PDA

View Full Version : Castlevania Chronicles is sweet



Ruler26
04-07-2002, 02:21 AM
Yeah, it's been out since...October, or something. But I've only finally gotten around to playing through it. I've played through Arranged mode on Medium, and now I'm sort of trying to go through the Original mode. Wow, the game can be such a sharp stick up the ass, and then all of a sudden it seems like the best game in world. Difficult and weird at the same time.

I almost feel like the Arranged mode music was worth it. While some people didn't like it, I LOVE remixed Vampire Killer and The Tower of Dolls. There's also Theme of Simon, but everyone loves that remix, it seems.

Now if Konami could just do Rondo of Blood, damn it...

Oh yeah, I have kind of a weird question for anyone who has played Dracula X Rondo of Blood on the Turbo Duo...when Richter swings his whip, is the whipping animation super smooth like that of his swing in Symphony of The Night, or is it a tad framey?

MottZilla
04-07-2002, 02:51 AM
I dled CV Chronicals in japanese and played it. It was great and I enjoyed it. And as for DracX Rondo, it's equal animation to the snes dracx. If you are on broadband of some sort i might hook you up with DraculaX and Magic Engine to play it.

Daarkseid
04-07-2002, 12:45 PM
I got Castlevania Chronicles for Christmas, and loved it. I've beaten the game on Original and Arrange. Getting through the Original mode was a pain in the ass though, and took nearly 30 continues to finish. Dracula was incredibly easy though... he has the exact same attack pattern as he does in Dracula X.

The music is also great, and lives up to my expectations for a castlevania soundtrack, although I liked the music tracks in Original mode over the remixed ones in Arranged.

MottZilla
04-07-2002, 01:20 PM
We should make a petition and get people to sign it of people that would buy Dracula X if konami ported it to PSX and brought it to North America. I've heard of people being successful in getting companies to do things that way before.

Ruler26
04-07-2002, 04:43 PM
Daarkseid, which sound driver do you use for the Original music (I think the menu for selecting a sound driver comes up when you hold L1 + R1 when you select Original mode)?

Thanks for the offer Mottzilla, but I'm on a lowly 56k. It's okay, though, I might across Rondo of Blood on some FTP. Also, Mott, be aware that since you only played the Japanese version of Castlevania Chronicles, you were probably listening to skippy music. I hear that just about every track in the japanese version has skips of some sort.

Now, the whole animation thing baffles me. Rondo of Blood is right behind Symphony of the Night. In Rondo of Blood, Richter can really only do a backflip, and that's about it. Yet, in Symphony of the Night, they give him all sorts of abilities, like the run, slide, slide jump, and various attacks...for what, a quick jaunt against Dracula, and a run through the castle if you use the Richter code? I don't get why they bothered giving him so many abilities in SOTN, including ultra-smooth whip animations and being able to swing the whip around.

If you play through SOTN as Richter, you only need to fight like one or two bosses, since you have like the upper-cut that gets you past all sorts of obstacles. I can only think that maybe in the Saturn version (where Konami added like two areas and the ability to select Richter or Maria from the start), maybe they limit Richter's abilities, or require him to get his abilities like Alucard has to. Otherwise, you can't have a fun 2-3 hour play with Richter, because he doesn't fit in the game lay-out.

Basically, I'm kind of bummed that Richter can't slide and stuff in Rondo of Blood, but it might be for the better (except for the animation...I didn't like the whipping animation in the SNES version and, oh well).

I'm just rabidly interested in Dracula X: Nocturne of the Moonlight (I'm think that's close enough to the Japanese name of the Saturn game I mentioned). It has sweet renditions of "Bloody Tears" and stuff (along with the two new areas). I'm painfully working through downloading it from an FTP...but then I gotta get a Saturn...

Making a petition to Konami would definitely be cool, Mottzilla. However, I haven't even e-mailed Konami myself, supporting a port of Rondo. I usually go to their website to find out their e-mail address, then I'll be like, "Hmmm, this would be more effective if I sent it to Konami of Japan...ohh...I should probably write it in Japanese...ohh...my translator program kind of sucks...I think...hell, I dunno, I can't read the Kanji it spits out, much less the Hiragana or Katakana." I do know that I would buy a port for $30, even $40 if they actually did it...but they also have to pump out Haunted Castle and even Vampire Killer. Konami really has to get to work :)

Isn't there some sort of petition website, that has a whole bunch of live petitions of any sort imaginable? I think it was in a PC Magazine I have...I'll find out about it.

Daarkseid
04-07-2002, 05:04 PM
Originally posted by Ruler26
Daarkseid, which sound driver do you use for the Original music (I think the menu for selecting a sound driver comes up when you hold L1 + R1 when you select Original mode)?


I use the third sound module, that produces the best quality of music. The first one makes some of the tunes sound horrible(like music that plays in the opening sequence). Also, because of how you can access the original sound modules, you can actually access these sound modules for Arrange mode, and thusly play the Arrange mode with the Original music.


Now, the whole animation thing baffles me. Rondo of Blood is right behind Symphony of the Night. In Rondo of Blood, Richter can really only do a backflip, and that's about it. Yet, in Symphony of the Night, they give him all sorts of abilities, like the run, slide, slide jump, and various attacks...for what, a quick jaunt against Dracula, and a run through the castle if you use the Richter code? I don't get why they bothered giving him so many abilities in SOTN, including ultra-smooth whip animations and being able to swing the whip around.


I haven't played Symphony of the night all the way through, but Rondo of Blood and Castlevania: Dracula X were both released on systems inferior to the PSX, and years behind SotN. Rondo of Blood was released in 1993, on an 8-bit system(with 16-bit graphics) and Castlevania: DX was released in 1995 for a 16-bit system. SotN was on a highly developed 32-bit system in 1997.
My only guess then is they gave Richter all those moves because it looked cool, I guess, as well as the good animations.



Making a petition to Konami would definitely be cool, Mottzilla. However, I haven't even e-mailed Konami myself, supporting a port of Rondo. I usually go to their website to find out their e-mail address, then I'll be like, "Hmmm, this would be more effective if I sent it to Konami of Japan...ohh...I should probably write it in Japanese...ohh...my translator program kind of sucks...I think...hell, I dunno, I can't read the Kanji it spits out, much less the Hiragana or Katakana." I do know that I would buy a port for $30, even $40 if they actually did it...but they also have to pump out Haunted Castle and even Vampire Killer. Konami really has to get to work :)

This might actually work, at least for Rondo of Blood, because the creator mentioned in that interview on Castlevania Chronicles(American release) that if he does remake another classic, it would be one of the ones he mentioned in the interview, and the two he mentioned were Akumajou Densetsu(Castlevania 3) and Dracula X: Chi no Rondo(Rondo of Blood). A good sized petition would prove to this guy that at least a Rondo of Blood port is desired among fans and supported.

I don't know about Vampire Killer and Haunted Castle though... those games are probably lost due to the fact they're not nearly as impressive as games themselves, but simply for the fact they're vintage Castlevania games. Also, Vampire Killer was an 8-bit game on an old computer system that hardly anyone remembers, and Haunted Castle was in arcades, and is probably only known by any of us because we looked into the history of castlevania titles. I also tried playing the Haunted Caslte rom on MAME, but apparently the version of Mame I was using wasn't the right one, because Haunted Castle's background layers were blank. It would look awfully cheesy if Vampire Killer were brought to the PSX... I mean 16 bit games, you can get away with because their graphics aren't nearly so backward as 8-bit.
Haunted Castle I could see on the PSX though since its graphics were fairly decent, just behind those of Super Castlevania 4 and Chronicles. But then again, its terrible gameplay(I've heard towards the end it basically becomes a quarter munching continue fest) would probably force Konami to create a more playable format like Chronicles, only this would be more drastically needed and possibly cause some serious changes to be made in the game's engine and or level designs.

MottZilla
04-07-2002, 05:21 PM
One audio track was damaged in the iso I downloaded. The rest was fine.

In a Private Message could you tell me this FTP with the saturn version of SotN? I plan on getting a saturn and modding it eventually.

Anyways, I'm all for a petion to bring Pc-Engine's Dracula x to playstation. Anyone want to start a site of somekind? Or try to find other people that would help?

Ruler26
04-07-2002, 05:22 PM
Rondo of Blood was released in 1993, on an 8-bit system(with 16-bit graphics) and Castlevania: DX was released in 1995 for a 16-bit system.

Heh, yeah, that all was just wishful thinking on my part. In the back of my mind, though, I knew that the TG16 was actually 8-bits, or like two 8-bit chips together, but I never bothered to find out what sort of power the Turbo Duo had. Well, Konami sure had the space for more animation.



I don't know about Vampire Killer and Haunted Castle though... those games are probably lost due to the fact they're not nearly as impressive as games themselves, but simply for the fact they're vintage Castlevania games. Also, Vampire Killer was an 8-bit game on an old computer system that hardly anyone remembers

Hmm. Yeah, I must be smoking something strong if I really, desperately needed Vampire Killer ported to the PSX. If I really needed to, I could get the emulator necessary for it and what not. But the game seems interesting in its own right. It does have keys and stuff, so you've gotta search around instead of staying on a linear path.

I tried Haunted Castle too. For me, though, the graphics became garbled about half way through the first level.

Too bad there aren't any other rare, good Castlevania titles for me to bitch about for a port. I can't stand the idea of porting Bloodlines, that game was just poor on all fronts, it didn't feel like a Castlevania game at all.

Daarkseid
04-07-2002, 05:33 PM
Originally posted by Ruler26


Too bad there aren't any other rare, good Castlevania titles for me to bitch about for a port. I can't stand the idea of porting Bloodlines, that game was just poor on all fronts, it didn't feel like a Castlevania game at all.

I actually liked Bloodlines, the only real problem I have with it is that all the roms of it seem to be unable to be played on any Genesis emulator because of its heavy use of Raster Effects. Actually, I think this is the shortcomings of most(haven't tried them all) Genesis emulators, especially Genecyst which seems to be particularly incomplete when it comes to raster effects.

The sound track was also very good, I thought. And level designs were good too. However, it was weak in that they changed the hearts to crystals(Why???) and had only three sub-weapons, one of them drastically changed so its less useful. This is probably the first Castlevania game where I regard the throwing axe as the most useful sub-weapon.

Like I mentioned earlier, the sound track was great too. Iron Blue Intention(on the 4th level) is one of my favorite Castlevania tracks ever.

Actual sound effects were very week though... I can't imagine why either, short of the fact Konami was just lazy, which is also hard to concieve as well since I thought the rest of the game was well done considering the restraints givin due to the Genesis' aging hardware.

I'd only want this game ported though, if I'm unable to track down a Genesis and a copy of Bloodlines, or a Genesis emulator is made(or found) thats capable of emulating the last stage of Bloodlines perfectly(level 6 has some very heavy use of raster effects).

MottZilla
04-07-2002, 05:44 PM
Ok, two things. Haunted Castle is fine on mame now. I played through it, it was alright. Next, Genecyst requires you activate raster effects Daark. Alt + E. Genecyst actually has COMPLETE raster effects emulation. Well, the only incompletness is the Palette raster effects. So water has problems. Other than that, CV Bloodlines plays great on genecyst.

Daarkseid
04-07-2002, 06:05 PM
Originally posted by Mottzilla
Ok, two things. Haunted Castle is fine on mame now. I played through it, it was alright. Next, Genecyst requires you activate raster effects Daark. Alt + E. Genecyst actually has COMPLETE raster effects emulation. Well, the only incompletness is the Palette raster effects. So water has problems. Other than that, CV Bloodlines plays great on genecyst.

Ah well, I made my observations of Bloodlines with the Genecyst last summer, and turning on the Raster effects then failed to make Level 6 playable(on the upside down section of the level, the sprite graphics are missing). Also, I try Genecyst now, and it does not want to run on XP. No amount of tinkering with its properties seems to want to make it work.

MottZilla
04-07-2002, 06:21 PM
Try Gens/GensX/ or Kega.