same. also i loved how it simulated hanging out with a friend playing games including looking through magazines
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i love this record, by @lofia
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I gave y’all that save for the best dungeon of Alundra and don’t think anyone touched it!
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It’s NES Remix, yeah? I thought it was cute but ultimately games made just for Wario Ware worked out better.
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NES Remix was fine and I am fine with things that are just fine existing (most Wario Wares were better, yes).
I played through Castlevania The Adventure within the past few years (thanks to the same collection) and… it is mildly interesting while also clearly still being rather bad? I think one can get something out of the experience, and seeing early Gameboy games that were still struggling with its capabilities trying to work around things is hard to root against (this game did so by taking place mainly is plain white rooms, everyone’s favorite CV environment) but it is very slow with a very unsatisfying (i.e. bad) jump. The back half does have some neat bits of level design but the flaws are sadly very real and almost impossible to ignore completely.
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Playing Castlevania for NES, extracted from the Steam version of Castlevania Anniversary Collection and played in Mesen.
I used this Steam version ROM extraction guide to access the ROMs: Castlevania Anniversary Collection · farmerbb/RED-Project Wiki · GitHub
That resulted in a tidy dump of the ROMs, with these file names:
boy_01_DraculaDensetsu.gb
boy_02_DraculaDensetsu2.gb
boy_us_01_Castlevaniaadv1_fake_rom.gb
boy_us_02_Castlevaniaadv2_fake_rom.gb
famicom_01_AkumajouDracula.nes
famicom_03_AkumajouDensetsu.nes
famicom_04_BokuDraculakun.nes
kid-dracula.nes
nes_01_Castlevania.nes
nes_02_Castlevania2.nes
nes_02_Castlevania3.nes
sega_jp_VampireKiller.bin
sega_us_CastlevaniaBloodlines.bin
snes_01_supercastlevania4_fake_rom.smc
sufami_01_AkumajouDracula.smc
They’ve been altered to remove mention of Nintendo from the opening screens. Maybe that’s why some got the “fake_rom” label?
Supposedly these are like early revision ROMs or something and maybe prone to crashing semi-randomly? I dunno, hasn’t crashed yet, if it does I guess I’ll just load the last Mesen autosave and try to keep going. : P
I first bought the Anniversary Collection on PS4, but even though M2’s logo is shown at startup and they usually do pretty solid emulation work, the available screen sizes and aspect ratios are kinda messed up (no full-height sharp display option, and I think their “pixel perfect” and “4:3” options are swapped around sometimes or something? I dunno, anyway it’s not good; there’s also some annoying color shimmer or something going on). And only one save slot.
Trying to sort out the screen settings from that, Googling accidentally led me to the mention of extracting the ROMs from the Steam version, so I just did that instead, woo! And I got farther faster so far, but maybe that was just me having had more practice.
When I tried this game as a kid it seemed hard, and stiff compared to I dunno probably Mario or whatever it was I was playing. As a young working adult I was buying PS1 and GBA Castlevanias (and eventually the PC Engine Castlevania, Rondo) but not really playing them. I had too many games. : P
Well, I seem to be enjoying this game so hopefully I can get through these early ones–the ones from the Anniversary Collection–and have a good time with them. I still have Castlevania Chronicles for PS1, with its two remixes of Castlevania 1, so maybe I’ll give that a shot if I still want more after the Collection. Then there’s ANOTHER remix of one, Arcade Archives VS. Castlevania on PS4, so I could try that too if I’m not sick of it yet by then. ^ _^ (It’s even harder, I think I read.)
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Konami demanded they make properitary emulators and frontends just for the Konami products and that none of it be used elsewhere.
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They should’a turned it down or done a better job.
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i got an xbox series controller bc i dont have an xbox controller for pc games and i really enjoy this controller
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I really loved that iteration of the controller, especially the grooves/anti-slip bumps on the back and the clicky dpad, my only issue with it has been a gradually more sticky a button and not being coordinated enough to take it apart and clean it
1 Like
I still have Castlevania Chronicles for PS1, with its two remixes of Castlevania 1, so maybe I’ll give that a shot if I still want more after the Collection.
I was forever drawn to this release but the sheer cheapness of its design becomes apparent after the 2nd level (or so) where it leans very hard into taxing your health just to climb a staircase, which is made worse by the successive damage increase as the game goes on
Also has the most ridiculously proactive skeletons of any Castlevania that it almost becomes funny
3 Likes
that ol frogwares charm…only they would end their gruesome as fuck cthulhu game (sherlock holmes the awakened) w cultist suicide jumpers pitching themselves off a lighthouse with some scooby doo shit
i loved this game even tho i forgot to finish it for 2 years because of the amazing voice acting and stilted animations. its so charming
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The new Advance Wars 1+2 remake on the Switch looks really neat
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i’m continuing my saga of playing PS1 games i intended to for a very long time by finally playing thru Castlevania: Symphony of the Night after what feels like a whole lifetime of hearing people talk about it.
ever since i was a kid i remember contemporary gaming magazines being like “OMG a 2D game on the PS1?? people might not buy this!!” and also “this is what Castlevania should be, not that N64 Castlevania shit” and it appeared that everyone agreed (tho i like what i’ve seen of the N64 Castlevanias). because as a teen it felt like they released about 10 different Castlevania games in this style for the Gameboy Advance. i actually played Harmony of Dissonance at some point partly due to the cool OST, though never finished it.
i actually have a disc copy of SOTN i bought on here from @meauxdal awhile ago, but i think my PS2 has issues with reading the game because the audio is a little weird. i’ve read that that’s an issue for other people, so i might just have to test it on a PS1. but it’s easier for me to play this kind of stuff on emulator regardless.
anyway, my main goal of this playthrough is to get the inverted castle. one of the few things i know about this game is people can’t stop talking about the freaking inverted castle. i remember a friend in college being like “dude you gotta get the inverted castle in Symphony of the Night” or something like that. normies even talked about it. it’s weird to think how little has that level of cultural saturation at this point.
it’s also weird to reflect on a game that everyone has copied since and remember it was one of the first of its kind, or at least the first Castlevania game to be like this. like i played Hollow Knight before i played this. for several years people were hoping and praying for other games like this, which is so funny to me now. now we can’t stop getting fuckin’ games like this and i hate it.
and there are little things i’m surprised by, like the fact that it actually takes pretty long to get the double jump in the game. contemporary Metroidvanias usually give that one to you right away. or just the complete proliferation of items - so many items, so many relics, some of which are essential and some of which just seem to be kind of cool to have. a lot of places where i backtracked to areas only to find them giving me sword or armor that i already had a better version of, making them useless. also you can’t sell anything but the gems you pick up. which just adds to this game feeling a little distinct and non-standard in a genre that has been so codified.
favorite rooms are the confessional room in the chapel area where either you get this evil woman who closes the curtains and tries to stab you:
or you just get a woman who cries into her handkerchief indefinitely until you get up from the chair
there’s also a priest if you sit on the chair on the other side, and he can also be either good or evil. it appears to be random every time you enter the room.
i also like this torture room where i picked up the “Blood Cloak”
little things like these have added a lot to the fiction of the game in ways i appreciate.
tbh, especially because this game has been copied to death, most of the appeal of this for me has been all the small details. some of the enemy design in this game is just really funny. my favorite enemy so far is the “Hunting Girl” which is an invisible anime girl who tries to stab you with a sword. other places there will be these huge giant enemies that you can easily kill and show up nowhere else in the game. it’s just all so over the top. this game has no chill. which is cool compared to the hyper-minimalism of so many indie Metroidvanias. you can definitely tell how refined skill-wise the pixel artists at Konami were by that point. contemporary pixel art generally just doesn’t compare.
this also has this classic 90’s crypicness that Silent Hill 1 had, and seems to be coming back into style a little bit now? like you can easily miss something and end up on the Bad Ending. the stairs to the boss are just there and you can go any time you have the bat, which i already knew to skip. i don’t think there’s any way i would have known to do that if i didn’t already know about it being the bad ending, though.
generally direction-wise i’ve been okay, though there were a couple points i had to look up a walkthrough because i don’t think i’d figure them out. one is the clock room where you just have to sit there to wait for it to open up a passageway. this is just to get the regular ending, mind you. (i forgot to screenshot so just took this from elsewhere):
the other is a point where you’re underground and you have to slowly guide a skeleton carrying an explosive barrel over to blow up a bridge. that one was on me, i guess, because the game does give you a hint about that… i just didn’t expect that you would need to do this. this game does have puzzles, which surprised me… but not enough to where you regularly get used to doing them.
anyway going down the path for inverted castle and ignoring Richter for the bad ending means you have other weird boss encounters. like this random Succubus boss that i won’t spoil much about. this all has very BDSM Guy energy.
darkling! i smell you’re blood!!
but yeah, still on the path to get the inverted castle. will give my final thoughts once i finish the game. but like i said, the main thing i’ve enjoyed is the details, like the enemy design, and the fact that this game has no chill and really revels in being as over the top as possible in a lot of ways.
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yeah imo that lack of chill and over-the-topness is 100% what’s missing from most games that copied this. or at the very least, it’s what makes SotN worth playing in 2023. it’s such a bizarre game!
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This one opens every other minute, so there’s an actually very high chance you’ll see the statue move during the conversation with Maria. It’s got a couple other failsafes, like when you get the super jump or bat you’ll likely come back to that room (since you can see the upper exit on the map), and one screen up you’ll see the side exits from the statue passages (and they’ll similarly go on your map), plus the whole surrounding area is begging you to make the clock+stopwatch connection, at which point you’ll understand the statues can move, plus the fact there’s that unique musicless room with a ticking clock, heavily telegraphing that the clock ticking does something.
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My issue with SOTN style Search-actions is that they are too calculated, the mess and clutter of the over grown castle full of secrets makes the search part of search action most joyful. It seems like something you can just cut out but I dont think thats true.
New players and old take heed!
Many SOTN weapons have secondary attacks if you press back+forward or down+forward before your attack. I did not know this until my most recent playthrough.
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I love Square-enix’s non AAA output right now, I’ve played Paranormasight which is this microbudget, no-cruft, occult horror, dutch angle fest, flowchartcore VN with a flawless style.
Very Nonary game adjacent, with the fanservice cringe + puzzles rooms absent, and math game theory being replaced by ancient japanese curse game theory
Fourth wall breaking narrator asked me « so how many people did you kill at this point from 0 to 5 » and I counted them all and it was five. I answered this, expecting the real answer to be 0 or 4. It was three !?
He also got me to avoid a voice related death curse by hinting at setting the voice level to 0 in the sound settings menu
NGL I can’t get enough of this
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SotN is the only game I can remember actually finishing in recent memory! All the weird, beautiful shit everywhere! The zillion pointless items with unique sprites!
Didn’t feel like it was winking at me the whole time which is something that really annoys me about a lot of throwback style games that have come out since the first indie boom
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