Topic: The Intro to Symphony of the Night, and the sole title "Castlevania".

[Abnormal Freak]

I always just thought it was to make the introduction more elegant, as in "Here's the fancy-pants new installation of Castlevania, folks." As stated, it says Dracula X in the Japanese version, which was to indicate that here's the second game in the sub-series, a direct continuation of Rondo of Blood. I guess in that sense the Japanese title has more meaning, but it still worked in my mind to just see the westernized title.

[zangetsu468]

Well actually Nintendo (or more specifically Gunpei Yokoi) was the one who invented the D-pad, which Nintendo (and Sega after the fact) used from then-on. Nintendo still has the Best D-pads, especially with their older consoles like the NES and SNES.

Normally I'd agree the SNES Dpad was one of the best, but SSOTN's Dpad really knocks the PSX's for me. Spells are much more effortless, especially Richter's UDF+Attack. It's pretty much an older version of the SFIV Viper pad.

[Lelygax]

Also to clarify to what peeps already said, it says "Dracula X" in all japanese versions, not only Saturn, but PSX and PSP too. It is called like that because Maria have a long blonde hair like Zero does, can dash, shoot and charge her shoots like in Megaman X.

[Aceearly1993]

I love the PS1 controller because of the controller's shape. I like the d-pad of Wii classic controller but it has some problems with PC games, if it's being plugged to PC by using adapters, the left joystick will manage the movement of character instead of d-pad, thus make the should-be-cool d-pad almost useless. Playing Rosenkreuzstilette/Freudenstachel or CV The Lecarde Chronicles in the situation is really a pain in the @$$ (You can't control the position of your character pixel-perfect when you are using joystick to push directions).

The way I test gaming input hardware is to get through the big 3-brick hole in Block 8-2, in CV Chronicles. Other way is to get through the Cross Wall boss in Rosenkreuzstilette using Grolla.

For SotN, I'm using PS Vita d-pad to get through it but Richter's air dash still won't respond in time when I try to "combo" the air dash moves.
I like the message says "DRACULA X" merely because it makes more sense, ties the "DRACULA X" titles that have Richter appearance