CASTLEVANIA - Good God what a bad Amiga game!

[ZEUSDAZ]

Well It's time to review another crappy game on my "Sh*t Game Time" series, this time I play and sh*trate Castlevania on the Amiga, what a stinker!


Hope you enjoy it: [ Show youtube player ]


Zeus.

[Retroplay]

I never knew Castlevania existed for Amiga until the late 90's.
Novotrade butchered this classic, just awful in every way.

The US C64 version was OK but not great, NES version is still king.
Which reminds me:
[ Show youtube player ]

[guest.r]

At least the game is postprocessing shader friendly, but that obviously doesn't make it a much better experience.
The delay when using weapons is just too long, i guess the authors wanted an authentic experience with some planning in combat, but it didn't turn out well.

[Shatterhand]

I really would love to be at Novotrade offices when this was being developed to understand WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON.

In one hand, they kept level design intact, even all the secrets are there. And considering this was published by Konami, they probably had access to source code, original assets and everything.

In the other hand EVERYTHING ELSE is wrong on this port. And this time you can't even shout "OH LAZY ST PORT" as an excuse.

It really looks like this was made by a bunch of teenagers doing their first game for extra points in their final grade at some random subject.

The music is AWFUL, they carefuly picked the WORST samples to produce the music. And then... what the heck why did they put all the songs AT THE WRONG SPOTS? I don't think one single song plays at the right part on this fucker, it's like they had forgotten to put the songs on game and 12 hours before sending the game for mastering they asked the intern to do it , and he just threw all music randomly around the game. What the hell.

And then, the grapghics. How the fuck does this has more colors, more resolution and everything look SO FRIGGING HEINOUS. What the artist was TRYING TO ACHIEVE here?

I mean... let's look at the NES final boss.



Due to NES limitations, it has just 3 colors. It width has to be limited too, to avoid sprite flicker. Ok, with all those limitations, Konami did it allright, it looks like a monster, it looks scary enough, it looks like its gonna kill you.

On Amiga we don't have such limitations. We can have more color, more size, more everything. Well, if it was the same as the NES it would be cool already, but we could touch it up, couldn't we? Let's see how the Amiga one looks like:



NOW JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Seriously, look at that fucking thing. WHAT IS THIS? Did they mix a fly, a bat and a clown on a atom blender machine or something? WHAT THE HECK IS THIS THING?

This happens with basically EVERYTHING on this game. The first enemy looks ridiculous, the bats are badly drawn, it looks like they made AN EFFORT to make everything look bad and stupid.

But well, I could deal with bad gfx, I could deal with awful ear-splitting music played at the wrong sections, if the game played any good.

But NO. Movement is completely erratic and jerky, the character just jumps around everywhere on screen. It's weird because the scrolling *is* smooth, but general movement is just awful. And then you have the piss-poor lag control. Everything you press on controller takes like a full second to respond on screen. It's AWFUL. Try to whip mid-jump its FRIGGIN IMPOSSIBLE because your mind will always wait to see you character in the air to press the button but then ITS GOING TO BE TO LATE. You have to press UP and then press the button BEFORE the jump even starts, or else you will only whip after you've already landed. And then you there's that hilarious thing that happens constantly, when you press the button but the whip takes so long to come out you think your button just failed and you press it again and somehow the game reads this as if you WERE HOLDING THE BUTTON and you fire the special weapon instead of using the whip.

And don't even get me start on trying to jump around ladders.

This could had been a PERFECT port. there's NO REASON the Amiga couldn't handle NES Castlevania perfectly and, yes, even with better music and graphics. Castlevania isn't pushing even the NES hardware, the Amiga could had handle it without a single issue, if this was made by professionals and not some random kids who had never seen a computer before starting developing this. I Really wonder how the heck they managed to get it SO WRONG.

Every NES to Amiga port should had been given to Arc Developments. All their NES ports were very solid. Shame they ported some really bad games, so it wasn't their fault if the games sucked. They could had done an excellent job with Castlevania.

[Tigerskunk]

@Shatterhand: haha. well written..

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I really would love to be at Novotrade offices when this was being developed to understand WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON.
...
Every NES to Amiga port should had been given to Arc Developments. All their NES ports were very solid. Shame they ported some really bad games, so it wasn't their fault if the games sucked. They could had done an excellent job with Castlevania.

See, we do actually agree on quite a few issues

Castlevania on Amiga is a horrible mess that makes me ashamed to even admit it exists.

[Shatterhand]

See, we do actually agree on quite a few issues

I actually have a picture of that amiga last boss stored in my HD. I have a friend who *loves* the series, have played every game, know the storyline, has worked doing graphics for fangames based on Castlevania. He really loves it. (And he's a *great* artist, it's the guy who made the graphics for the Amiga game Santa Chaos..... which was coded by me )

And then everytime he talks something about castlevania to me or show me some gfx work he did inspired by Castlevania, I show him this picture just to piss him off.

It's really sad though, Castlevania is a great game. It would had been a killer game on Amiga if done correctly.

[malko]

So, is anybody interested for coding the conversion that deserves our Amiga platform ?

[roondar]

I'd honestly love to do something like that, but I'm sure I'd take ages with the amount of time I actually spend programming these days. Well, that and my level of 2D art skill is err, 'not quite kindergarten level'. Still better than my musical ability though, which is somewhere below that of a tone-deaf and mostly dead snail.

[Shatterhand]

I honestly think if the game was properly made using graphics ripped from the NES, it would be already good enough.

Or someone could try to use the MSX version graphics into a scrolling game on Amiga. I think it's doable, and it would look *really* good IMO:

[ Show youtube player ]

You'd need to change the final form of Dracula though, as its different in the MSX version. IMO it's a lot cooler, but you'd want to keep it faithful to the original, I guess


Of course you could also try to rip the X68000 graphics, but I guess that wouldn't work very well on an Amiga

[ Show youtube player ]

[malko]

X68000 gfx are really cool !
better than the arcade version of the game
[ Show youtube player ]

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

hame they ported some really bad games, so it wasn't their fault if the games sucked. They could had done an excellent job with Castlevania.

I doubt it would have been much good no matter who ported it, as it sucked on the NES too.

[Foebane]

I only knew of Castlevania at all because the Angry Video Game Nerd covered it in his videos, but I don't remember if he considered it a classic or not.

[Retro1234]

The Arcade version looks pretty garbage as well.

[ Show youtube player ]

Didn't Konami announce various games for Amiga that never appeared.

[spudje]

Originally Posted by malko

X68000 gfx are really cool !
better than the arcade version of the game
[ Show youtube player ]

Yes, I guess this is (one of) the best versions. I wasn't aware of the Amiga version and only played it on my X68000. I regret I watched the video of the Amiga version, what a disgrace.

[gimbal]

The game is pretty bad, but to be honest I have little love for the first three games no matter what version I play. I just don't like the controls.

Love the music though.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by gimbal

The game is pretty bad, but to be honest I have little love for the first three games no matter what version I play. I just don't like the controls.

Love the music though.

Yeah, the NES controls weren't good enough despite the game qualities. But there are Romhacks which improves it a lot.


http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3867/


http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4150/


http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3596/

[Shatterhand]

The arcade game was planned after the home versions were already being developed and, yes, it's not a very good game.

But I saw at least 2 people here saying the original Castlevania is bad? What the hell? You guys were playing garbage like Gods on Amiga and overrating it as hell, how you dare saying Castlevania isn't a good game? It's a classic, incredibly well designed and challenging platform game.

Didn't Konami announce various games for Amiga that never appeared.

Metal Gear, Ajax and I believe The Simpsons. All made it to the C64. I believe thier games were marketed to the USA, and when they noticed the Amiga market on USA wasn't half as good as the C64 one they pulled the plug. They would probably all suck as every Konami port on Amiga did anyway.

[DanScott]

Never saw the amiga version before until about 1 minute ago... HORRIFIC!!!

The X68000 version is beautiful by comparison

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by malko

X68000 gfx are really cool !
better than the arcade version of the game
[ Show youtube player ]

Haunted Castle is not equal Akumajou Dracula/Castlevania. It's different game which can be counted as "Castlevania 0", some kind of prequel to Castlevania series.