Castlemania!

[ZTC]

Since I've been trying to encode the music from every Castlevania game, I'd thought I'd make a thread about it...

Listing and Progress:

NES:
Castlevania 1 - timed and titled from nsf
Castlevania 2 - timed and titled from nsf
(FDS) Castlevania 2 - timed and titled from nsf
Castlevania 3 - timed and titled from nsf (re-encode needed)
(Famicom) Castlevania 3 - manual rip from the sound test, added fadeouts, titled
Wai Wai World 2 - timed and titled from nsf (has 3 remixed tracks from CV 1 & 2)

Arcade
Haunted Castle (just found out about this one o_o; )

MSX2:
Vampire Killer - never heard of this till a few days ago (and quite hard to find a 'copy' of it)

PC Engine:
Rondo of Blood - downloading an ISO for it...

SNES:
Super Castlevania 4 - timed and titled from spc archives
Dracula X - straight encode from rsn archive

Game Boy: (to be done...)
Castlevania: The Adventure
Castlevania 2
Castlevania Legends

GBA: (need to re-encode, volume too soft)
Aria of Sorrow
Circle of the Moon
Harmony of Dissonance

Genesis:
Bloodlines - manual rip from the New Generation beta soundtest, titled (also have a gym encode...)

PSX (to be done...)
Symphony of the Night
Castlevania Chronicles (never heard of this one till the other day too...)

Saturn:
Symphony of the Night (let's see if I can even find this one...)

N64: (to be done...)
Castlevania 64
Legacy of Darkness

PS2: (to be done...)
Lament of Innosence
Curse of Darkness (also for XBOX)

DS: (to be done)
Dawn of Sorrow
Potrait of Ruin

====(some comments on select games)====

Castlevania 1 - Really haven't played that much of it, but I <3 the music
Castlevania 2 - Same as 1, but the FDS and the NES music are great in their own equal rights
Castlevania 3 - Played through the translated rom, fun as hell, too bad the extra sound chip wasn't included for the American release =/
Castlevania 4 - This game is a f'ing masterpiece, in both gameplay and in music
Dracula X - Played through, music is pretty good
Vampire Killer(MSX2) - trying to find this is quite a challenge
GBA series - AoS has the best music of the 3, followed by CotM and HoD (and yes, I like HoD's music)
Bloodlines/New Generation - Beat it, the music is pure awsomeness, the gym rip data is missing information, making the music 'incomplete'; I'd use the vgm rip, but that clips too horribly

====(and here's a few emulation-related questions/comments)====

I'm currently looking for a good MSX/MSX2 emulator, what are the reccommendations? (with the possiblity of sound logging)
What are some good Game Boy emulators that does a decent job in sound logging?
Is there any PSX and N64 emulator that can log sound? (as I can't rip psfs/usf worth crap =/ )
What is the best Saturn emulator out there? (yes, I know they're all crap...)
How's PS2 emulation as a whole coming along?
(and) has sound files been sucessfully ripped from DS games?

======
Along with that collection that I have encoded so far, I've been working on including midi remixes and oc remixes of Castlevania themes (heck, I still have MottZilla's CV theme remix from an old ZC quest of his...) Simply said, I <3 Castlevania music.

[mrz84]

Vampire Killer can also be found for a snes emu(if I remember correctly, they are the same game). I can't post the site (for obvious reasons), but if you wanna get the SNES Vampire Killer I'd recommend znes for an emulator.

[Kairyu]

The MSX2 game is horrible. In ways that can't be described.
Have you been to Castlevania Dungeon recently? They may have some of what you're looking for.

[MottZilla]

====(and here's a few emulation-related questions/comments)====

I'm currently looking for a good MSX/MSX2 emulator, what are the reccommendations? (with the possiblity of sound logging)
What are some good Game Boy emulators that does a decent job in sound logging?
Is there any PSX and N64 emulator that can log sound? (as I can't rip psfs/usf worth crap =/ )
What is the best Saturn emulator out there? (yes, I know they're all crap...)
How's PS2 emulation as a whole coming along?
(and) has sound files been sucessfully ripped from DS games?

======
Along with that collection that I have encoded so far, I've been working on including midi remixes and oc remixes of Castlevania themes (heck, I still have MottZilla's CV theme remix from an old ZC quest of his...) Simply said, I <3 Castlevania music.

MSX, try looking under computer emulators at www.zophar.net
But be aware, MSX sucks. I mean it sucks hard core. I played Vampire Killer on it once via emulation, it sucked. Did I mention it sucks?

Sound recording via GB emulators, you could try VisualBoyAdvance. But you know there are GBS sound rips you could try.

Any Playstation or N64 music rips for what you want probably exist. Check Zophar for music rips.

For Saturn you're best off, getting a Saturn. Sorry but no emulator is that great and all require a pretty powerful system to run decently. If you must use an emulator, look around for that hacked commercial Sega used Saturn emulator. It's a bitch to setup though. In the end it's just not worth it. If you like Saturn games I highly suggest you buy one. If you can't afford to buy the games, I can tell you how to boot CD-Rs.

PS2 emulation is worse than Saturn emulation. Need more info? Lets just say your PC probably has no chance of reasonably playing any games. Buy a PS2, they're cheap. Again, it's easy to run "backups" on CD-Rs or DVD-Rs (or DVD+Rs).

As for Nintendo DS, I don't think they've started ripping music, but music should be similar to GBA in some cases, but others could actually have music steams which may requires they be transcoded into mp3s or something. But for now the easiest way to "rip" music would be the headphone jack and a sound test menu.

I love Castlevania's music as well, that's why it was in that old quest ofcourse. I highly recommend the PC-Engine Akumajou Dracula X Rondo of Blood. True CD music and it sounds great. I hope the ISO you are getting isn't reencoded MP3s. They are of lesser quality than that of lossless copies.

[ZTC]

I just got an ISO+MP3 copy of Chi no Rondo the other day to hear what it sounds like while I wait for a couple of ISOs to download and I realized I already a highquality track of Bloody Tears I snagged off a p2p service a few years ago. (lol)

Any Playstation or N64 music rips for what you want probably exist. Check Zophar for music rips.

Already checked long before for any PSX rips, and it has only two tracks; as for the N64 rips, well, there are none for CV64

Sound recording via GB emulators, you could try VisualBoyAdvance. But you know there are GBS sound rips you could try.

I didn't realize that VBA did that, but as for the GBS rips, I already knew about. Unfortunately, my plugin for Winamp has a tendenacy to crash it with certain gbs files, and I can't hear the music when it's doing an encode, leaving me to have to 'guess' where it's at. Straight logging is the lesser of 2 evils.

Speaking of logging, since there's no viable rips for the PSX and N64, I guess I'll have to use Camcasta Studio to do vid/sound logging. I just have to find a way to keep the sound from CV64 from clipping for an accurate log...

Have you been to Castlevania Dungeon recently? They may have some of what you're looking for.

and they do, thanks!

I feel backwards today...

[Kairyu]

I'm fairly certain there are indeed rips of the N64 Castlevania games, but they haven't been tagged or timed or something important. Try searching for .usf archives, there was a page in particular that had a huge list of ripped-but-not-ready game music files.

The reason there are only 2 PSX rips is because the other music is streamed, not synthesized. The only possible way you could have trouble finding a SotN soundtrack is if you don't actually look. It's possible to rip from the CD directly using PSound, but the music is stored strangely and you won't be able to get it all. PSound only rips up to 17 minutes or so, but the music for SotN is stored back-to-back on I think 8 or so tracks (as in, more than one song on a track).
A complete Castlevania Chronicles soundtrack shouldn't be too hard to find either- I found one once, so it's gotta be easy.

[ZTC]

lawl at Google, at least I found the USF sets

MSX, try looking under computer emulators at www.zophar.net
But be aware, MSX sucks. I mean it sucks hard core. I played Vampire Killer on it once via emulation, it sucked. Did I mention it sucks?

I got blueMSX the other day and I had no problem playing Vampire Killer on it, now I just have to see if there's a sound test for it...