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Castlevania Retrospective, Xbox Live Bound 59

Posted by Zonk from the good-times-with-the-belmonts dept.
astrokid writes "From last week, 1up is running an informative look back at the Castlevania series. Although I am looking forward to Portrait of Ruin for the Nintendo DS, I really hope Konami finds a way to release a 2D game for one of the next gen systems." Funny you should mention that. An anonymous reader writes "The greatest Castlevania game -- and possibly 2D game -- of all time, Symphony of the Night, is headed to Xbox 360 Arcade!."
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Castlevania Retrospective, Xbox Live Bound More

Castlevania Retrospective, Xbox Live Bound

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  • 2D? (Score:2, Funny)

    by KatchooNJ ( 173554 )
    What be this 2D gaming you speak of? *Walks down the game aisle seeing this rare beast*

  • Metroidvania (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hansamurai ( 907719 ) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Friday August 04, 2006 @09:53AM (#15846061) Homepage Journal
    I enjoyed playing the original Castlevania's back in the day, good old simple whip side-scrollers that were fun for its time. But once Symphony of the Night came out, I really, really loved the series. Especially the GBA and DS game, those are very fun games and bound to be classics. Check out Metroidvania [wikipedia.org] for more info.

  • Now the question is.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ProppaT ( 557551 ) on Friday August 04, 2006 @09:54AM (#15846065) Homepage
    Will we see the bonuses added to the Sega Saturn version of the game? As a die hard Castlevania fan (the only ones I haven't played and destroyed are Rhondo of Blood and the Saturn version of SOTN), this would definately be an incentive to rebuy a game that I already own three copies of (my original scratched disc, my replacement, and a sealed greatest hits version).

    Heck, it might be an incentive to buy a 360 if we see more of these kind of classic ports. Now when's Sega re-releasing Panzer Dragoon Saga?
    • Doubt that -- it's the PS1 version that will be ported to XBLA.
    • Some of the best games of all time... Anyway, SotN on Saturn had just a few quirks that the PS1 version didn't have. The "Rune Sword" was named "Verbotem" like the animation showes. A few other weapons were named differently as well (mostly they didn't over-translate all of them). I'm not completely sure, but I do know that the Japanese Saturn and PS1 versions have slightly different creature animations and backdrops. The stone angels in the backgrounds aren't covered up with vines or wings. There crea
      • Off top of my head, the Sega Saturn Adds:

        - Richter playable from the get go with both of his costumes
        - Maria Boss Fight
        - Maria Selectable from the get go.
        - Running after you clear the first castle.
        - Bat Wing Smash continues indefiniately until you hit a wall (or run out of mana?)
        - Several new items, including the Alucard Spear
        - Couple of new areas, including new enemies, so the total castle area becomes something like 205%

        However, Saturn's 3D prowess (or there lack of) changed the graphics for the worse in
    • I'd buy a 360 today if it gave me the chance to play Panzer Dragoon Saga.
      • That would be huge, also some other sega classics like wonderboy or space harrier. if sega was wise they would move a lot of the classic genesis games over for cheap. I'd pay 3 or 4 bucks to be able to replay some of those.
    • Well I can tell you that the differences aren't that great between the two versions. I have the SOTN import for Saturn, but unfortunately it's heavily Japanese. Maria doesn't control as well as I was hoping, and the extra parts of the castle aren't too special. There's more slowdown, but I wouldn't mind an english language version running at a better framerate to come out. I'm just saying that you're not really missing out by not playing it.

      Panzer Dragoon Saga on the other hand is a different story. Best eB
  • That is great news for XBLA and Konami, whoring out (in a GOOD way) all the old classics for us oldschoolers to just eat up, and give all the newschoolers a chance revel in the entertainment that is Konami 80's-90's power period.
    FTFA,

    Konami is also bringing back other classic hits, some revered (Frogger, Contra, Super Contra, Track & Field) some obscure (Time Pilot), and some really obscure (Scramble).

    Super C on XBL scoreboards will be a very good thing.

    • Konami code on or off for Super C?
    • Time Pilot is considered obscure? That was one of the most popular games back in the 80's.

      BTW who would want to destroy their xbox controller playing Track & Field?
      • damn if it were the old xbox I could have said something like the controller is big enough to support you. . .
        My guess is that Track & Field won't show up on the 360 until DDR shows up.

      • I'm surprised to see Scramble cited as "really obscure", too. It may not have been Defender in terms of popularity, but I thought it was historically recognized as an important development in the genre of side-scrolling shooters.

        I mean, it was the first game in the Gradius series, according to Konami's official ret-con...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's Street Fighter II Turbo, so I think that's up around 24 megs in the first place. But then it's got to be wrapped up in something that makes it play well, then it's got network support... and it is MS. They know they'll profit off you if they keep giving you games that you need yet another memory card to hold onto, even if they let you download again, they know you look at it as a pain in the ass, and will eventually buy another mem card or a HDD for the sake of convenience.
      • It's Street Fighter II Turbo, so I think that's up around 24 megs in the first place.

        Right, but Xbox Live Arcade games are measured in megabytes, not the megabits you talk about. Street Fighter II for Super NES was 2 megabytes, Turbo was 3, and Super was 4. Even Super Turbo for Game Boy Advance comes in under 8 megabytes.

    • Most of the disc is CD Audio, since the PS1 wasn't powerful enough to play compressed audio and the game at the same time. I'd imagine that by compressing the audio they could get the game down into the 40-50MB range very easily.

      Maybe this will finally bring the price of SOTN discs back down. Judging by the first post in this story though, I doubt it.
    • OK, I grabbed the first pressing NTSC-U/C (SLUS-00067) disc and poked around. It's all pretty organized and chances are that they would just use the resources and recreate/modify the code for a re-release. Here are the major groups sizes:

      BIN+VAB (characters, weapons, monsters, and other stuff) - 8.9MB
      BOSS (all the boss data) - 9.8MB
      SERVANT (your familiar's data) - 922kB
      ST (the stage data) - 24.5MB

      Total ~ 45MB

      Now for the data that could be changed a bit.
      Misc system data - 2.4MB (unless they are using a PS
  • Symphony of the Night is a great game, but it has several serious flaws that could easily be fixed. Specifically, the Crissaegrim and the Shield Rod combo destroy any challenge in the game, they are ridiculously overpowered. The Ring of Varda drop bug should be fixed too, and the ring toned down a bit as it's also way overpowered, especially if you equip two.
    • Simple fix: don't use those items!
    • Crissaegrim has a fairly low drop rate, but they can be easily farmed with Lapis Lazuli or two and Alucart gear. As for the Ring of Varda, they are only dropped by the Paranthropes after you CLEAR the game (with the apporiate tag on the save game). So the real purpose for the One Ring... I mean the Ring of Varda is for the post game antics. The Alucard Shield and the Shield Rod does destroy the game, and it's an easy pickup. Best thing to do is to balance that out is to lower the damage per hit, increas
    • Maybe I'm just a purist, but I'd rather Konami not go back and "fix" anything. Some of what makes a game great *are* its quirks, bugs, and imbalances. The only exception are high severity bugs which cause nasty things like crashes, lost saves, etc. (For example, the infamous Sketch bug from FF3/6)

      Things like game balance shouldn't need to be touched, especially since this is a single-player game we're talking about. As others have already mentioned, if you don't like how overpowered a combination is, then d
  • Furthermore, nothing from Konami has indicated that SOTN's appearance on XBLA will keep the title exclusive to Microsoft's Live Arcade.

    Does that mean it'll be on the Wii's download service as well? The fit would make sense, considering the majority of titles in the series have been on Nintendo consoles, and because of the Sega and TurboGrafx 16 deals, the fact that this title hasn't been on a Nintendo system before shouldn't be an issue.

    Anyone want to guess the over/under on how many fanboy wet dreams that

  • No GB love. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Friday August 04, 2006 @10:12AM (#15846143) Homepage Journal
    Maybe I'm strange, but I never got into the Castlevania games apart from the versions on the original Game Boy. I've had the music from Castlevania: The Adventure [wikipedia.org] stuck in my head for something like 17 years now. Sadly, the GB series get overlooked in TFA.
  • I just hope they clean up the sprites a little and make the fonts cleaner so that it doesn't look like ass on HDTVs.

    The music was hands down the best in the series IMO. As for the features of the Saturn version really the only big difference I saw was the ability to play as Maria and if you put the disc in a PC there was all kinds of concept art freebies on it.

  • And after conceding to buy SF2HF after saying I'd never fall for those "stupid micropayments" and swearing Street Fighter was the last, they come and they FUCKING REALEASE SOTN!!! WTFFFFFFF?
  • I don't know why, but I've have simply never liked any castlevania game as much as Simon's Quest.

    • Re:Simon's Quest (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Madpony ( 935423 )
      Simon's Quest always seemed to be quite the hack job to me. It had a great artistic feel, great music, but the level and monster design seemed pretty rushed. The bosses looked horrible and were incredibly easy to kill, the story and dialogue didn't make much sense at all, and the layout of the maps just seemed sloppy and uninspiring.

      I love how the game felt. I loved the day and night feature (What a horrible night to have a curse!) I probably beat the game about 30 times when I was a kid, but it jus
  • call me when we get a release of Dracula X. Seriously, what's taking so long? Maybe with the Wii...
  • I'm waiting for Pacman to get to the Live Arcade. They've announced they're working on it, but I don't know anything about a date.

    • I'm waiting for Pacman to get to the Live Arcade. They've announced they're working on it, but I don't know anything about a date.

      While no specific date has been set, Pac-Man is one of the games on the list for this summer's "Xbox Live Wednesdays" [xbox.com] arcade releases. The list is:

      • Frogger
      • Cloning Clyde
      • Galaga
      • Street Fighter 2
      • Pac-Man

      Since the list has gone in that order so far, releasing every Wednesday, I think it's a safe bet to say that Pac-Man will ship next week (Wednesday morning at 1:00am PST, b

  • Castle-V on the Wii (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iridium_ionizer ( 790600 ) * on Friday August 04, 2006 @03:49PM (#15848467)
    "If we were to translate Castlevania to the Wii, the expectation would be that we would find a new and outrageous use for the 'Wiimote.' I'm not sure we could get away with just using the traditional controller. I'm still considering different ways we can use the standard Wii controller, but am not yet happy with what has been proposed. Of course, we are always looking into expanding the series to new platforms, and the Wii is certainly one of our candidates." - Koji Igarashi producer of the Castlevania series since 2001.

    Here's how they could make a Wii game without pissing too many people off: make it 2 games.

    1) A standard 2D game, but with all of the characters, enemies, and backgrounds being presented as 3D models (ala Viewtiful Joe). This will allow the character animation to be incredibly smooth, something that was somewhat lacking in the GBA/DS games. Also it would allow you to zoom in on character while they are talking.

    2) A 3rd person/1st person game (can switch) using the Wii-mote as the whipping mechanism.

    What would really make this thing work is that you could keep each game relatively short (10-20 hours). You could keep the same dialogue, music, and 3D models. You could also use the same basic layout of the 2D castle for the 3D (or vice versa).

    I think it would be awesome to play through the same game with 2 different perspectives. And that way if the Wii-mote gameplay just didn't suit your fancy you wouldn't be stuck with a dud for a game.

    • A 3rd person/1st person game (can switch) using the Wii-mote as the whipping mechanism.

      That just sounds like a horrible idea to me. Have you ever played a Castlevania game before? Do you know how much whipping goes on? Your arm would get tired in no time.

      This idea sounds like something that originally seems cool, but in the end, is exposed as being really gimmicky, and detracts from the game experience more than it adds. One example is the symbol-drawing mechanic in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the DS.

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