Slashdot Mirror
The Fundamentals of Gaming
IGN has two great features up this week, looking back at two amazing gaming franchises. Their piece on the evolution of Final Fantasy takes in the changes and twists the iconic JRPG series has had over the years, while Castlevania: The Retrospective looks back on the last 20 years of vampire-hunting goodness. From the Castlevania piece: "Though Castlevania wasn't one of the original 18 launch titles for the NES, it was part of the unofficial second wave of games, and an integral part of the Nintendo Entertainment System's premiere years. From that point on, each Castlevania title (though still primarily a stand-alone adventure) was subsequently added into the overarching timeline, and while not every piece of the puzzle clicks from game to game, it remains to be one of the most prominent classic franchises still recognized today for its outstanding gameplay.
"
I run a gaming website and have to declare a conflict of interest as IGN is an advertiser. However IGN.com gets about a million visitors a day, so what they write tends to be believed and get a larger circulation than most sites.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Amen. Both Castlevania (aka Vampire Killer) and Metal Gear series started on MSX2 way back... before NES was even launched.
NES versions of those first titles were (poorly done) ports, but apparently they sold a truckload because the fundamentals of gameplay were good enough even if the graphics and content was gutted due to NES limitations.
That's not true. The original Castlevania was released for the Famicom Disk System (FDS), the Japan-only floppy disk add-on for the NES, in September 1986. The MSX2 version was released one month later. While the MSX version was released in Europe significantly before the NES/FDS version, the latter was developed first.
Konami had to port the FDS version to cartridge for the North American and European release, but it was for all intents and purposes a direct port: the only benefit the FDS had over the normal NES deck was an improved sound chip, and I'm not even sure that the original Castlevania made use of it. There were a lot of FDS-to-NES ports made in order to facilitate international release: Metroid, Doki Doki Panic (a.k.a. Super Mario Bros. 2), Kid Icarus, and The Legend of Zelda are probably the most notable. All were subsequently rereleased in Japan as cartridges, although often not for many years (Castlevania wasn't released as a cartridge in Japan until 1993 or so).
There's more information at Wikipedia's Castlevania article.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."