Tag: Castlevania

Konami Keeps A Promise

So if you’re some of the more anxious fellows who have been awaiting for Konami to upgrade their Anniversary Collections to include foreign versions, your patience has been rewarded with a free update. So now Castlevania fans who have never diverged into importation or the evil art of emulation can now officially play the Japanese Dracula’s Curse that everyone says it better.

For the most part, all games included in the Castlevania collection – with the sole exception of Simon’s Quest – have Japanese versions that you can play. The Akumajo Dracula game (Castlevania JP) included here is the Famicom cartridge version, which doesn’t have the save functionality of the FDS version, but does include an Easy mode which reduces damage and eliminates knockback entirely. Castlevania 3 JP has many differences while Belmont’s Revenge JP swaps the axe for the cross boomerang, which makes me happy. The other versions have minor differences aside from language change and things of that nature.

As for Contra, I haven’t played through all of them. From what I can tell, differences are seemingly superficial… though Contra III and Hard Corps’ JP versions have cheat codes which grants you multiple lives that were removed from the local versions, so that feels nice for those who care. Those who have played these Contra games from top to bottom will probably be better equipped to tell you the differences in greater detail.

In addition to the Japanese versions, the update also includes built-in BUTTON CUSTOMIZATION! So now you don’t have to fiddle with Steam controller settings to get the mapping that works best for you and thank fuck for that. Dealing with that shit is a headache and a half.

So who knows? Another House show might loom in the corner.

DTM House Show – Classicvania And The Evil Art Of Emulation (May 18th, 2019)

There’s no Mega Man Maker run today… instead, we’re sampling the wonderfully barebones Castlevania Anniversary Collection which includes an art book and a translated Kid Dracula. Recorded late night in a vain attempt to fall asleep. Maybe I should’ve played something more boring.

A shorter review of sorts will be posted on Friday.

The Full List Of Eight Games On Anniversary Collection: Castlevania

For curious parties, news broke as it relates to the full game listing of Konami’s upcoming Castlevania collection that is due for release May 16th. The eight games to be included are:

– Castlevania (NES)
– Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
– Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES)
– Super Castlevania IV (SNES)
– Castlevania: The Adventure (GB)
– Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
– Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis)
– Kid Dracula (Famicom)

Purchases are region-specific, so if you buy this in Japan, you get the Japanese releases while non-Japan purchases gain the English versions. So, a fair standard lot of games, with the only real standout being Bloodlines seeing a re-release for the first time in decades as well as the first time non-Japanese audiences (who wouldn’t have resorted to imports or emulation, that is) will experience the Famicom Kid Dracula… although in hindsight, I would’ve preferred the MSX Vampire Killer instead. Still a fairly basic collection for those who never experienced the early games.

For the record, I’ve yet to play Konami’s recent arcade collection, but I might give it a shot somewhere down the line. If nothing else, it should be a good indication as to how the rest of the collections would turn out.

About The Hardtype

Someone over at the House Show stream inquired about that Castlevania HardType ROM hack that I was working on, which is a surprise to learn that somebody remembers that thing. Well, I’d share some news here, but the truth is that I haven’t really touched it all that much; what with the leg and the other stuff. But I’m hoping to change that soon.

I did get around to giving another quick playthrough and perhaps the time away benefitted in making a couple “key” changes to the enemy placement. Sometimes, overloading a stage with enemies isn’t such a smart idea and makes the game more frustrating than fun. So I ended up toning it down a bit for a couple segments. Make no mistake; this is going to be a challenging romp one way or another, but it won’t be balls to the wall, jump off a pier difficult.

In any event, I’d imagine a couple more spits and polishes before I deem it ready for some semblance of distribution. I’d imagine it goes up in October and I end up posting on Zophar, though I wouldn’t mind making an attempt to submit this to that other Romhacking site.

We’ll see on that camp.

EGM #100’s Top 100 Games Of All Time – An Extended Lookback

November 1997 saw esteemed video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly release their one hundredth issue. And to celebrate the occasion, they concocted a Top 100 list comprising their favorite games and calling them “the best of all time.” But are they really that?

A bit of context is needed; this list was put back in 1997. That’s almost two decades ago and many other games have come along that deserve to lay claim to “the best of all time.” However, I was around in 1997. I know games back in 1997 and I still have some notes about whether I feel this list held water. This is more of a fun lookback than any “critical” observation. Who knows? I might pull out that 200th issue of EGM one of these days and do a similar feature with their 200 greatest games list, which deviates quite a bit from this particular list.

Originally, I had this broken apart into four parts. Those parts are assembled into one longform post. In addition, I’ve updated a couple thoughts here and there.

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