What the fuck is this: Castlevania SOTN is now going for like $70?!!

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/23/new-castlevania-coming-to-mobile-phones-in-september/

Castlevania: Order of Shadows

features a new storyline and original soundtrack

http://www.djork.net/castlevania/

Castlevania name-generator!

Castlevania: Bus Ride of Burnt Toast

Playing C:Order of Shadows. It's a lot like the NES versions, due to the limited controls. You still have stats & an inventory, tho.

Two new games on the way, another DS title and a 3d fighter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Order_of_Ecclesia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania_Judgment

Apparently, the Portrait of Ruin team is again working on this. Too bad I sold the DS a year, but we'll see.

I kinda burned out on these games when I picked up that GBA double pack with Harmony/Aria, though they were both fun. Both pretty good, though Aria was way better (damn you addictive soul collect-a-thon!) in general.

Not sure if I should still bother to get the two DS games, or just wait until Order comes out.... what say you?

Got an emulator for the original PC Engine "Rondo of Blood". Yeah, it's the best Castlevania game ever.

http://castlevaniadungeon.net/Images/Intros/rondoa.gif

I really like the anime feel on this one. The controls are perfect and the game music is amazing. Stage 2 is like being in the "Thriller" music video.

This game is a work of art, Roget Ebert can suck it.

I need to get these drum samples.

Playing "Castlevania: Bloodlines" for Genesis now. Amazing soundtrack as always, cool as hell bad guys, nice weapons, etc. Buying a Castlevania game is like buying a Beatles record.

Bloodlines was awesome, underlooked probably because it wasn't a main series title. Definitely preferred it to IV though, and a good stepping stone to the Rondo/Symphony series.

it's not a lot like buying a beatles record

I never had a Genesis so I never got a chance to play Bloodlines.

Do what I did, emulate it long after the fact

Just remember that at the end of game, it IS supposed to be like that ;)

Yeah im emulating a Genesis, playing games i never got to play. Also had a friend try out Splatterhouse 3 last night, which was also pretty damn cool.

I meant it's like buying a Beatles because i like the Beatles and i remember buying my first Beatles record and liking it and every record after that, I didn't know what new stuff would be added, or how orchestration or production had changed, but I always knew i would enjoy it from beginning to end.

Maybe i'm missing out on the crappy Castlevania entries. Never played 2 much.

lately i've been regretting giving my GBA SP away (years ago), mostly so i could play Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow again.

http://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/retro/user_screenshots/saves8/81983/Castlevania%20%20Bloodlines_Jun23%209_14_13.png
OK so i beat it last night, on Easy, but using Quick Saves to rather cheap effect a few times. Like any old game this is HARD. Final boss was pretty awesome, if seemingly never-ending at the time. First the Grim Reaper deals out tarot cards and you have to knock through each one. Some of them are re-fighting old bosses, some of them give you food, some of them just shoot fireballs at you. Then the green haired evil witch from the opening cinematic splits into 5 different duplicates and then summons a bunch of floating spheres that all align in a pentagram. You have to hit her before they all combine or else dodge a lightning strike, or wheel of fire that looks like a dragon, or circle of knives flying at you, etc. That part was pretty cool and I just figured it out on my own.

She also changes into a green half-man half-worm demon and then finally the above grotesque monster with a horrible face for a crotch that spits out streams of fire. The end of the game was extremely anti-climatic, at least it was for me, with simply a cool-looking full-screen loop of your character watching the castle crumble into dust in the distance, hair waving in the wind, standing on top of a mountain or something over endlessly swirling clouds or water or who the hell knows but it looks cool. It was fine w me tho because the game seemed to really go on and on for a LONG time.

It never slowed down, and while yeah there were only 2 or 3 bad guys on the screen at once, it usually felt like more. Plenty of really cool graphic tricks in this, neat water reflections, cool rotating floors and things that deliver a real 3d illusion. At one point *** SPOILER *** you enter a room where the screen is split into 4 parts and each part is horizontally offset in some effed up way, as if you are playing the game through a funhouse mirror or something. It's the most mind-blowing part of the game. At least until a stage or two later when you revisit it, only the distorted view is gone and THE ENTIRE STAGE IS UPSIDE DOWN. Thank God there are no enemies in these parts.

I almost feel like this was better than the Super NES one, it seems to control a little easier (even on an GENS) and the graphics are just jaw-dropping! There's the Genesis version of Contra waiting for me but something tells me it can't possibly be this good.

No doubt it was better than Super IV IMO. i don't remember Hard Corps being at the same level, but still pretty good? Alien Wars on SNES was more to live up to

The end of the game was extremely anti-climatic, at least it was for me, with simply a cool-looking full-screen loop of your character watching the castle crumble into dust in the distance, hair waving in the wind, standing on top of a mountain or something over endlessly swirling clouds or water or who the hell knows but it looks cool.

Hah maybe i've blocked them all out cos getting to the ending is always such a treat!

IV, Bloodlines/New Generation, and Rondo of Blood/Dracula X - those are the only 16-bit Castlevanias, right? Or are there more?

I purchased the Dracula X disc for psp just to get SOTN as a playable game

THE ENTIRE STAGE IS UPSIDE DOWN. Thank God there are no enemies in these parts.

I mis-remembered this. There are enemies during this part. This game is hard! And so good! I've played it through 3 times now.

i found my long, long-neglected DS and started playing through Aria of Sorrow again. this game is perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahSabf2-0s

Hah I've been playing through "Rondo" again, trying to find all the secrets and rescue all the anime damsels. Level 6 is just an incredible presentation. An evil necromancer stands in front of magical symbols and conjures a bunch of bosses from the first Castlevania game: the giant bat, the Medusa, the Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster, etc. and you have to fight them all with a single health bar while a blazing hot evil organ arpeggio runs up and down the scales.

awesome.

Um I've been playing Symphony of the Night. It's really sad that they didn't make another 2D console Castlevania after this one, it really is the peak of the form. I love the use of 3D, which is usually deployed to render doors or other box-shaped objects (flying novels! secret-entrance-concealing bookshelves!) but last night I ended up underground in some vast cavern system where the 3D started being used to render molten lava bubbling up from the earth.

This game looks fantastic, and my only criticism is that back-tracking, eventually I start going through the same areas I've been through dozens of times, which gets tiring. But this is a convention of the genre (and one that usually turns me off to Metroid & Super Metroid after I sink a half dozen hours into it) and when you DO reach a new area, it is that much more special.

Again, it's a travesty that this is was the last 2D console Castlevania. Imagine what they could've done on the N64! Imagine an HD Castlevania for PS2! I'm sure plenty have. I've just completed the first castle and intend on getting the best ending (I've gotten the inverted castle before but never stuck w it). The RPG elements in this are brilliantly seamless, and the fact that you can switch capes or equip a new weapon and the in-game sprite actually changes appearance to reflect this is wonderful! I would say this is the number one Castlevania (and objectively for western players it is, since Rondo didn't get an original release here) but the backtracking is just not my cup of tea. So personally I still think Rondo is the best, seconded by this, with Bloodlines a very very close third. But ask me tomorrow and I may think Bloodlines is the best (it has the best music and level design imo).

SNES version is just too muddy for me, both video and audio. It's like a Castlevania talking through a pillow. SOTN and Rondo both have this romantic, baroque, Rococo aesthetic to them, something that takes monster movies as a jumping off point to explore a heavily stylized compendium of historical European fantasy.

http://fantasyanime.com/valhalla/castlevaniasotn/screenshots/large/15-AbandonedMine06.png

Also, Salem Witches in the Abandoned Mines. So cool!

Kind of kicking myself because I'm playing the PSX version and apparently the Saturn one has a playable Maria and a few extra areas. On the other hand, here's an excuse to play this game all over again!

Great game! Loved/hated scouring the entire castle for weird zircons and stuff. Loved Legion, what a boss. Loved the floating clock-sword. Don't remember the final boss.

Super Castlevania IV is really great though, my second favourite in the series, best graphics of all the first-wave of SNES games and one of my favourite soundtracks. Love the intro to this cue, damn hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtEn0f5CWQo

SOTN: there's one or two weird boards in the colosseum where the difficulty is suddenly through the roof, memories of sailing through the game to come crashing to a halt, reloading reloading etc.

I can't think about this game without thinking of when it first came out and I was playing it, with a friend looking on who only played TBS games and held side-scrollers in great contempt. He was complaining for about 10 minutes at how stupid the logic of video games is, and how he couldn't understand how I could put up with it, etc. etc. I told him to shut up. After a couple of minutes in silence while I was going through one of those underground cavern areas, he said in this loud and indignant voice:

"THAT FROG HAD TWENTY DOLLARS."

Love those underground caverns, especially the sound design as you get closer to the waterfall.

adam, i love your retro revives. have you played the GBA ones, like Aria of Sorrow/Dawn of Sorrow? because those are brilliant 16-bit-style sequels.

Thanks... No I have not played them! I am super looking forward to them!

they're dope man. do 'em all

they're not very good!!

i mean i played ecclesia and the portrait one and the sci fi one, one of them. something about the level design in them all was just. Did You Like That Burger? Have Another Burger. Have Two More Burgers. Here Are Some More Burgers For You.

lol. i thought aria/dawn had good level design, but are mostly great because of the 'soul' system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Aria_of_Sorrow#Tactical_Soul

lol thomp

I like the painting one, some good boss fights in it

Aria of Sorrow was great. Haven't tried the other GBA ones, but would be willing to after playing that one.

I mean sotn is a really broken feeling game mechanically -- taking away the whip but keeping inertia and acceleration at castelvania-standard levels makes everything feel really somehow off. then there's like a fighting game move set and rpg stats and then the three transformations, none of which three play very well. but i think the really broken collection of ~ludic possibilities~ really works against the sort of cosy horror aesthetic, the sense of entrenchment the player feels in the world. and all the fragments of castle really neatly incorporate distinct, er, forms of spatial awareness.

compare and contrast super metroid: you have like 2% of alucards total moveset but everything feels more tightly constructed around it. -- everything expands the map for you.

i want to claim that the small format games try and improve on sotn without noticing it works because broken. the soul system, hm, I think I spent 25 mins killing the one enemy type to get through a particular door, so fuck that, frankly

I played a little Aria of Sorrow last night and WOW YES MOAR PLZ! Somehow I completely slept on the Gameboy Advance and now it feels like I missed out on SNES 2.0. Aria is pretty amazing, though I have no idea how to use the soul system yet.

Konami is easily my favorite game company of all time.

yup, GBA was fuckin' boss