score is stored in memory in a "decimal" format, which makes it fairly quick for the game to then display it on screen and also makes it the same speed for any combination of digits.<br />
On the other hand, the moment points are acquired, there could be a little bit of variance in the amount of computations performed depending on the current score and the score added, but this is usually just a handful of CPU cycles in total, which is pretty negligible.<br />
The bottom line is, score doesn't really matter for lag in Castlevania.
=== Additional Links ===
*[http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/Castlevania.html TASVideos tricks page]
