The strangest thing about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is how it’s over a decade and a half old and I’m not sick of it. I don’t just mean it’s old but I still like it: I mean I still play it regularly. I don’t think I ever really stopped. I can hardly remember when I didn’t play it. I have no idea how many times I’ve finished it.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the best games ever made, and the very pinnacle of the 2D pixellated era. The textures, the animations, the level backgrounds, the monster design – it’s the best that era had to offer, and as far I’m concerned, it’s never been topped. While I understand some consider Super Metroid to be the better of the two, I strongly believe Symphony of the Night is the better of the two.
Luck would have it, then, that its creator, Koji Igarashi, just managed to get its spiritual successor funded via a Kickstarter campaign. Big name studios were not interested in helping him build it, so he decided to do it on his own. Castlevania composer Michiru Yamane is also on the team, as is the studio behind several Mega Man games, as well as several other big names.
We’re living in a great era for gaming right now. Thanks to crowdfunding, we’re already in the middle of a great renaissance for the classic isometric RPGs, with brand new, successful titles such as Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original Sin, and many others rekindling the glory of games like Baldur’s Gate and Planescape Torment, and many other genres no longer deemed interesting by the big players are now seeing new games thanks to crowdfunding. I can’t stress how thrilled I am that the man behind Symphony of the Night will finally be able to make the successor he always wanted, but that the big names wouldn’t let him.
Personally, I think the older Castlevania games (except 2) are all better than SOTN. Primarily because you actually needed skill to finish them. I can still remember the grim reaper in Castlevania 1 kicking my ass again and again
SOTN (and I assume all the shitty MetroidVania games that came after it) simply required you to level-up/grind enough and you could walk right through it. This is essentially the same problem that most RPGs have, and why I don’t like them. Having been a huge fan of the old-school Castlevania, I was hoping this new game would be a return to form. Sadly though, it isn’t.
Edited 2015-05-12 22:18 UTC
While I agree that it’s one of the easier CV games, the difficulty is not what makes the game so special. For me, more than anything it’s the music, animation, and sounds, along with the RPG-style leveling and equipment upgrades in a 2D sidescroller, and the non-linear exploration that is possible. I don’t think that specific combination has ever been topped (though Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow come close), and I’m happy to see a spiritual successor coming out.
My love for this game is so great that recently I bought a JXD 7800B “emulation tablet” specifically because it’s known to fully support SOTN. And I can confirm that it plays the .bin file I copied from my SOTN CD perfectly.
How is your experience with that tablet, Morgan? It looks crazy awesome and useful!
I’ve had it for a week, and so far it’s been surprisingly great for what I paid ($150 USD on Amazon).
As I said, I bought it for a few specific games, foremost being SOTN. I had considered the smaller S5110 model, but I was worried it wouldn’t be able to emulate 32-bit and up systems as well as the larger unit, and the price difference was just over $50.
The unit was packaged like most cheap Chinese tablets: Useless earbuds, a cheap feeling USB cable, and minimal attention to the “out of the box” experience. I was pleasantly surprised to see a USB-OTG cable in the box; according to the manufacturer it supports USB flash drives, gamepads, and some 3G wireless adapters. The unit also has a mini-HDMI port, but it didn’t ship with a mini-HDMI cable. I was a bit disappointed to see that it uses a barrel type plug for charging instead of the micro USB port; the included A/C adapter has a very short cable which makes charging while playing nearly impossible. If I can’t find a barrel plug extension that fits it, once my warranty has expired I’ll splice a few feet of wire onto it. It officially supports up to 32GB micro SD cards, though there are reports that some 64GB cards work as well. I had no problems with my 32GB Sandisk card.
The buttons are decent, obviously not the same quality as an Xbox or Playstation controller, but comparable to a good third-party controller. The analog sticks are positioned well and have good response and range. One thing I miss (mostly for N64 and Dreamcast) is analog triggers; it has standard shoulder buttons but some games require analog triggers for full functionality. That said, you can map the right analog stick to what would be the trigger buttons and that seems to work fairly well, it just doesn’t quite feel right. Overall, the build quality is in line with or slightly better than the price. The screen is pretty good, with accurate colors and consistent brightness, though it could stand to have less of a gap between the LCD and the touch panel. The battery is not too bad; expect to get about four to five hours of 32-bit emulation at medium brightness. Sure, you can pay just a bit more for a much nicer second generation Nexus 7, but you’re not really buying this device to be a tablet first, and to me that makes it worth the price and then some.
The unit comes with Android KitKat 4.4.4, and is already rooted (I assume for full emulation and controller support). It comes with an app called “Game Center”, and once updated the app’s name changes to “Happy Chick”. This app is a sort of emulator launcher, along with an app store for likely illicit free downloads of popular ROMs and Android games. It comes with pretty much every major console emulator pre-installed, and it will download and install for you the ones that aren’t preloaded the first time you attempt to lauch a ROM or BIN for that system. I already had a BIN file of my SOTN disc on the computer, so it was trivial to copy it to the SD card and launch it in the game center app. It downloaded and installed the Android version of ePSXe, and I was pleased to find the button configuration was correctly set up from the start.
PSX emulation is nearly perfect, with only a little audio lag in some games (including SOTN), but it’s not enough to impact gameplay. I actually have the same issue with ePSXe on my gaming PC, so it’s likely an issue with that particular emulator and not the tablet. Basically, emulation of every console from the N64 and PSX down to the old 8-bit consoles is nearly flawless. The Dreamcast emulation is hit-or-miss; Rayman 2 seems 100% perfect or nearly so, while Sword of the Berserk and Soul Calibur have rendering and speed issues. Speaking of Rayman 2, seeing it emulated on DC and PSX on the same hardware really brings out the low quality of the PSX port; playing it on the DC emulator is crisp, beautiful, and fluid, whereas the PSX version is absolutely ugly. The Nintendo DS emulation is also not quite there, but that’s more about the state of DS emulation in general than anything specific to the tablet. Overall, I’d say I’m thrilled with its performance as an emulation machine.
Android gaming is interesting on this device, because it comes with a button mapping app that lets you customize it for each game’s onscreen controls. I’ve never been a fan of console ports to Android because the idea of using ghostly onscreen buttons is counterintuitive. There’s simply not enough physical feedback for my taste. This tablet remedies that issue by letting you drag overlay buttons representing the physical controls to the appropriate onscreen positions. I tried this with the Android port of Soul Calibur and it works very well. The downside to this approach is that not every Android game lets you hide the onscreen controls, and some may find that distracting, but it definitely makes those games more playable.
I definitely recommend this device to anyone seeking an Android-based portable emulation machine. It handles every game I have barring a few DC titles, and performs decently with Android native titles as well. I think the best thing about it is the physical controls, and the “not too big, not too small” form factor makes it comfortable to play for hours at a time. The fact that it’s a modern version of Android makes it all the better; for someone like me who only occasionally uses a tablet, it’s a great choice for a convergence device.
This Youtube video showcases several games across all the major consoles, and is a must-see before buying this device:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4THH97uR-cg
Could’ve paid just a bit more and got yourself a Shield portable
A friend of mine had the PSP version of Castlevania running on it, which has SOTN and Rondo of Blood. Might run on your tablet too… not sure.
I had actually looked for one of those, but Nvidia has been out of stock for a while, and the price on eBay and Amazon even for used units was grossly inflated ($500 for a new one on Amazon as I write this[1]).
I don’t have the PSP version of SOTN, so I wouldn’t play it on an emulator anyway. I won’t put a ROM or disc image on there that I don’t have a physical copy of. Besides, I think the PSP emulator is not even close to playable yet, at least on my tablet.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00E3667XQ/ref=dp_olp_new?ie…
Here is some PSP stuff running on the Shield portable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntrb9gcXg1g
Sucks you couldn’t find one. They’re pretty awesome
You kids don’t know nothing.
Turrican 2 on the Amiga is the best 2D game ever PERIOD
Pfft. Super Mario World for the SNES is the best.
I am with you 101% on this one. This is nothing but great news as I am happy to see 2D gaming pick up where it unswervingly left off so many years ago.
This, with the news of a new cartridge based gaming system has most certainly peeked my interest as well as my faith!
We are flooded with movies, musics and games with very detailed effects but with really poor development. They lack purport and depth. We have some fun with “fast and direct”, but this vanishes as times marches on. By myself, I have no patience to “modern” action movies, current crop of music “stars” and latest games.
Currently I can watch good old and new movies, even though they are not on wide “exhibition” and are very outnumbered (was always this way, anyway), same about music. Hope the initiatives of the “old school game members” will fix the situation for games too.
I’m guilty of joining the various crowdfunding for a few games myself, like the Ultima Underworld one, and Satellite Reign (Syndicate successor).
I don’t get to game much, but I have tons of games, I even fire up my Ol’ Amiga and play Cannon Fodder on it from time to time.
But I’ll admit, the only Castlevania game I ever played was the original. At least for more than 2 minutes.
Downloaded it on the PS Vita. Played great!
In regards to old Castlevania being harder, and new Castlevania being about grinding and powering up till you can make it through…
…well that’s not exactly true, even the grinding game take skill, after all you only have patience to sit there and grind for so long, and some of those boss fights are TOUGH, or at least were at the time.
Also, it is very possible to add difficulty to a Castlevania grinder, I.E. Castlevania Order of Ecclesia.
Try it if you have not already, it is the perfect blend of old school Castlevania with the new, and very hard at that!
I’m a huge Castlevania fan, and a huge fan of Igarashi’s work. To those saying that they liked the older level-based pure platforming CV titles better: That’s fine. If you beat SoTN, you get to play through the same castle as a pure skills-based platformer as Richter Belmont. In the Japanese version on the Saturn, you even get to play through as Maria Renard.
There’s no doubt in my mind that SoTN is a masterpiece that really helped define the genre of ‘Metroidvania’. Many have tried to imitate it, but few have mastered it.
Is Castlevania any relation to this place?
http://www.jetlagtravel.com/molvania/
First up, Spectral Interlude is a fan-made Castlevania game for the ZX Spectrum. It is absolutely tight. http://spectralinterlude.com/
What I wanted to say is — can they deliver? Kickstarters have been hit or miss. DoubleFine’s Broken Age is not the classic adventure game fans wanted. Inventor of the genre Ron Gilbert left DoubleFine to Kickstart an actual classic adventure game with the look and feel of Maniac Mansion: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thimbleweedpark/thimbleweed-par…
Cyan are doing a new Myst-like: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyaninc/obduction/description
My best experience has been Freedom Planet. They only wanted a few-thousand. They got $25’000 (chump-change compared to the big-hitters) and they made a better Sonic game then Sega have since S3&K. If you liked Sonic1/2/3 then Freedom Planet is an utter joy to play http://freedomplanet.galaxytrail.com/
Awesome, I was not aware of the Spectrum project, very cool!!!
The Shadowgate remake was the first project I backed on Kickstarter, and even though it took twice as long as they said it would, it was worth the wait.
http://www.zojoi.com/shadowgate/
Thanks for the Spectrum link — it looks awesome; reminds of the first Dizzy game. Then again, I had a C64, and only played a few Spectrum games, so it might be that all Spectrum games looked like this.
And while we are on the subject of new games for old computers, the most pleasant surprise to me was Bruce Lee II for the C64: http://kollektivet.nu/brucelee2/.
I wouldn’t say that. There were problems with Broken Age running out of budget, but for me, they delivered exactly what I expected. I don’t know what you mean by “fans”, but I am pretty sure the the majority did not just want another SCUMMVM game with 25 years old graphics — as proven by the difference in the number of backers and the amount of money pledged to Broken Age and Thimbleweed Park (and I supported both).
Edited 2015-05-15 09:09 UTC
Oh man, did SotN change my life or what? I still listen to its soundtrack on a daily basis. I’m listening “The Tragic prince” as I write this.
This is one of the few games that are timeless classics just like Ocarina of Time and Super Mario Bros 3.
Thanks for pointing this out Tom!… I will be getting the $250 pledge.