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General Castlevania Discussion / Why Curse of Darkness will probably never be ported via store fronts
« Last post by Nagumo on March 15, 2023, 11:50:35 AM »Hey, guys! It's been a while since I posted anything. I would like to share an interesting theory from a buddy of mine called Crying Wolf, who unfortuantely has been unable to make an account here, so he asked me to post the following:
Quote from: Crying Wolf
Konami never ported Castlevania: Curse of Darkness to the PS3, and still have yet to do so for the new PS5 classic store. Even when they’ve already ported a lot of their PS2 library to the old Classics storefront, we still don’t have Curse of Darkness despite an existing port of literally every other Castlevania game released on PlayStation. Let’s discuss PlayStation Classics policies and the very first release of the Curse of Darkness Original Soundtrack.
Sony has a policy, when porting PS classics, that you are not to change or modify the game in any shape or form whatsoever, if you are releasing it under the Classics label. It is to be released digitally as long as it plays well on their emulator. Although they have not stated it publicly, it is sort of an open secret due to Mega Man Legends not being put on PSN for a while because Capcom wanted to remove some product placement in addition to a small handful of issues with the voice acting. There is also the case of the Japanese game, “Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko,” which was released as is- unchanged and untranslated which supports the notion of this unspoken rule even further.
In the original release of the CoD soundtrack, the ending theme “True To Your Dreams” was composed by Michiru Yamane, written by 2 people credited as C. Bucknall, J. Briley and performed by Russell Watson. That song only appeared on the first soundtrack release and never again, not in the Perfect Selection, not in Black and Red box collections, and lastly, not in the digital releases of the soundtrack.
You may be wondering why this is worth discussing. After all, didn't they remove the Yuzo Koshiro tracks for the digital releases of Portrait of Ruins OST? Interestingly, they are back in the Black and Red box collections. On the Curse of Darkness soundtrack, “True to Your Dreams” was composed by Michiru Yamane, but it seems the actual ownership actually rests with either C. Bucknall, J. Briley, or possibly both. I have searched copyright and music ownership databases online, but came up empty handed. There is, however, something that did help me in putting together this theory/investigation... and that something is the term “Copyright Control” written next to C. Bucknall and J. Briley’s names in the liner notes for the soundtrack. I’ve looked it up and ended up in conversation with a US copyright attorney to confirm, and it basically means one of the following (we can’t really be sure due to us not having their contracts of course):
1.That C. Bucknall and J. Briley own the lyrics and the rights to the composition are with Konami/Michiru Yamane
2.It exists is some gray area where no one really owns nothing
Given that the song never appeared again, we can hazard a fairly educated guess, but can’t know for sure. They can still probably work something out and make a Classic release or just replace it and make an actual full port in a collection as they did with Symphony of the Night on Dracula X Chronicles.