61 Frames Per Second : castlevania

Whatcha Playing: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Again)

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:06:00 GMT

I have a small stable of games I love returning to once in a while, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is among them. I own the original Playstation version (the actual original: it lacks the flu-snot green bar that labels it a best-selling re-release) and the emulation that was packed with the PSP's Dracula X Chronicles. I've finished both multiple times, but I decided that wasn't enough, so I downloaded the game once more on XBLA. Having lost my original Playstation at the bottom our sock drawer something like five years ago, it's nice to play Symphony of the Night on a large screen once more. It'd be nice if the Achievements weren't lame, but eh, if wishes were horses, and all that.

Symphony of the Night is still firmly in the top quality tier of the Castlevania hierarchy, but aging gamers draw in vital nutrients through message board fights about whether or not an esteemed game still deserves its lofty status. Over the past handful of years, Symphony of the Night has ignited similar arguments. Is the game as brilliant as we remember it? Was the Inverted Castle a stroke of game design genius or a cheap trick to extend gameplay?

Konami's premiere “Metroidvania” was one of the first titles I purchased on the Playstation: it helped usher me over the turbulent change from my teenage years to my adult years, which came with the inevitable realisation that you can't always do what you want to do, but there is no one who can stop you from enjoying the things that make the transition a little easier.

I'm undeniably biased towards Symphony of the Night, so I'm useless in a debate about its place amongst gaming history. At the same time, I don't think anyone can deny how lovingly put together it is. Every time I play Symphony of the Night, I discover some new thing: a mouse scurrying, doves nesting in the crevices of the Outer Wall, or (as I discovered very recently) the fact you can kill a toad by throwing Holy Water on its tongue, which pleases me greatly.

And even if you still insist on crossing your arms and saying “A-bloo-bloo-bloo awkward item screen,” you will surely recall how quickly the gorgeous piano melody in Orlox's Quarters made your annoyance melt away.

I think of Symphony of the Night as an integral soldier in the last stand for console-based 2D adventures. Sony of America was desperate to leave video gaming's “kiddy” image back with the colourful sprites on the Super Nintendo, and the 32-bit era of platformers—which birthed some of the finest in the genre—would have suffered for it if the likes of Konami and Capcom hadn't engaged in justifiable blackmail by threatening to hold big-name 3D titles if Sony wouldn't America have Castlevania and Mega Man. Interestingly, Symphony of the Night is a dignified and mature game regardless of its “primitive” presentation. Religious symbolism abounds, something Japan tends to be very hit-or-miss about. But it's all in context and it even aged well: heraldic imagery, spectral priests who listen to confessions, pious ghosts who cross themselves, and even a beautiful, sun-lit cathedral decorated with an ornate cross.

Incidentally, I still think Dracula has chutzpah for building a fully-loaded cathedral in the middle of his castle. He's all like, “Take that, God!”

I'm aware of Symphony of the Night's flaws, not the least of which is some kind of mapping joke that makes it prohibitively difficult to explore 200.6% of Dracula's abode. Certain gaps in the map will only be filled by doing a strange dance that involves shifting into a wolf, then shifting back after jumping. But who needs the reward at the end? Empty-headed Maria chases after Alucard. So what--

Oh crap, getting 200.6% is one of the Achievements on the Xbox 360 version of the game, isn't it? Bugger.

Related Links:

Suffering Castlevania Fatigue
Watcha Playing: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Cruse of the Stupid Red Headed Kid

Dracula's Bad Day

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:40:00 GMT

On the Internet, there is a man named Kajetokun. Kajetokun brought us videos like Over 9000 and Gutsman's Ass, so you may have already decided you hate him, even if you weren't familiar with his name.

Since hate doesn't tend to slow down the contributions of the creatively insane, Kajetokun has posted another something on YouTube. It's A Day in Dracula's Life. In fact, it's the only day in Dracula's Life. No sooner is Dracula resurrected by the dark priest Shaft than his delicious pot roast dinner is interrupted by the arrival of Richter Ballmont.

What follows is a lot of cursing and stuffing of meat and money into candles and lanterns.

Dracula regrets the loss of Succubus. I can't imagine why he'd be upset over the loss of a sex-crazed female demon.

Related Links:

Wasted Rentals, Wasted Youth: Bram Stoker's Dracula
What Is a Man? More Than a 4chan Meme
Castlevania III: Dracula's Reign Ends, Sypha's Baby Factory Opens

Castlevania III: Dracula's Reign Ends, Sypha's Baby Factory Opens

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:45:00 GMT

When I was a kid, I ate crayons while I was supposed to be tested for giftedness, I lost interest in achieving the honour roll when I found out it wasn't covered with sticky frosting, and I could never understand why grown-ups got so uppity if I was wearing my shirt backwards (still can't). But I finished Castlevania III all by myself, without cheating, and I'm still damn proud of that. It remains one of about two games both my husband and I played as kids, but only I've completed.

I've only finished the game with Grant as my aide, mind you. Even my childlike stupidity and gullibility had its limits. “Ha ha,” I said as I watched the credits scroll, “I am never doing this again!”

Ah, but it looks like I will with the help of the Virtual Console. Once I get my platforming legs back, I'd like to try and finish the game with Sypha. I've seen her ending already thanks to the modern magic of YouTube, but it still fascinates me. The second Dracula dies, the schmatte covering Sypha's head falls off on cue and Trevor's like, “Holy shit, Imma touch this bitch.” And he does.

Sypha's gender is pretty ambiguous up to that point. It's basically a Samus-style unveiling, but Samus was alone in the depths of space. The only person who was present when she said, “Um, excuse me, I have a vagina,” was the player.

So what's the deal between Sypha and Trevor? Did he know from the start that Sypha was a female, but he said “Shhh, let's not tell the player until they've finished the game and gone half-mad through the attempt?”

Or did Sypha wait until that moment to show Trevor what was under her robes, and Trevor just said, “Oh, well, you're a girl.” (*belt hitch*) “I guess we'll be makin' some babies, then?”

Only they know, bless their little pixel-sized hearts.

Related Links:

Suffering Castlevania Fatigue
Watcha Playing: Castlevania Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Curse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid

Beating the Dead Horse Who Has It Coming: Playstation Releases on PSN

John Constantine — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:45:00 GMT

Castlevania Chronicles, the peculiar Playstation remake of a peculiar X68000 remake of the original Castlevania, was released as a downloadable title on Playstation Network today. It ain’t the best Castlevania out there, but it’s still a swell action title. The disc release was never widely distributed either, so this will be the very first time most interested players will even get the chance to try it out. Of course, the same could be said of a lot of Playstation games. The halcyon days of 2003 when you could walk into any Blockbuster or Gamestop in the country and pick up five classic PS1 games, often times still shrinkwrapped, for ten or twenty bucks are long over, and the collector’s market is making many great games prohibitively expensive. Want to play Silent Hill? Hope you’ve got an extra sixty-five dollars lying around. How about Suikoden II, considered to be the series’ definitive installment? That’ll be $150. And what about cult classics like CyberConnect2’s Silent Bomber? Yeah, seventy smackers.

You shouldn’t have to pay top dollar for these games, though, considering they could very easily be released on the Playstation Network. Over the course of the past two years, SCEA, along with a handful of other US publishers, have put up a measly twenty-six Playstation games on PSN, while Sony Japan have released close to a hundred. This isn’t the first time I’ve brought up this inexplicable disparity here at 61 Frames Per Second, but seriously, Sony. What the hell is going on here?! If the current market has proven anything, it’s that you can put almost anything up for download on a console and someone will buy it. There is no other explanation for Boogerman’s presence on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. The expense of having a game re-rated by the ESRB can’t be that high if Boogerman is getting re-released.

Sony, if you want to convince people to buy a Playstation 3 or PSP, then nostalgia-bomb them. Tell them they can relive all their fondest memories of 1997 for a mere five dollars on the Playstation Network and I promise you, people will literally throw money at you. And no, I don’t mean you should put up more Jet Moto games.

Related links:

Sony Gives Thanks Via Charming PSN Deals
Far Out, Man
I’ll Tell You When I’ve Had Enough!
Sony Might Just Hate You
Boogerman: Too Immature for Children

Watcha' Playing: Castlevania – Order of Ecclesia

Amber Ahlborn — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The Giant Enemy Crab lives forever in infamy.

The latest Castlevania game to hit the DS is possibly the best one yet, or at the least it rubs shoulders with the best in the series in this gamer's opinion. Ever since the series started taking cues from Metroid, Castlevania (in 2D) hasn't messed much with what's become a winning formula. That said, the series has gotten a little bit stale. The point where this really came home for me was with Portrait of Ruin: a solid and fun game that I just had a heck of a time getting into. It took two false starts before I buckled down and played the game all the way through. Ecclesia however, feels fresh.

Don't get the wrong idea, Order of Ecclesia is hardly a dramatic change in the formula but it does take some of the ideas proposed in previous games and brings them to prominence. Portrait of Ruin dabbled with the idea of setting the game play in locations other than Dracula's Castle (an idea not explored since the 16 bit days). The Dawn duo introduced the ability to gain powers from enemies and Symphony of the Night itself brought us a whole armory of weapons to play with, but all of these concepts feel refined in Ecclesia.

Now, I know you've already heard me say this before but it bears repeating, I'm glad they returned to a more Gothic art style. I have nothing against anime style but it can be incredibly generic looking. You could almost say the cookie-cutter visuals were falling in line with the formulaic game play of the series. It's good to see the series break away from that trend. Ultimately, one has to wonder where Castlevania will go from here. I do not foresee any dramatic changes in the future, but I do hope the next games take Ecclesia as an inspiration base and continue to explore different settings for our hero to do her or his vampire killing.

Author's Note: I'll be continuing my Uncanny Valley series tomorrow. I hadn't intended there be such a long gap. All I can give in my defense for this posting lapse is a warning: avoid school age children at all costs, for they are festering pools of disease and pestilence. They will use their hands instead of tissues to wipe their dripping noses then proceed to touch all of your stuff, thus dooming you to a week of coughing, sneezing, congested, bed ridden misery. You have been warned.

Related Links:

Watcha Playing: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin

Castlevania Judgment(s): Iga Continues to Show a Keen Understanding of His Franchise on DS, But His First Wii Title Misses the Point

Watcha Playing: World of Goo

Sony Might Just Hate You

John Constantine — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Even before the company’s dramatic fall from grace, there has been a number of reasons a discerning individual might think that Sony hates them. The original Playstation had a failure rate to challenge the Xbox 360’s and the first DualShock controller didn’t become a pack-in with the system for months after its release. The Playstation 2 launched at a pricey $299 and that price held until May of 2002 when Sony suddenly and without forewarning dropped it to $199, leaving thousands of gamers out a hundred bucks when a simple press release could have saved them the trouble. The PSP launched and its screen was plagued by dead pixels and the Playstation 3 cost half a grand at the cheapest when it launched in ’06. One day, they’re committed to backwards compatibility and against rumble in controllers, and the next they’re asking you drop sixty smackers on a controller that shakes and backwards compatibility is for the birds. Yep. Sony hates you. Sony hates all of us.

Well, today, Sony hates your potential creativity. If you’re anything like us, you looked at LittleBigPlanet and thought, “Oh man. I am totally remaking Castlevania III in that sumbitch.” As the game plowed through its autumn beta, it turned out there were many like minded souls out there, making all sorts of homage-laden playgrounds for Sackboy to romp about. Then, last week, Media Molecule started disappearing levels from LittleBigPlanet’s servers en masse. Claiming that these deleted levels were the target of user complaints, it turned out that they were almost all removed under the auspices of copyright infringement. Most of the levels erased were based on classic videogames, but as Kris Erickson pointed out on PS3 Informer, some levels were removed for so innocuous a reason as they shared a name with a movie. (It’s actually just as well this one was taken down. No one needs to be reminded that Failure to Launch exists.) Today, Sony released a statement outlining some “suggested” LittleBigPlanet rules of conduct:

• Ensure that the content you share with other users is suitable for all ages - everybody has access to your level if you publish it.

• Please respect other people's intellectual property rights. For example, don't use images, brands or logos that you're not entitled to use.

• If you come across any content that you feel the need to report, then please do it responsibly. Hoax reports will be considered inappropriate behaviour.

Nothing says creativity like a nice set of rules! Regarding the all ages part, I don’t see why Sony and Media Molecule didn’t incorporate age settings that reflect a given PS3’s parental settings in the first place. No hoax reporting? Fine. But the intellectual property issue is both prickly and offensive. As Erickson also points out in his excellent editorial, the majority of these levels deleted from LittleBigPlanet fall within the boundaries of fair use. The levels inherently don’t diminish the value of the work that inspired them because, especially with game homage, they have to run in LittleBigPlanet. But more importantly, none of these levels are made for commercial consumption. They are free, provided you already own the game and a Playstation. PSN member RoboAlucard92 isn’t getting paid for his Symphony of the Night level in LittleBigPlanet. When Konami releases their inevitable LittleBigPlanet Castlevania content pack, then that level might need to be taken down. But not before.

The very existence of LittleBigPlanet seems like an act of love. But this sort of corporate kowtowing looks a whole lot more like hate.

(Our thanks to CVG, PS3 Informer, and NeoGAF user newschool)

Related links:

Microsoft Just Might Hate You
Nintendo Might Just Hate You
Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet
Waiting: Four More Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
Four More Games That ARE Awesome Remade In LittleBigPlanet

Watcha Playing: The Palette Cleanser

John Constantine — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:45:00 GMT

The past six weeks have been teeming with meaty, action games. I’ve been working through them slowly but surely, like an elegant seven course meal. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was thick, hot comfort fare, a brief appetizer of sloppy design coated in delicious Stormtrooper and rancor killing action. The game’s a buggy mess, really, the gaming equivalent of empty calories, but definitely satisfying. Then there was the dynamic horror duo of Dead Space and Silent Hill: Homecoming, a soup and salad combo built to terrify. They didn’t really scare, but instead delivered visceral body simulations. Both games succeeded by making you constantly aware of your avatar’s physical presence and the heft of their actions, and they achieved this through a careful synergy between atmosphere and play. Yakuza 2 was truly the main course, a game I had no expectations for whatsoever that turned into an all time favorite. Its broad adventure, pulp tale of cops and crooks, and simple but ceaselessly engaging fisticuffs were nourishing, more substantial than anything released on current gen consoles. For dessert, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Another bonafide surprise, Ecclesia turned out to not be another retread through Igarashi’s decade-old formula, but a challenging successor to Castlevania 2 with fierce action whose variety and elegance was exceeded only by the game’s environments. Yes, it’s been a great month of big games, but it’s been the small things I’ve played in between them, games I’ve played for no more than a handful of minutes here and there, that have given the most *ahem* food for thought.

The palette cleansers, as it were, aren’t what you might expect either. These quick play sessions, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, haven’t been with simplistic small titles. Far from it actually. The ones I keep returning to are Wipeout HD, Mega Man 9, the original Katamari Damacy, and Castle Crashers, all games that sport demanding mechanics, all games that get very stressful very quickly. Hairpin turns at high speed in Wipeout and precision jumps toward clandestine robot master confrontations don’t exactly seem like the ingredients for refreshment, but they’ve been restorative between the larger games. What makes these games perfect palette cleansers isn’t their immediacy, nor is it their lack of an expansive narrative. The key characteristic is that they don’t demand a serious investment in their world before and after. You don’t have to remember what you were on your way to do before your last save, what sidequests you’ve half completed. You simply need to know how to control them, and all of them take practice to control well.

Strange as it is to say, after recently starting a game of Fable 2, I immediately thought that it would make for an excellent palette cleanser. The game may be huge in scope and have a sweeping story to tell, but its play and guiding hand towards objectives don’t ask much of you beyond an understanding of the world’s rules. Molyneux’s made a sprawling RPG that’s less of a filet mignon and more of a small dish of sherbert. I’m wondering what other fall blockbusters may hide the same quality.

What are some of your favorite palette cleansers, everyone?

Related links:

The 61FPS Review: Dead Space
Katamari in the Classroom, Part 1
Style Over Substance: Why I'm In Love With WiiWare's "Art Style"
Screen Test: Star Wars – The Force Unleashed
Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone
Surprise of the Week: Sega Releases a Good Game
Impressions: Fable 2
Gears of LittleBig Fable Music: Considering the First-Party Blitz
New Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Pics
Suffering Castlevania Fatigue

Let the Mega Man 9 Speedruns Continue

Peter Smith — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Some weeks back, our very own Bob Mackey reported on the first speedruns of Mega Man 9. But the best clip out at that point was multi-segmented and started out with 999 screws, which is kind of cheating in my book. Now, watch as champion speedrunner Nicholas "SirVG" Hoppe (who holds world speed records on such classics as Actraiser, Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland and Castlevania: Rondo of Blood) delivers the goods with a single-segment, new-game run. (And provides entertaining captions to boot.)

Some Youtube/gaming forum posters have complained about the way that MM9 times gameplay — freezing the timer when the game is paused. This does mean that an MM9 speedrun like this one, which actually lasts forty-nine minutes, gets an official time of 27:37, which is a little odd. But the cool thing is that by not penalizing for use of the select screen, this rule encourages inventive speedrunners to use all of Mega Man’s special weapons in clever, time-saving ways. (Mega Man 9’s weapons, incidentally, are far more versatile and useful than the throwaways of most Mega Mans past.) This makes the run way more entertaining to watch, which, after all, is the point, and it’s enough to make me wish that the older games were set up this way. In fact... Capcom, old friend? Any thoughts? Enhanced downloadable versions with MM9-style challenges and timer features? You know, we love you very much...

Related posts:
Infinite Mega Man 9: Composer Ippo Yamada Talks Living Up to a Serious Musical Pedigree
Mega Man 9: IT'S OUT NOW
Let the Mega Man 9 Speed Runs Begin

Suffering Castlevania Fatigue

Bob Mackey — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:00:00 GMT

It's hard to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it comes to Castlevania--I'd rather see an installment from Koji Igarashi's beloved franchise on the DS than yet another animal grooming game. But since the series has moved to the DS, I've been slightly disappointed. As good as Dawn of Sorrow was on its own terms, the game felt waaay too much like Aria of Sorrow, even within the limited Castlevania framework established over a decade ago by Symphony of the Night. (I'll go ahead and admit that, three years later, Dawn is a game I really need to re-visit, now that I'm even further removed from its predecessor.)

My reaction was even worse with 2006's Portrait of Ruin which claimed to be a return to the roots of classic Castlevania that I never liked much to begin with. I can't tell you if Portrait lived up to its promises, because my limited time with the game was spent pressing the character change button in order to annoy people in my immediate vicinity.

"Charlotte!"
"Jonathan!"
"Charlotte!"
"Jonathan!"

You get the idea.

But the new Castlevania game, Order of Ecclesia, actually has me thinking my disappointment might go away, even if the Symphony of the Night formula doesn't hold the novelty that once made people think Circle of the Moon was even remotely good. For one, the art has reverted from the kid-friendly redesigns back to its former gothic glory--and that's a move we can all be happy about. Word on the street is that the game also features adventurey gameplay elements that are very similar to Castlevania II, except not retarded--frankly, any change to the format is welcome at this point. My interest is piqued; here's a trailer in case you're still on the fence.

Related Links:

It's Official (And Officially Sad): Castlevania Judgement Is Ghoulish
Watcha Playing: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin
When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi

The Ten Greatest Ice Levels in Gaming History, part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:10:00 GMT

Donkey Kong Country – Snow Barrel Blast

Donkey Kong Country isn’t the most fondly remembered SNES game out there. It was marketed to hell and back in 1994, its pre-rendered characters shoved down millions of gamers’ gullets as a final grasp at technological relevance before the dawn of 3D gaming’s rule. At heart, it’s a simplistic and fun platformer whose visuals have aged poorly. But certain stages in DKC still impress fourteen years later, thanks to a combination of inspired graphical presentation and deft sound arrangement. Snow Barrel Blast is the best DKC has to offer. An ice level that seems simple enough when Donkey and Diddy Kong emerge from an igloo at the start but soars when the sky starts to darken and the level goes from sunny winter landscape to brooding driving snow storm. It’s purely aesthetic, not informing the game’s basic platforming at all. But its beauty makes it the one thing memorable about DKC besides the hype. – JC

Super Mario Bros. 2 – World 4

Traditionally speaking, ice is the bane of platforming. As soon as you see blue ground, slightly shaded to a reflective sheen, you know that the rules you’ve been operating under up to that point are going straight out the window. You will slip, you will slide, and, so, you will miss many, many jumps. World 4 in Super Mario Bros. 2 turns icy surfaces into an exercise in speed and timing, setting up a first level that’s less about jumping across tiered platforms than it is about running as fast as possible and expertly sliding beneath/over oncoming enemies. It’s the speediest stuff in any of the original Mario trilogy. World 4 gets downright weird by the second stage: yeah, those are whales in between the ice-platforms and snowy outcroppings of rock. Why are there whales? Why not! Go spit some eggs, or something. – JC

Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts – Ice Forest

Though it came out at the same time as Actraiser, as one of the first fantasy epics for the fledging SNES, Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts could hardly be more different in tone. Where Actraiser is an existential epic, SG'n'G is a macabre romp; it plays as if Tim Burton and Danny Elfman designed a platformer and let the Marquis de Sade balance the difficulty. Stage 5, the Ice Forest, is a glimmering nightmare full of wolves, frozen ghost knights and spore-spitting snowdrops. In its lurid way, it's awfully pretty, but if you stand around admiring the ambiance, you will soon find yourself without your pants. – PS

Metroid Prime – Phendrana Drifts

Come on, you knew it was coming. Ice in Metroid recalls Samus’ arsenal more immediately than the series’ sprawling environments, but it also defines the most evocative and beautiful space in Prime’s Tallon IV. The Phendrana Drifts has a quality rare in Miss Aran’s adventures: it’s a tranquil place, almost soothing in its stillness. As the camera pans when you first arrive, and Kenji Yamamoto’s eerie, still score begins to play, the ice flows, icicle laden cliffs, and crumbling Chozo architecture come off as a place that’s safe to explore, free of bloodthirsty space jellyfish or insectoid pirates. It isn’t until Ridley’s shadow glides over Phendrana’s surface that you feel a literal chill and remember: Tallon IV isn’t a safe place. The frozen water kills and the ice blocks your way. Best to get bounty huntin’ before your suit freezes up. – JC

Part 1
Part 2

Previous Top Tens:

Ten Reasons Why Secret of Mana Sucks
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History

The Ten Greatest Ice Levels in Gaming History, part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:05:00 GMT

Lost Planet – The Whole Game

Lost Planet, Keiji Inafune’s attempt to make Halo for Japan, is one of this console generation’s most underappreciated games. The shooting is tight, the levels are impeccably designed, the automated-grappling-hook platforming is neat, and the Starship Troopers-bug baddies are some of the cooler looking HD threats out there. Sure, it has some clunky parts, but the good far outweighs the bad. What’s more, the entire game is all about snow and ice. The initial stages, wandering the frozen wastes of E.D.N. III, are still jaw dropping. It isn’t even the swirling snow or the ice-bound cities; it’s the sound, the crunch, of stomping through snow drifts. My teeth grit just thinking about it. The snowy setting is also behind Lost Planet’s health system. Your health is constantly draining because of the cold, so you’re forced to constantly collect the body heat of felled foes. That is cooler than crawling inside a Taun-Taun. – JC

Actraiser – Northwall

Let other developers go the way of stock level design. Quintet was always too good for that, giving their levels in Actraiser a pre-human quality that went far beyond the usual D&D boilerplate. That sense of a vast natural world haunted by gods and demons was perfectly captured in the two Acts that take place in the frozen land of Northwall. In the first, you enter a pristine wasteland to clear it for your subjects. Despite the substantial amount of combat that takes place therein, the austerity of the snowy background and the chilly beauty of Yuzo Koshiro's score gives the whole scene a sense of peace.

Things are different in Act 2, which finds you scaling a collosal frozen tree to rid your now-colonized land of monsters. This climactic moment finds all the forces of the arctic landscape rallied against you, with Koshiro's appropriately frantic music spurring you ever upward to destiny. – Peter Smith

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow – The Lost Village

Castlevania is a series about place, but its range is often limited by the requirements of its title. Each game has its unique spaces, but they’re inevitably tied to Dracula’s castle and the Transylvanian countryside surrounding it, which is why franchise entries that mix things up are the most memorable. Of all the ‘Vanias to release after Symphony of the Night’s complete genre realignment, the Soma Cruz adventures are the most distinct, their near-future setting lending much needed modernity to the usual gothic ramparts and libraries. And given Soma’s snowy appearance, it’s not surprising that his second outing, Dawn of Sorrow, is home to one of gaming’s best ice levels. The first screen of The Lost Village plain makes you want to put on a coat. Snow falls lazily on a rickety wooden fence, dense forest obscures an enormous moon, and the only sound is wind. The real star is the central room, a multi-screen series of German-styled village buildings stacked on one another, frozen and abandoned. Unforgettable moment: landing a jump on a broken-down VW bus and seeing the snow slump off onto the ground. – JC

Part 1
Part 3

Previous Top Tens:

Ten Reasons Why Secret of Mana Sucks
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History

The Ten Greatest Ice Levels in Gaming History, part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Autumn may only be a few weeks old, but, as it is with all seasons, you can feel its successor growing during the increasingly long nights. It’s getting cold and the chill has got us thinking about cool things, here at 61 Frames Per Second. As a result, we’re doing two things. One, we’re quoting Batman and Robin far more than we should. Two, we’re thinking about ice levels. Ice levels, like fire levels, refers to a theme more than a specific element. An ice level is more than ice. It’s freezing water, driving snow, strong wind, and grey skies. It’s gaming that makes you want to wrap up in a giant bearskin rug. Naked. Or not, to each their own. Here, we present to you, the top ten greatest ice levels in gaming history. – John Constantine

Chrono Trigger – Death Peak

*Spoilers. Big Ones.*

The snow-capped peak is not an uncommon locale in role-playing games. You’ve been there before: there’s a giant monster, typically abominable, waiting for you at the summit, and the journey to him is guaranteed to entail solving an ice block puzzle or three. You are also guaranteed to find some convenient Ice Armor or even, if you’re lucky, a Fire Sword. Chrono Trigger’s Death Peak, the lone natural environment in the Lavos-ruined 2300 AD, is different. It is, ostensibly, optional. Like everything else in Trigger’s end game following the silent hero’s death, you can skip the mountain entirely, though ascending it is fundamental in reaching the plot’s true conclusion. Death Peak is the physical embodiment of everything at stake in Trigger’s conflict, a frozen place inhabited by stray creatures, cold, and Lavos’ offspring, growing fat on decay, waiting to leave the dead planet to claim others as their own. Its challenge is both environmental and emblematic: your surviving heroes must push against snow and wind, against nature, to both save the world and also their fallen friend. No boss waits at the pinnacle, just a dreary sky and a chance to use the Chrono Trigger itself. When Crono is resurrected, the wind and snow cease, the sun emerges from the clouds and is eclipsed. If you choose to see it, it is the turning point in the game, the moment hope overcomes despair. – JC

Metal Gear Solid (1 and 4) – Shadow Moses

Most of the levels here made the list because they do two things: they are artful and the ice defines how you play through them. Shadow Moses, that forlorn little island north of Alaska where so many bad, Metal Gear-y things happened, fulfills both those criteria and then goes a step farther. Shadow Moses, and the very first post-opening-credits play sequence in MGS, defines the entire series. It sets the overdramatic tone, it bookends the franchise narrative, and it quickly establishes the stealth gameplay. It isn’t a real stunner now, but finding out that enemies would notice footprints left in the snow was exciting stuff in 1998. The return trip to Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4 is less exciting for its gameplay – it comes in MGS4’s limited-play back half – and more just artful. Approaching the base from outside, literally navigating through a white-out blizzard, provides a visually stunning moment in a game full of them. When I saw that giant bi-pedal robot lumbering through the snow, only barely visible through the torrent, I damn near threw my controller at the screen. – JC

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 – Ice Cap Zone

Okay, okay. I've never much cared for Sonic, but I will admit that its cartoony, distinctly '90s environment design is distinctive, and Ice Cap Zone probably deserves a place on this list. It's cool how you snowboard in, and it's cool how half the level breaks around you in big chaotic shards of crystal, even if the gameplay remains duller than toast. And the much-beloved music is pretty catchy, although it evokes a night of strip-mall dance clubbing more than an arctic wonderland... Okay, Sonic fans? Okay? You win this round, you hear? Now stop sending me those horrible pictures! – PS

Part 2
Part 3

Previous Top Tens:

Ten Reasons Why Secret of Mana Sucks
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History

Castlevania Symphony of the Night 2: What is a Screenshot? A Miserable Little Pile of Secrets!

John Constantine — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Can you dig it, everyone? Tokyo Game Show is off to a running start and while it appears that some games that everyone expected to appear, like Team Ico’s Playstation 3 debut, are nowhere to be found, plenty of other exciting games are rearing their glorious digital heads. Who in their right minds expected No More Heroes 2 to be announced? That is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Of course, Tokyo Game Show isn’t without a little mystery here in 2008. For example, take this screenshot Koji Igarashi showed off during a chat about Castlevania:

Why, that appears to be Alucard, star of the ubiquitous Symphony of the Night and apple of ten billion goth girls’ eyes. A discerning fellow might also intuit that Alucard is holding a gigantic glowing sword in front of a certain titular castle and a giant moon. Now, I don’t read Japanese, and no intrepid fan has translated the +D article this picture originates from, but folks over at the Castlevania Dungeon, run by the inestimable Kurt Kalata, are saying that this is from an Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 title about, "the bloodline that has been surrounded by darkness and curse, betrayed his own kind and destroyed his own father, the cursed destiny."

We do not trade in rumor and speculation here at 61 Frames Per Second. Well, not often. But here’s a huge dose of rumor and speculation for you anyway: this appears to be a full on sequel to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Can you hear that? That’s the sound of one million geek hearts exploding simultaneously.

Thanks to both NeoGAF user Guymelef and The Castlevania Dungeon for alerting us to the madness.

Related links:

Castlevania Judgment(s): Iga Continues to Show a Keen Understanding of His Franchise on DS, But His First Wii Title Misses the Point
Watcha Playing: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin
When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi
Castlevania: Curse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid
Castlevania Fighting Game Elicits Anguished Moans From the Living

Watcha Playing: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin

Amber Ahlborn — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I have had Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin ever since it was released, but only now am I finally going to beat it. The first time I played it, I screwed up and wasn't going to get the best ending. Yeah, I'm one of those gamers who would rather start over than continue after making a bad plot point choice. Unfortunately, I just haven't been in the mood for a Castlevania game for quite a long time. After a few false starts, the game has languished on my shelf for months. There's another Castlevania coming for the DS soon, however, so it's time I closed the book on this one.

I'm enjoying a staycation from work this week, thus I've been attacking my backlog with a vengeance. I've chewed my way through a couple games already and C:PoR will soon be my third conquest, though the final battle looks to be a really nasty one. Also, there's a secret area in the game I want to unlock and play through before I finish off the big bad. This is another excellent entry into the metroidvania style Castlevania games that have graced the GBA and DS. I don't think I've enjoyed it as much as the Aria and Dawn duo that came before it, but I have no big complaints. Well, maybe I am a little annoyed by the art style.

Starting with Dawn of Sorrow, Koji Igarashi decided to switch from the distinct look of Ayami Kojima's Gothic art style and go with a more generic anime style. The new look is okay, but it lacks the dramatic personality of the former. Thankfully, it seems this is about to be fixed. The next Castlevania on the horizon is Order of Ecclesia.

Ahh, now that's looking much better.

Related Links:

When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi

New Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Pics

Watcha Playing: Blast Works -Build-Trade-Destroy-

Alternate Soundtrack: Castlevania III vs Bush

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

So there's this election around the corner, right? All about choosing a new President for the United States or whatever, and I keep hearing people complain about how after this election they won't be able to rant about how much they hate Bush anymore. Personally I don't understand where they're coming from. I, for one, love Bush. Those guys rocked so hard throughout the 1990's and early 00's and anyone who hates on them just can't be my friend anymore.

I've always been particularly smitten with their 1996 sophomore record Razorblade Suitcase, an emotionally dense powerhouse of crunched guitars, squealing feedback and ominous negative space. This album cries out for monsters, as demonstrated in the music videos for singles "Greedy Fly" and "Mouth", and monsters it shall receive in the form of Konami's 1990 classic Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

There's a lot to love about Castlevania III, but I feel I couldn't possibly add to what's been said before aside from I love it to pieces. Instead, I will add that this marks the first Alternate Soundtrack video to be available in iPod video format. If you have a free Vimeo account, feel free to download your portable copy of today's video right here and let me know if this is something I should keep doing / find a less exclusive download source.

More Castlevania Love:
What's in my MP3 Player: Castlevania II "Castle of Tears"
Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet
Castlevania Judgment(s): Iga Continues to Show a Keen Understanding of His Franchise on DS, But His First Wii Title Misses the Point
Castlevania: Curse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid
What Is a Man? More Than a 4Chan Meme

Previous Alternate Soundtracks:
Ai Cho Aniki vs. Xiu Xiu
Battletoads vs. The Blood Brothers
Super Star Soldier vs. MSTRKRFT
Orbital vs. The Notwist
StarTropics vs. Islands

What's in my MP3 Player: Castlevania II "Castle of Tears"

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

One of the things the Castlevania series is known for is its music. In fact, much like the Zelda series, there are some iconic tunes that tend to pop up again and again, songs like “Bloody Tears” which is the source of today's featured remix. “Castle of Tears” by remixer DigiE is a fast paced in-your-face electronica mix, ready to be downloaded for your listening pleasure.

Castlevania II was the first Castlevania game I ever played. I rented it and never finished it. I wandered around, collecting Dracula's body parts until I got to that point in the game where everybody got stuck. Earn yourself some Game Geek Cred and be the first person in comments to guess what point in the game stonewalled me. Damn those townsfolk and their crappy hints (and outright lies).

Related Links:

What's in my MP3 Player: "Kindred"

OST: DuckTales

Chiptune Friday: Little Nemo

Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet

John Constantine — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Ever since its announcement, excited gamers across the internet land have been discussing their level-making plans for LittleBigPlanet. Puzzle levels, hardcore platforming levels, insane art landscapes, and, most importantly, Level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. Yes, LittleBigPlanet may be all about getting your creative juices flowing but there was never a doubt in anyone’s mind that players were going to throw down all sorts of lovely, copyright-infringing devotionals to gaming’s beloved creations of old. Team Sportsmanship, a group of art students participating in Parsons New School of Design’s Game Jam event, didn’t explicitly recreate a level from Fumito Ueda’s epic, but as PS3 Fanboy put it, their level can only be named Shadow of the LittleBigColossus. It’s a work of art, a lovingly crafted riff on Shadow of the Colossus’ grand encounters made terribly adorable by LBP’s style and Sackboy mascot. Of course, this got me thinking: what games are perfectly fit for the LittleBigPlanet treatment? Here’s what came to mind.

Castlevania III

Besides being a classic platformer overflowing with badass levels primed for reimagining, Castlevania III is also uniquely suited to LBP’s four-player challenges. You’ve got a vampire, a pirate, a witch lady, and a dude with a whip. What do they do together? They scale clock towers and kick the crap out of less-than-friendly vampires. Perfect.

Joe & Mac

The first time I saw a Sackboy smack another one upside the head, my brain was filled with visions of a caveman themed level in LBP. Then again, why be creative when you can shamelessly exploit someone else’s creations? Joe & Mac is a good fit for LBPization, with co-op play and giant dinosaurs to assault. Sure, LBP doesn’t appear to have projectile weapons but they do have clubs. After making a Joe & Mac level, you could go whole hog and recreate the full, non-linear Joe & Mac 2. Note: Chuck Rock sucks, so he lost the caveman race.

Silhouette Mirage

Treasure’s other action-platformers might seem like more obvious choices for LBP (Mischief Makers certainly comes to mind,) but Silhouette Mirage’s duality theme puts it over the top. Is it possible to make obstacles impossible to overcome or enemies impossible to beat based purely on color in LittleBigPlanet? Whether you can or not, finding ways to manipulate the environment to accommodate Silhouette Mirage’s quirks would be a fascinating challenge if nothing else. This one might be a little tricky thanks to the aforementioned lack of projectiles.

Silent Hill

I know. Silent Hill isn’t exactly a franchise that would lend itself to 2D platforming, let alone platforming as sticky-sweet as the kind found in LBP. Might be a little difficult to create the same sort of so-unsettling-you-don’t-sleep-right atmosphere when Sackboy keeps turning to the screen, smiling, and waving at you from the television. But imagine structuring a LittleBigPlanet level that, halfway through, started to transform into a horrid, twisted version of itself. Harmless cardboard flowers peeling back to reveal barbwire fences, the blue sky turning an angry red, and fog descending over the stage. It would be awesome. Plus, SackPyramidHead.

Leisure Suit Larry

Come on, where are you going? Come back. Just hear me out. Now take Al Lowe’s 1987 classic smut-adventure and re-imagine its torrid city of lounge lizards, ruffians, and prostitutes as a multi-tiered pagoda or luridly colored challenges. Behold, you must get the condom “key” from the Drug Store of Doom and carry it as you ascend one floor to the Perilous Prostitute Platforms! In the final challenge, you must convince the drunken barfly to give you the engagement ring and climb to the tower’s apex, where a buxom Sackgirl waits in a pleasantly pastel colored hot tub. What? Don’t look at me like that. You and I both know this is a great idea.

Related links:

NSFW: The Top Five Game-Based Pornos
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
Top Ten: Favorite Bosses
Top Ten Most Terrifying Enemies and Then Five More

Castlevania Judgment(s): Iga Continues to Show a Keen Understanding of His Franchise on DS, But His First Wii Title Misses the Point

John Constantine — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I tried to keep an open mind when Castlevania Judgment was announced back at the beginning of July. Yeah, it seemed that making a Castlevania themed fighting game – oh, forgive me, Mister Igarashi. A 3D versus action game. Right. – was about as good an idea as a Sonic the Hedgehog fighting game, but it might be good! Stranger things have, after all, happened, and Castlevania has twenty years worth of memorable characters, weapons, and environments to pull from. The open arena play, borrowing heavily from Capcom’s fondly remembered Power Stone brawlers on Dreamcast, also seemed like the ideal foundation for the franchise’s transition into the world of fighters. Maybe it would be good fun. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be as bad as Soul Calibur Legends.

Well, it’s better than Soul Calibur Legends, but, after going a few rounds with at Konami’s fall preview event in New York today, I wouldn’t call Castlevania Judgment a must play Wii game. I also wouldn’t call it a good game. The problem comes down to the fact that, even though the game is due out in the next couple of months, it feels woefully unfinished and empty. The arenas recall classic Castlevania (the crumbling cemetery and Dracula’s gold and red throne room as seen in Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood) but they’re nothing but gussied up, barren cubes for the fighters to run about. A stray zombie rises out of the ground in the cemetery, but they’re more of a random nuisance than something to build strategy around. The actual fighting is just as problematic since Judgment uses the Twilight Princess model for basic attacks: shake the controller, and your character attacks. To say that it feels imprecise would be an understatement and the problem is compounded by a camera that completely obscures the action at worst, and confuses you while playing at best. The demo on show had three selectable characters, a barely recognizable Alucard and Maria Renard alongside a pretty swell Simon Belmont, but they were only distinguishable in appearance, their move sets all but identical. The fact that Igarashi’s first Wii title feels more like a throwaway unlockable mode from one of the more recent 3D Castlevania adventures is besides the point, though. Even if all of its disparate parts worked perfectly and in concert, the game would still be flawed on a fundamental level. There is a reason that the franchise is named after its setting and not its characters; at its heart, Castelvania is a series about a world and not characters. Which is why, unsurprisingly, the latest DS Castlevania, Order of Ecclesia, is faring much better than its console sibling.

Anyone who’s played any of Igarashi’s last seven 2D Castlevanias (excepting the excellent PSP remake of Rondo of Blood) will feel right at home with Order of Ecclesia. The tight control and smoothly animated sprites are as comfortable and smooth as a pair of worn-in boots. Ecclesia’s glyph system, the new play style replacing Dawn of Sorrow’s enemy-soul-collecting and Portrait of Ruin's dual characters, shows significant promise thanks to its emphasis on combat (that you can equip a weapon in both right and left hands is made useful for the first time in series history.) Even more impressive is the new environment. The introductory areas of the game show the same incremental visual evolution the series has enjoyed for a decade, but they feel particularly fresh thanks to a more open world and variety of locales. Ecclesia takes a step beyond Portrait of Ruin, taking the game entirely out of the castle and providing a world map. The first area of the game, a monster-filled monastery, has one of the most beautiful areas I’ve seen in a Castlevania since Symphony of the Night: a tangled forest at twilight, with interlocking bare tree branches obscuring your character, Shinoa, from view as she approaches the monastery entrance. It’s wonderful.

This gets to the heart of what does, and what doesn’t, work in Castlevania. The series has yet to be successful in three-dimensions because no three-dimensional Castlevania has been designed to have a compelling world first and good action second. When Iga finally builds his 3D castle, he’ll finally solve the 3D Castlevania mystery that’s plagued the series since the N64.

Related links:

When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi
Castlevania: Curse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid
Castlevania Fighting Game Elicits Anguished Moans of the Living
New Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Pics

Castlevania: Curse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid

Nadia Oxford — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:11:00 GMT

So I'm one of about three people who really enjoyed Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for the Playstation 2. It was pretty easy, pretty linear and pretty dull next to my personal Saviour, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but I really liked hatching and evolving the Innocent Devils. I had dragons, a phoenix, a maggot-gnawed crow named Bonnie Brae and some kind of deity that looked like the product of a questionable encounter between an angel and a devil. I am okay with alternative Pokemon raising.

I was pretty excited when I heard Tokyopop is publishing a Curse of Darkness manga adaptation. I was even more excited when I landed a review copy. When I opened 'er up and was hit in the face by a red-headed lead boy named Ted, my excitement drained like a fratboy's bladder on a Sunday morning.

There are a lot of situations in this life that make us want to shake others and say, "Oh my God, why are you so stupid? Can't you see what's in front of you?" ::Smack.:: If God gave me the opportunity to do that to anyone in the world, I would make a bargain with Him (God loves cookies) and corral every single writer, producer and artist who ever stunk up a perfectly good property with a smart-mouthed kid.

The game Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is about a silver-haired bishonen boy who breeds devils to help him take revenge on Issac and/or Dracula for his dead wife/girlfriend/dog. Dracula, in response, says, "Oh no you did-n't girlfriend," and throws the forces of Hell at him.

Where does a kid factor into all of this?

Where does a red-headed, smart-alecky kid factor into all of this?

I know I should be whacked with a Hotwheels track for mentioning "Castlevania" alongside "historical accuracy" in the same sentence. Still, this "Ted" character talks back an awful lot to his elders in an era when boys and girls got whipped for forgetting their manners. What's more, they usually had to take their punishment under the mournful eyes of a carving of Jesus Christ suffering on the Cross for their sins.

Eff minus minus.

Related Links:

When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi
Castlevania Fighting Game Elicits Anguished Moans From the Living
Games to Film: Paul W.S. Anderson's Castlevania

Indie Dev Moment: A Game a Month From Kloonigames

John Constantine — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

I sometimes worry that even though I talk a big game about championing videogames as a creative medium, I’m full of crap. Nine times out ten, if I’m playing a game, it’s some blockbuster title or the twentieth entry in a franchise that’s been milked for more than a decade. If a game with the word Castlevania in its name is on the shelf next to, say, Rhythm Tengoku, I’m going to buy Castlevania. I’m that guy. I am part of the problem. Thankfully, there are people out there spreading the word on independent gaming’s greatest achievements.

I am indebted to Infinite Lives for spreading the word on Petri Purho. Petri has created a brand new videogame every month for the past two years, hosting them all on his blog Kloonigames. This is a remarkable feat in and of itself but many of these games are a hoot, visually rich, occasionally unsettling, and all of them smart.

Celebrate the man’s achievement by indulging in a little Humpsters (pictured) or perhaps a little Choke on my Groundhog, YOU BASTARD ROBOTS.

More Indie Dev Moment:

Scarygirl
Eegra Shindig Ends, No One Got Laid, Awesome Games Got Made

Related links:

Make the Music With Your Games, Kids!
Fun Fact: Metroid Meets Metronome

What Is a Man? More Than a 4Chan Meme

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:17:00 GMT

Konami will never live down the original translation inflicted upon Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It tried to atone for past sins by re-doing the voicework for SOTN in Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP. It was a fine attempt, but a worthless gesture overall; you can't erase the past. I can't deny the fact I'm descended from sheep thieves and Konami can't deny Dracula's infamous riddle to Richter Belmont. "What is a man?" (I don't know Dracula, what is a man?) "A miserable little pile of secrets!"

I hang out and make trouble at Gamespite because sometimes I learn something new. Today, for example, I learned through a fellow forum comrade named eirikr that Dracula's riddle is not his own. It was, in fact, lifted from a French author named Andre Malraux. Interestingly, Malraux was born in 1901, meaning he picked up the quote from Dracula during a time jaunt through the Carpathian Mountains. Damn, I need to manipulate some kids into writing this down for a history project. These are TRUFAX being doled out here, people. Remember them, and pass them onto your children.

If you're interested in the source material, check out The Big Curmudgeon: 2,500 Outrageously Irreverent Quotations from World-Class Grumps and Cantankerous Commentators. If you can recite the book's title to the store clerk before running out of breath and dying, that is.

Related Links:

Games to Film: Paul W.S. Anderson's Castlevania
Games To Movies: Why Is It So Gad-Danged Hard?
When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi

Screen Test: Fragile

John Constantine — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I’m as bad as every other slavering fanboy on the internet when it comes to Wii software, ranting about the garbage publishers have vomited onto the system, games that would have been visual embarrassments on the Dreamcast with gameplay that makes Tamagotchis seem like the most sophisticated machines on earth. Instead of a new 2D adventure, Konami makes a Castlevania fighting game. Instead of a brand new Rygar game, Tecmo ports over a six year-old PS2 title. Instead of a fresh Resident Evil, Capcom makes a glorified light gun game.

The worst part is that some people are making very promising titles for the Wii, yet no one knows about them. Case in point: Namco’s Fragile.

All anyone knows about Fragile at this point (some eighteen months after its announcement) is that it takes place after the end of the world. You play as a young man named Seto and you explore an abandoned earth. It’s developed by tri-Crescendo and Namco says it’s an RPG. It is also absolutely gorgeous.

If more games on Wii looks like Fragile, I probably wouldn’t spend so much time ranting about it.

Many thanks to NeoGAF user Stormbringer for pointing us to these new screens. Check out the rest right here.

Previous Screen Tests:

Fallout 3
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Alone in the Dark
Silent Hill Homecoming

Games to Movies: Why Is It So Gad-Danged Hard?

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:10:00 GMT

Pardon me, but might I bother you to turn your head while I spew vulgarities? The live-action Castlevania movie by Paul W.S. Anderson is going to be as stinking and putrid as a zombie's testicles. Yeah, as rotten as zombie testicles stewing like dumplings in a pool of sweat collected in the crotch of a pair of leather pants. And...the testicles are dangling. By, like, one scrap of skin.

One scrap of maggot-chewed skin.

We're used to this, right? It's the curse of video game-based movies to be absolutely no good. A friend of mine who's a huge Silent Hill fan convinced a non-gaming friend of mine to see the Silent Hill movie. Second friend saw the movie and still insists that first friend owes her eight bucks for making her see the stupidest film in the world.

But it's not as if the Silent Hill series is incapable of keeping even hardcore horror fans up all night. Why do games translate so badly into movies? Is it because directors (we're not even counting Uwe Boll) have no qualms about taking creative liberties with the source material--the lack of a whip for Simon Belmont's film being a perfect example?

That certainly can't be helping the problem. On the other hand, there are game-to-movie adaptations, mostly of Japanese origin, that are easily recognisable as their inspirations...but they still suck.

When Final Fantasy: Spirits Within soiled itself and died at the box office, Final Fantasy fans were so sure the reason lay in the butchering of the source material. Final Fantasy is about swords and monsters and chocobos; here was something with the name Final Fantasy that was little more than a generic science fiction flick.

Flash forward a handful of years to Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It has Cloud! It has Tifa and Red XIII and Midgar! It's essentially a Final Fantasy VII movie!

Is it any good? Not really.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is the whipped and delicious fanservice every Final Fantasy fan craved, but it's an awkward piece of work with a jumbled plotline and boring battles. Final Fantasy VII ended mysteriously: we're not supposed to know if humankind survived Lifestream's onslaught or not. Looks like we did. Boy oh boy. Let's kung-fu fight.

Moreover (and admittedly through no fault of its own), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children suffers from a terrible case of Know-It-All Fandom. That is to say, Final Fantasy VII has such a huge and significant fanbase that literally tens of thousands of fanfics exist for the game; fanfics written by authors who are convinced that they know what's best for the characters and get furiously angry if anything counters their "fanon" (canon+fandom). Cloud isn't supposed to be a loner emo who remains distant from Tifa. They're supposed to be married. They're supposed to have a million spiky-haired babies.

(Or Cloud is supposed to be up on Vincent, one or the other.)

Interestingly, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children came with a shorter animated film called Last Order. It was a little bit like Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core for the PSP in that it followed the life of Zack, Cloud's "shadow." It was also far better than Advent Children, possibly because it didn't go to strange and fabulous new places; it took an already-interesting part of Final Fantasy VII's story and expanded upon it.

In the same vein, I hold hope for Warren Ellis' animated Castlevania III: Dracual's Curse adaptation because it's a further telling of events from an established game. Nobody's going to make up their own continuity. Ellis is merely working with material that's already there and expanding upon it.

Further hope: The Dark Knight, a movie based on a comic book, is being taken very seriously and recieving excellent critiques. Not that long ago, a big budget movie based on nah-nah-nah-nah BAT-MAN or any comic book character would have been laughed at. If we stop farming out video game properties to directors who suck, we might see the same treatment for our digital favourites.

Games to Film: Paul W.S. Anderson’s Castlevania

John Constantine — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how Paul W.S. Anderson keeps getting paid to make movies, especially movies based on videogames. The man is a different sort of enigma than Uwe Boll. Boll, after all, manages to self-finance the majority of his filmic game adaptations through a labyrinth of German tax shelters and Satanic covenants. Paul W.S. Anderson, on the other hand, gets actual studio funding to make stinkers like AVP and Soldier. In all fairness, Anderson’s Resident Evil trilogy and his legitimately hilarious Mortal Kombat don’t actually lower a viewer’s IQ like Boll’s House of the Dead; Anderson makes trash, not garbage. But it doesn’t change the fact that his movies suck. Yes, even Event Horizon.

When it was announced in 2005 that Anderson had gotten his mitts on the Castlevania franchise, it was pretty disappointing. Castlevania is, conceptually, pretty trashy, but as far as videogame with potential to be excellent movies, it’s high on the list. Killing Dracula has been a proven film premise for decades, but the setting is the real hook for a Castlevania special-effects spectacle. An ever-transforming castle that’s the living embodiment of chaos and appears on earth once every century? Awesome. Anderson, however, doesn’t have a track record of delivering on a property’s potential. The guy actually made a Resident Evil movie that’s campier than the games. From the sound of CC2K’s script review of Anderson’s Castlevania, it sounds like business as usual. A handful of pages for the script leaked way back in January, but this is the first report from someone who’s gotten a look at the whole shebang. Belmont brothers who lead teams of knights? A grotesque plot amalgamation that lifts from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Francis Coppola’s film adaptation instead of the Castlevania world? NO WHIPS?! What the hell kind of Castlevania is this?

Luckily, Anderson hasn’t been able to get the project off the ground. Dimension Films lost distribution rights to Rogue Pictures in 2006, Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard) took over as director in early ’07, and the entire movie got shelved during the WGA strike last winter. IMDB says the picture’s on-track for release in 2009. Let’s hope that day never comes.

Thanks to AICN for letting us know about the review.

Related links:

We Are Watching Many, Many Speedruns. Join Us in Some Castlevania!
Castlevania Fighting Game Elicits Anguished Moans From the Living
Chiptune Friday: Do the Monster Mash!
When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi
New Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Pics
Games to Film: Marky Mark is Max Payne
Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
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Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship
Games to Film: Et Tu, Bioshock?

We Are Watching Many, Many Speedruns. Join Us in Some Castlevania!

John Constantine — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

As I mentioned about a month back, I’m still pretty new to the whole speedrunning scene. Truth is, they’re usually something of a hassle to watch. You’ve gotta download the whole shebang or you’ve got to watch like eight parts of the same run on YouTube. I demand instant gratification from the internet at all times!

Which is why I’m pretty thrilled that the go-to source for all things speedrunning, Speed Demos Archive, now has most of their catalog of world-record runs viewable as flash videos! Apparently, this has been the case for ages and I am just very late to the party. To celebrate the discovery, what do you say we all head over there and watch Chris Kirk’s thirty-four minute run of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night! WOO!

Related links:

Free Running: How Speedruns and TAS Make New Games

Whatcha Playing: The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS

John Constantine — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A strange thing happened ‘round about last October. For the first time since its release in April 2005, I was regularly playing games on PSP. I had been carrying a grudge against Sony for promising the world with their first handheld and not delivering even a fraction of the compelling software that they had on the first two home Playstations. But then, all of a sudden, there were all these fantastic games to sink my teeth into. Strategy RPGs like Jeanne D’Arc, old-school action like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and true genre benders like Crush had finally brought me into the PSP fold. The drawback? My DS went on the shelf and wasn’t touched for months. Oh, I brought it down when Contra 4 came out and on that rare Saturday morning that I felt like going back to my Animal Crossing village to do some weeding, stomp some roaches, and writing some letters. But I wasn’t playing anything new and I started wondering if the brief reign of the DS — not as a force of business but as a fount of compelling design — was over.

Man, was that stupid. For all of the greatness we’re seeing on the current crop of consoles, nothing can touch the dual-screened wonder for sheer versatility. My second honeymoon with the DS started with my introduction to the Phoenix Wright games, a series I was none too fond of at first. As I plunged deeper into the game, I became addicted to the story and the satisfaction of pushing it forward through simple logic puzzles. I never thought I would use a gaming console to read comic books, yet here I am, plowing through the second Phoenix Wright, loving every minute of it. I also mentioned last week that I’m taking on my first full Pokemon game, an experience that’s proving perilously habit-forming. My complete conversion back to the system came this weekend though. I spent time with games on opposite ends of the play spectrum, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword and Shiren the Wanderer. Gaiden is a forward thinking action experience, a game as much about new ideas than it is about series tropes. Shiren the Wanderer is the pinnacle of throwbacks, a roguelike dungeon crawler as mechanically obtuse as it is simple to play. This is the essence of gaming on the DS, a constant barrage of new and old, design of yesteryear melding perfectly with fresh ways to, no pun intended, touch art. As the fall approaches and new console titles start dominating the gaming frontline, I’m sure I’ll gravitate back to playing at home. For now, I’ll be out in the sun, getting to know an old friend all over again.

Related links:

Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon
Whatcha Playing: Ninja Gaiden – Dragon Sword
Whatcha Playing: How Many Buttons I Gotta Push

Castlevania Fighting Game Elicits Anguished Moans From the Living

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Looks like the August issue of Nintendo Power is full of thrills and chills. The news about Mega Man 9 being developed in an 8-bit style brings the thrills, whereas a baffling preview of a Castlevania fighting game for the Wii is bringing the chills.

Not the good kind of chills that you got when you first played Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, mind you. These are the bad, feverish chills with the pained moaning and cold sweat.

When fans heard that a Castlevania game was in production for the Wii, there were all sorts of half-depraved fantasies involving the Wii remote and hot whipping action. The death of a potentially cool idea is only half the reason fans are disgruntled: the other half lies with the character re-designs. Castelvania's popular character designer, Ayami Kojima, is stepping aside this time to make way for none other than Takeshi Obata. Obata is famous for his work on the famous Death Note manga series, which goes a long way to explaining why Simon Belmont looks like (to quote my husband) L dressed Mello's skin-tight leather, appropriate Catholic memorabilia included.

As a hardcore Castlevania fan, I'm not irritated by Konami's latest, uh, decision. I am certainly intrigued, but not as angry as some. There's a general cry in the community of, "We didn't ask for this!" No we didn't, but we didn't ask for a game featuring Mario characters putting around in go-karts, either.

I also look forward to explaining the existence of a Castlevania fighting game to my mother. She hasn't played games since the Super Nintendo era, but she remembers well Castlevania III and I recently took ten minutes to explain to her why Alucard wears high heels now.

Chiptune Friday: Do the Monster Mash!

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Written by Derrick Sanskrit

It's Friday the 13th, which means its time for a super-spooky edition of Chiptune Friday!

Here's the ever-popular "Bloody Tears" from 61FPS favorite Castlevania II: Simon's Quest:

Oh yeah, that gets me in the mood to dance with some cute vampire girls before I have to go reclaim chunks of Dracula's body from five different castles...

The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 1

Peter Smith — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:30:00 GMT

More than any other creative medium, videogames rely on sequels. Unlike serial fiction (television, comics) or film franchising focused on continuing narrative and familiar characters, videogame sequels — at their best, mind you — are not just the next chapter of a story or the return of a popular protagonist. The most successful gameplay designs are perfected through revision. Practice, as they say, makes perfect. And while sequel-as-business-model more often than not leads to stagnation, sometimes pandering to the audience reveals a vein of creativity richer than that found in the source material. Sometimes, a good idea needs to be demolished and rebuilt over its original foundation to become great. This week, 61 Frames Per Second takes a look at gaming's ten most adventurous sequels: direct successors that significantly alter the fundamental design, aesthetically and mechanically, of their predecessors. Some of the entries on this list are great successes, others failures. But they all broke the mold to change our ideas about play. — John Constantine

Adventure Island IV

Even as an old-school die-hard I've always been pretty indifferent to the Adventure Island series. Sure, it's solid hop-and-bopping, but without much aesthetic or architectural distinction. Does anyone feel passionately about Adventure Island, really? More people might if Adventure Island IV had come out in the States. IV melds the series's standard run-around-whacking-stuff-with-other-stuff mechanics to an ambitious Metroid-esque superstructure, in which newly acquired items must be used to open previously inaccessible sections of a large, continuous map. (The snowboard you pick up in one area gives you passage through a snowy field, and so forth.) This is a familiar tactic today — see recent Castlevania games, for example — but at the time it was unusual, and certainly not where you'd have expected a staid platforming series to go. — Peter Smith

Super Mario Bros. 2 (Super Mario Bros. USA)

Quiet down. I know Super Mario Bros. 2 is Doki Doki Panic. As soon as those sprites were transplanted into Shigeru Miyamoto's platforming follow-up to Super Mario Bros., it became a Mario game, and SMB's first true sequel. Even Nintendo went on to re-categorize Takashi Tezuka's Japan-only Super Mario Bros. 2 as little more than an expansion of SMB (it was re-released in 1993 as Super Mario Bros: For Super Players in Japan and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels in the west.) What's remarkable about Super Mario Bros. 2 is not its unorthodox development; it's how it warps the fundamentals of SMB (and even J-SMB2) while maintaining familiarity. The aesthetic shift from SMB risked alienating Nintendo's still-growing fan base but it made Mario and his friends even more recognizable as icons. Play wise, it expands on the multi-character abilities of J-SMB2, and re-defines progression through levels. In SMB, the goal is merely to get to the end of a series of stages and then get past Bowser at the end of castle. In SMB2, the completion of levels is usually tied to items, whether it's procuring keys to get past locked doors or retrieving a magic orb. The game also has multiple antagonists that have to be physically defeated as opposed to just avoided as with Bowser. It was also pretty adventurous to have a transgendered dinosaur in a game for kids. Risky! — JC

Final Fantasy II

The old joke is that, by rights, Final Fantasy II shouldn't even exist. In 1987, Final Fantasy was intended to be a young Hironobu Sakaguchi's swansong, an experiment in the rising role-playing genre made popular by Yuji Horii just a year before. Its success has kept the Gooch making games for two decades now, but the series, and JRPGs broadly, owes many of its enduring characteristics to the sequel that never should have been. Final Fantasy II was designed by Akitoshi Kawazu, best known for the SaGa series. While the first FF, with the exception of a few aesthetic flourishes, was more or less a clone of the first two Dragon Quests, Final Fantasy II placed an emphasis on story and character that was absent from the genre previously. Rudimentary as the tale of empire and resistance was, the story of Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon in Palemecia was a drastic shift from the western-style hero-epics that typified the genre in 1988. Kawazu also made some decidedly ill-advised changes to play. As opposed to the traditional system of gaining experience points through battle to build character's statistical attributes — a foundational aspect of role-playing games, digital and non — each action in the game improved only through use. Increasing defense requires defending against attacks, increasing attack power requires attacking, and so on and so forth. This system of growth was applied to every interactive aspect of the game and quickly became tedious. But it was one more new idea in a game full of them. — JC

Click here for Part 2.
Click here for Part 3.

When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi

John Constantine — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Koji Igarashi’s a consistent guy. The man-in-black of videogames – he doesn’t really look like Johnny Cash, but he does have a habit of wearing black leather and carrying a whip around in public – Igarashi rose to prominence in 1997 when he released Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Playstation. SOTN was a fairly dramatic re-imagining of the Castlevania franchise, expanding on the non-linear style of 1988’s Castlevania 2 and molding it into a circuitous, fluid environment in the vein of Metroid. In the past eleven years, Igarashi has overseen seven more Castlevania titles, four of which are in the exact same style as SOTN. On the two dimensional front, Igrashi’s resume is un-indictable; even when his 2D Castlevanias are a little dry (as is the case with 2002’s Harmony of Dissonance), they’re still well-made games. It’s his work in the third-dimension that’s been the problem. 2003’s Castlevania: Lament of Innocence may be the best 3D Castlevania to-date, but it’s still a boring game whose empty, box-like environments have more in common with mid-90s Gauntlet than contemporaries like Devil May Cry. 2005’s Castlevania: Curse of Darkness isn’t much better, tacking on shallow monster-collecting (think Pokemon but with demons) gameplay to Lament of Innocence’s already weightless action. The less said about his one non-Castlevania game in the past ten years, Nanobreaker, the better. In all fairness, the gore in Nanobreaker is pretty entertaining, but that doesn’t make it good (it does, however, make for good Up All Night).

Igarashi has yet another Metroidvania, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, due out this fall. The first trailer for it looks mighty good. But word on the street is that he’s working on new three-dimensional Castlevanias for both Wii and 360/PS3. Word to the wise, sir. Stick to two-dimensions.

Related:
New Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Pics
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History Part 1