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Castlevania Retrospective, Xbox Live Bound
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!."
What be this 2D gaming you speak of? *Walks down the game aisle seeing this rare beast*
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
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 for more info.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
FTFA, Super C on XBL scoreboards will be a very good thing.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Anybody has a CD of the game lying around. How many megs is it? I mean, I read the other day that Microsoft didn't want XBLA titles to be bigger than 50 megs so they could fir on 64megs memory cards. Is the game really that small? No FMVs or anything?
ALso, anyone downloaded the SFII game of XBLA. Did you notice the size. 50 MEGS!!!! Talk about a bloated piece of code! How did it get so huge? I mean, I remember the SNES version being a 4 MEGS cartridge.
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.
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 thought is going to cause?
Goo goo g'joob.
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 stuck in my head for something like 17 years now. Sadly, the GB series get overlooked in TFA.
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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.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
Doubt that. The Wii's download system is based on SD memory cards. That'd be an awful lot of memory card space (although, memory cards are getting dirt cheap these days)
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
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.
Ähum, isn't it 512MB built in flash memory + sd-card slot + usb? 4GB SD is around $100 isn't it?
call me when we get a release of Dracula X. Seriously, what's taking so long? Maybe with the Wii...
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XBLA is limited to 50 MB per game as decreed by Microsoft (because the memory card is only 64MB). If it can fit into 50MB it can fit on an SD card or the 512MB of internal non-volatile memory the Wii has.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
Nintendo Wii will allow use of USB mass storage devices as well. http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/29/commentary/game_ov er/column_gaming/:
'The Revolution has 512 MB of flash memory, allowing for some initial storage space. The system also has a slot for SD memory cards, which are widely used in digital cameras and can hold a greater amount of data. Most importantly, Iwata mentioned, were the USB ports that are built into the Revolution "so practically any storage method can be used".'
Therefore you could buy an external hard disk, use a flash drive, hell I'm gonna use my iPod. The only possible thing that might hinder use of say an iPod is disk format. If Wii does not support the filesystem your iPod is formatted in, you're SOL in that dept.
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.
What a piss poor attempt at trolling. It lacks subtly. Better luck next time.
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 quite a few sections. For instance, all the transparencies were converted into dithers. Also, extra loading times, as it didn't take advantage of any RAM Carts.
The Saturn one is still the superior version of the game however because of the running boots and the wing smash improvement.
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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 emulator, likely this will change)
STA files (FMV for intro, ending, and logos) - 46.2MB (remember, these are already compressed)
SD/XA (audio spooled from disc during gameplay) - 391MB (this could be compressed much more)
There you go, let's assume that the compressed down to ~50MB using 64kbps WMA (ulp!) and the FMV was thrown out or at completely redone using simple 3D. One could assume that the resulting total could be kept under 100MB which is pretty manageable. Sorry that this post contains so many assumptions.
I would much rather see the prequel to SotN converted (Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo) as not only would that be much smaller (28MB data exlcuding audio IIRC) but less people have had a chance to play it.
They have standard usb connectors too. nothing forbids them of using external hard drives :)
"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.
Ah, and let me guess, when Nintendo does it on the Wii it "totally different!"
The controller is fine on other 2D Xbox Live games, and I don't understand the developer support comment at all. Konami releasing the most popular Castlevania game as a download is somehow bad?
The 360's support in America is just dandy, and while in Japan it's shiat, who cares. I'm an American, this is an American console, with games targeted at Americans. I don't go around yelling at Japanese people for playing Hentai games.
And several people I know personally are quite excited to have this game available, and that's just my circle of friends, so in the big picture you are quite wrong, plent of people are happy for this.
But I guess I expect to much from an AC troll.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Rewritten for Mario 3 to show the stupidity:
A 2 decade old NES game is getting a port to the Wii.
A game that 100 million NES people can and have been playing for the past 2 decades.
A game that 100 million SNES people can and have been playing for the past ten years.
A game that anyone with a GBA can play.
A game that anyone with a NES emulator for your computer can play easily.
IS GETTING A Wii PORT!!!
How would this be different?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
That was dumb.
I think the excitement is that the game can be somewhat difficult to find and this will make it so that anyone with an Xbox 360 can have it almost instantly. Maybe your typical 15 year old 360 gamer has never played SotN, which came out when he was 6. He might see this in the Arcade Marketplace and go "Huh, this looks pretty good, I'll give it a shot."
Old games on new platforms simply creates more options for the end user. I fail to recognize how this is a bad thing.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
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 don't use it! I'm sure there are a lot of people who are excited about the game, and *want* to be able to use that awesome combo.
-- jchenx