FGC #87 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- System: Playstation to start, but then it wound up on PSP (by way of another game), Vita, and Playstation 3/Xbox 360. There was also a Saturn version that does not in any way count. Interestingly, this means the Vita has two different versions (PSX/PSP) on one system.
- Number of Players: Wouldn’t it be cool if a second controller could steer your familiars around? That wouldn’t be game breaking, would it? Bah, until that glorious day, just one player.
- Port o’ Call: The Playstation version is the base, and that’s what’s been ported to future systems. The Saturn version features a playable (and fightable) Maria, and two new areas that add
absolutely nothing to the game, but seemed like the coolest places in the universe back when importing was impossible(ly expensive). The PSP version, itself an unlockable in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, has a playable/fightable Maria, but she has totally different moves from her Saturn incarnation. And, of course, the Saturn areas have returned to the graveyard. Given the PSP game is on the PSP, that makes it kind of hard to choose a definitive version. Like, I like Maria and all, but I like proper proportions better. - Favorite Castle Denizen: Beelzebub drives me nuts. Dracula just decided to have a hanging, giant corpse in his upside-down castle? Why is he there? Do the flies know what they’re doing? Does Beelzebub summon them deliberately? How long can he operate without a head? So many questions for a boss that most people just randomly stumble into (and are then poisoned to death immediately).
- Sword Problems: Has anyone ever gotten the Sword Familiar (or any familiar) up to Level 50 without dedicated grinding? I equip that dude the minute I find him, and he’s still barely level 20 by the time castles are falling.
- Stumble into Success: From Iga’s own mouth, the claim has always been that Symphony of the Night was an attempt to ape The Legend of Zelda more than Super Metroid. Honestly, this makes sense for a lot of reasons, chief among them would be a Japanese developer copying Metroid over Zelda would be like a Western developer copying Dragon Quest over Final Fantasy. And, yes, there’s a lot of shared DNA between Alucard acquiring new movement “spells” and Link gaining new movement “items”. Does this mean the “Metroidvania” genre was created almost by accident, and each subsequent “Igavania” was an attempt to mimic a genre that wasn’t understood in the first place? Only the Librarian knows for sure…
Did you know? At over 50 MB, Symphony of the Night was once one of the largest games on the Xbox 360 Arcade service. I just downloaded a 7600 MB game the other day… and I got it for free!- Would I play again: Yes. A thousand times yes. Big gigantic yes. One of the most firm yes’s that has ever been on the site. That’s a yes, if you’re not paying attention.
What’s Next? Random ROB has chosen… Skullgirls! Guess I’ll tackle the most recent version, so you can see all your favorite Skullgirls like Beowulf and Big Band. Please look forward to it!
Yeah, I’d heard stories about the dark ages of early digital 360 releases and how the infernal file size limitations affected early ports and emulated games on the service.
In Symphony’s case, it lost the FMVs…which frankly were pretty awful (untextured bad graphics castle), but still a shame to lose just ‘cuz of the original music. Ending theme I Am The Wind was swapped out with some orchestral thing from another Castlevania, but given it wasn’t on PSP either it’s probably more a case of being embarrassed by that cheesy ending song than file size or licensing issues.
Anyway, love how you presented the SotN article as a school report.
[…] And this is all just a really roundabout way of saying that DDR was a singular, completely illogical flash in the pan of gaming that seemed amazing for about a console generation and a half, and then gave up forever. Nobody, once, said that the next big fad in gaming would be pretend-dancing, and, arguably, nothing descended from the DDR craze, either. Yes, today we have Just Dance and similar Kinect games that allow the player to get their workout/dance-on through following rigid, onscreen instructions, but Dance Dance Revolution always had more in common with Parappa the Rapper than wobbling along to Jason Derulo/Han Solo songs. Ultimately, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band fad I can understand, because everybody wants to be a rockstar. The Wii Sports fad I can understand, because everybody wants to be a professional bowler. Dance Dance Revolution, though? Everybody wants to flail around on the dance floor? Who would have expected Konami to get more attention with its stomping simulator than the game where you can turn into a bat? […]
[…] from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Pokémon X/Y. Hell, it took, what, seven games for Castlevania to hit Symphony of the Night? In a number of ways, in the “early years” of a franchise, a sequel is practically inevitably a […]
[…] was released in 1997, the same year Final Fantasy 7 revitalized storytelling in videogames and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night put the “vania” in Metroidvania. At this time (nearly two decades ago, yeesh), videogames were […]
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[…] find such an experience would be in the Gameboy ghetto of game development. It’s telling that one of the most popular games of 1997 had to retreat to the portable space, while its 3-D rival of the year managed to dominate the […]
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[…] my relative enjoyment of Metroid. In fact, I would argue that it is the main difference between Castlevania and Metroid titles. In a Castlevania game, you are constantly accruing new abilities and skills, […]
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[…] still 2-D platforming titles in 2005. The Castlevania series was still living off the success of Symphony of the Night, so running and jumping and stabbing was something you could find on those GBA/DS titles. Speaking […]