Castlevania Dungeon Forums
The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => General Castlevania Discussion => Topic started by: bucky on June 11, 2010, 04:58:26 PM
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Introduction / What this project is about:
I feel like Konami did a poor job of documenting most of their older Castlevania soundtracks. By drenching them in reverb and making them muddier, or not including complete soundtracks across ports with different sound chips, I always felt like there was something left to be desired. My goal is to supply newer complete rips to the intarwebs with the most accurate raw hardware sound possible, asides from possibly cleaning up the audio output of the console itself first.
Castlevania: The Adventure (Game Boy, model DMG-01)
FLAC - http://tinyurl.com/2fjrq34
224k MP3 - http://tinyurl.com/2fnr3yp
Youtube Playlist (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=13D6E1504CB09657)
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge (Game Boy, model DMG-01)
FLAC - http://tinyurl.com/2d2w47w
224k MP3 - http://tinyurl.com/24yk6p2
Youtube Playlist (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1C98B0A7CD0170CB)
Castlevania Legends (Game Boy, model DMG-01)
FLAC - http://tinyurl.com/22n8zr4
224k MP3 - http://tinyurl.com/29a6wm3
Youtube Playlist (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7DC042EBEF3DFAF2)
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Hey, cool. :) I admit, I like some of the reverb on the OSTs, but I'd also like having the soundtracks as they are in-game. The Game Boy games don't sound the prettiest on the OSTs, however; they definitely sound loads better how they are originally.
Looking forward to more soundtracks completed in this way.
That's really cool about playing directly from the Game Boy. I know a lot of people use Game Boys to create music, which I find really fascinating.
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Thanks! One cool part about this is that if you do like reverb, but think you can do a better or more careful job than Konami did, you can just open up the FLACs and give it a shot yourself. :D
Last on my priority list is the NES soundtracks. I'll do them, but unlike GB emulation, there is some very decent and hard-to-tell-the-difference quality of emulation out there. For the time being, people can listen to the NSF files, and that's pretty darn good. The Game Boy soundtracks and Castlevania Bloodlines both suffer from generally worse emulation quality (whether it be a full game emulator or the emulated audio formats, gbs and vgm), so I plan on doing those all first.
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You realize that FLAC on chiptunes is COMPLETELY USELESS?
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I guess I wouldn't know the technical aspects, but how exactly are FLACs useless for chiptunes? I realize there's only so much quality and complexity to be replicated, but wouldn't a FLAC have more fidelity for such low-quality sounds than a compressed format, even if the end result is miniscule if not entirely unnoticeable?
Last on my priority list is the NES soundtracks. I'll do them [eventually.]
I'm looking forward to high quality rips of the NES version of Castlevania II whenever that gets handled. Do you think you'll be doing both the NES and Famicom versions of Castlevania III?
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You realize that FLAC on chiptunes is COMPLETELY USELESS?
You're more than welcome to download the 224k MP3 set!
I don't disagree that FLAC is kind of overkill, since I can't really tell the difference between that and the MP3s I made, but I've heard low bit-rate mp3s of game music that sounded quite poor. Compression does have an impact, somewhere along the road. Plus if I'm going extra lengths to get proper hardware recordings, why not share a lossless version of the result? All it takes is exporting two different formats from audacity, and it doesn't bother me to do so.
I'm looking forward to high quality rips of the NES version of Castlevania II whenever that gets handled. Do you think you'll be doing both the NES and Famicom versions of Castlevania III?
Absolutely! I already sampled both CV2 and CV3 (the 4 different US/ FDS + US/ VRC6 versions), but this was a while back and not from hardware. I think they're still nicer than the OSTs though, since they didn't make complete versions of all regions available. I believe the official CV2 OST is mostly just the FDS tracks? Anyone interested in them just send me a PM and I'll send you a link to their zips.
The one current roadblock is that while I've modded my US NES to support expansion audio, I don't own Akumajou Densetsu, nor an FDS unit and Dracula II. I don't normally need the game, because I can dump NSFs onto the powerpak (http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?products_id=34) and sample them off of the console. However, the powerpak doesn't actually have all those extra fancy mapper chips in the cart itself, it has to emulate them as well. And the emulation, at least from the FDS games I tried, had an audio quality not even as good as some NSF players, defeating the purpose of using the hardware. But I have some friends into collecting famicom games, so I can probably just buy CV3J, or borrow it, when I need to.
Dracula II will take a bit more dedication, but I'll worry about that later when the time comes. :)
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Yeah, Akumajo Dracula Best mostly had the Dracula II FDS tunes. They're not as good as the Simon's Quest NES tunes, in my opinion, so it'd be nice to have the whole NES soundtrack in high quality. But yeah, Dracula II would certainly be interesting to hear if you ever do get a Disk System and the game. You'd also need the FDS version of Akumajo Dracula to make a complete soundtrack, since there's the naming BGM, "Underground". Aside from that, anyone know if there are any differences between the Akumajo Dracula FDS music and the Castlevania NES/Akumajo Dracula FC music? It's always sounded the same to me, but I've never done side-by-side comparisons, and I've always been a little curious about that.
And yeah, I've come across too many low quality rips—really low bitrate MP3s that do affect the quality immensely. FLAC probably is overkill, but it's still a nice option. I wouldn't accept anything lower than 192kbps MP3s, to be honest, because there's definitely a difference even when converting sounds from old hardware.
Also, a lot of rips are made from emulators, and that's just not cool by my standards (especially when certain emulators don't emulate the sound properly). So I appreciate what you're doing here. Whenever you get around to the SNES games, if you figure a way to record from the hardware or whatever, I'd really love a high quality rip of Dracula X.
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Chip tune music has a certain quality limit, by nature. NES and GB music especially have a low range, and so at some point, you just cant get any higher quality. For SNES it is a higher threshold, but still no way you'd ever need anything close to flac. It wouldn't make any difference what so ever since the sound couldn't possibly reach to the higher quality range by design.
It's a good thought in concept, but really you could just set to 320vbr and be way more than set for anything you'd be doing.
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I think we can all agree that the ancient 128 and 160kbps MP3 rips of yore can be thrown out the window, though, ha ha. Still waiting even for high quality rips of some of the official CDs, like the Perfect Selection Dracula Battle albums. If I could buy 'em, I would.
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Yeah, Akumajo Dracula Best mostly had the Dracula II FDS tunes. They're not as good as the Simon's Quest NES tunes, in my opinion, so it'd be nice to have the whole NES soundtrack in high quality. But yeah, Dracula II would certainly be interesting to hear if you ever do get a Disk System and the game. You'd also need the FDS version of Akumajo Dracula to make a complete soundtrack, since there's the naming BGM, "Underground". Aside from that, anyone know if there are any differences between the Akumajo Dracula FDS music and the Castlevania NES/Akumajo Dracula FC music?
Ah, they are identical! And thankfully I won't need the FDS game. Since it doesn't use the extra FDS channel, the NSF playback on the NES will be accurate. And what's cool is that "Underground" is in the US Castlevania NSF anyways. In spite of taking out the name entry screen, the track can still be found in unused ROM data. I recall finding that track before I knew about the name entry screen, and it freaked me out because I thought it belonged to some undiscovered secret area / item. lol
edit: For the SNES, I need to inquire if the Super Powerpak (http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=84) supports .spc playback. If it does, I might just have to grab one! Then I could sample almost any SNES soundtrack I wanted to.
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Oh, cool! Good to know the tune's there despite being unused.
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I think we can all agree that the ancient 128 and 160kbps MP3 rips of yore can be thrown out the window, though, ha ha. Still waiting even for high quality rips of some of the official CDs, like the Perfect Selection Dracula Battle albums. If I could buy 'em, I would.
Yeah. I would buy those albums too just to get a higher quality rip. Long over due.
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Man, today I was listening to my CV tunes on the Droid, and the quality jump is very noticeable from my old MP3s from, say, CV3 or something, and the stuff from Order of Ecclesia, partly due to the instrument samples improving but mostly due to the fact that I'm using high-quality VBR instead of old 128CBR. It's quite noticeable...
...but I'm not sure I can recreate my old tunes, as many were made when I had different instruments and before several hard-drive crashes.
Having a new version of the old chiptunes is good, because, like people have said, Konami went waaaaaay overboard with the reverb in their OSTs for them. It's like I'm in a cave listening to 'em.
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edit: Nevermind! I was asking about official track titles for Castlevania Legends, because of some discrepancies across different rips out there. But I found my answer here-
http://www.gamefaqs.com/gameboy/564357-castlevania-legends/faqs/25767
:)
With the 'research' part finally out of the way, you can expect a proper rip of Legends soon.
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There's this (http://vgmdb.net/album/17063) too for the translated titles for the official soundtrack (disc 5, tracks 1–20). That way you're not naming anything "???? (Okada 8)" and so on. ;)
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That's great help, thanks!
That leaves two Castlevania Legends tracks I'm uncertain on-
(gbs track # --> track name --> logical track order for when it's tagged and done)
01 - Title [01]
02 - Game Select [02]
03 - Prologue [03]
04 - Stage 1 - Bloody Tears [04]
05 - Stage 2 - Inside the Castle [05]
06 - Stage 3 - Clock Tower of Darkness [06]
07 - Stage 4 - Highest Castle Floor [07]
08 - Stage 5 - Undergound Watercourse [08]
09 - Secret Stage - Dungeon of Silence [09]
10 - Unused - "Okada 1" [22]
11 - Boss Battle [10]
12 - Alucard Battle [14]
13 - Unused - "Okada E" [23]
14 - Count Dracula Battle [16]
15 - Vampire Killer (Last Battle) [17]
16 - Ending [18]
17 - Gatekeeper (Mini-Boss) [11]
18 - Talking to Alucard [13]
19 - Taling to Dracula [15]
20 - Unused - Continue [21]
21 - Epilogue [19]
22 - Trap Room [12]
23 - Unused - Player Lost [20]
Two titles not well clarified from the OST are "The Castle Lord's Room" and "Dracula Castle Cathedral". I take it those are 'Talking to Alucard' and 'Talking to Dracula'? That's all that's really left after process of elimination. The ost appears to leave out 3 of the other unused tracks, but that's okay, I don't really need better titles for those (especially since they don't exist!).
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I'm not sure which songs are which. I could upload my AAC rips of the Legends tunes from the box set if you have iTunes or anything that plays AACs; otherwise I could re-rip to MP3.
And with Konami's track record of placing a song out of sequence and giving it the wrong song title on their Castlevania OSTs, there may be a couple misnamed tracks on the CD.
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Ah yeah, if you wouldn't mind re-ripping to mp3 that would be sweet.
I'm done sampling everything, just gonna wait to see if I should re-tag anything first. I'll also put it all up on youtube... either tomorrow night or the next. :)
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Remembered I still have the MP3 rips someone else had made, so here ya go (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=E7QNUQ7E).
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Thanks again! And would you look at that? The quality here is solid. They didn't smother it in reverb like most of their other early soundtracks. I guess what'll make my rip still worth it is that I'm including a couple things they left out. :) My rips are a lot louder too, although that's not exactly an indication of improved quality. That's probably just because I didn't have to worry about mastering them to fit on a CD with songs from other soundtracks...
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Legends is up! I renamed the thread and cleaned up the first post so it's not just about the first soundtrack. I initially posted about this project here (http://theshizz.org/forum/index.php?/topic/31884-castlevania-soundtrack-restoration-project/), in case anyone wants to check out the conversation thus far.
More to come later...
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Cool stuff. Keep up the good work.
By the way, what did "Talking to Alucard" and "Talking to Dracula" end up being titled on your rips? I'm guessing those are "The Castle Lord's Room" and "Dracula Castle Cathedral", respectively.
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Ah yes, they did turn into those. 'Unused Piece of Music' became 'Unused - Okada 1', because there are two different versions of it. Okada E is slightly different.
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Yeah, I noticed "Okada E" is slightly bassier and gloomier. Otherwise it's almost identical, ha. Still, I think I actually prefer it over "Okada 1".
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Thanks for posting these ;D
One thing I'd really like to see is extended versions of some CV music. For instance, I enjoy listening to CV music quite often, but it sucks that the tracks are usually over within a minute and a half or two minutes tops.
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Have you tried listening to some of the soundtracks in their emulated formats, like .nsf, .gbs, etc? You can listen to the NES and Game Boy soundtracks with infinite looping on tracks that don't end.
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Have you tried listening to some of the soundtracks in their emulated formats, like .nsf, .gbs, etc? You can listen to the NES and Game Boy soundtracks with infinite looping on tracks that don't end.
Yes, I can just put anything on infinite loop in iTunes, but that doesn't really work for music from say SotN. As of now, when I make a mix, any song I want a "longer" version of I just double or triple up, but you still get the song break because of the fade at the end.
Oh well, in the scheme of things in my life, it's not really important.
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My brother did make WAV rips of SOTN tunes and then burned them to CD long, long ago. I've got AAC rips of those two CDs with the extended tunes if you're fine with AACs; otherwise, I could try and get the CDs from him and re-rip to MP3.
Also, relatedly: I have the Haunted Castle OST that came with the Oretachi Game Center Zoku PS2 release of the game. Unlike the music that's part of the big box set, the music didn't go through any post-production. If anyone's interested, I could upload that.
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My brother did make WAV rips of SOTN tunes and then burned them to CD long, long ago. I've got AAC rips of those two CDs with the extended tunes if you're fine with AACs; otherwise, I could try and get the CDs from him and re-rip to MP3.
Also, relatedly: I have the Haunted Castle OST that came with the Oretachi Game Center Zoku PS2 release of the game. Unlike the music that's part of the big box set, the music didn't go through any post-production. If anyone's interested, I could upload that.
Yes, that would be awesome ;D
AAc's are fine btw, as I can just convert them. Thanks ;D
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Here we are:
Part 1 - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5NZCTCYY
Part 2 - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=750P1KS3
These are the Symphony of the Night rips my brother made like twelve years ago. He was unsatisfied with the official OST and its short songs, so he took these from the game CD, edited each song to a length he was satisfied with, and then converted them to WAVE files. Unfortunately, the WAVEs are long gone (they took up a massive amount of space for a computer in 1998), but he burned them to two CDs. I re-ripped them both to VBR 320kbps MP3 and then ripped the two "Dracula's Castle (Remix)" tracks from my game CDs for the best quality.
Also, about the Haunted Castle CD I mentioned earlier, I uploaded it and a bunch of other stuff in this thread:
http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php?topic=2703.msg49693#msg49693
If anyone wants just the Haunted Castle CD by itself, let me know and I'll upload that separately. (The other tracks are for people who have Akumajo Dracula Best Music Collections Box and want to complete their soundtracks with the songs that are missing but are present on the old OSTs.)
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SWEET!!! :o ;D
These are awesome, thanks for uploading, and tell ur brother thanks for making the originals.
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Once again, thanks for these. Been listening to them for past two days.
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Thanks for that link! And, another quick question for Abnormal Freak.
Does CV2: Belmont's Revenge (from Akumajo Dracula Best 2 or other OSTs) sound like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GeL_EjdkYg (dry, bass/ wave channel too quiet)
Or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5CY9uimc9E (reverb, and sped up)
I'm assuming it's the latter, because the bass being too quiet probably comes from poor wave channel emulation from in_gbs or another sound emulator, but just figured I'd double check. It'd be pretty odd if they sped up all the tracks, huh? Anyways, I'm all set on track titles. This is another one I should have up by next weekend.
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It's the latter. That upload is of the OST track. That is odd it's sped up; I never noticed because, shamefully, I've never even played the game, ha ha. Been meaning to do so for years.
VK: Glad you're enjoying the tunes.
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Here's a couple quick comparisons of Bloodlines from the CD versus the hardware (model 2 genesis with the CCAM mod).
http://tinyurl.com/3426ph3
http://tinyurl.com/2v3b8zj
Granted the CD part comes from a 128k MP3, but it's still a valid comparison which shows you just how soaked in reverb it was. You can also hear that the panning was lessened and moved closer to the center.
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Curious, if you record Bloodlines, which Genesis model you'll use. Far as I know, the first model sounds the best—definitely the bassiest and most badass. :o And I'd imagine it'd record in stereo since you can listen to it in stereo using the headphones jack.
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Changes in the mixing circuit resulted in later revisions of the hardware producing more distorted sound output than earlier models
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Drive#Audio
Click the wiki link for a sound comparison
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The general consensus is that the model 1 (which I own) sounds the best 'out of the box', with the headphone jack, while the model 2 with the 'crystal clear audio mod' (which a friend owns) is also some of the best sound you can get. I'll likely be sampling from the model 2 w/ ccam, but I'll also do some recording from mine first and see which I think sounds better. Getting stereo from whatever model/ output we use also won't be an issue. :)
Here's a quick explanation on the 'ccam'-
http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2009/07/tmee-genesis-2-crystal-clear-audio-mod.html
Here's a more detailed site for audio comparisons-
http://milkcrate.com.au/_other/sega_comparisons/
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Ah, cool. The CCAM one does sound rather clear, but I still think I prefer the model 1 headphone sound. It's a little murky by comparison, I suppose, but it's got kick. It's asking a lot, but if you could record Bloodlines both ways entirely, that would be cool. ;) It would give two very unique and interesting versions of the soundtrack.
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That sounds like a good idea. I'll be down to do both, but due to impatience I'll likely do one well before the other. :)
Anyways, I'm in the middle of sampling Belmont's Revenge and I realized there are two slightly different versions of "Road to Enemy". Tracks 12 and 13 from the GBS file. One has a snare intro and more panning effects, while the other doesn't.
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi224.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fdd56%2Fbrownreclusesings%2Fexplod%2FRoadtoEnemies.jpg&hash=b85c988a941cff7cd99020d2776ba42343edb153)
After watching a playthrough on youtube, the bottom version with the snare intro seems to be the one used in all the levels. Does anyone know if that means the other one is unused? Or is there a circumstance in which you can hear the other track in-game, like perhaps dying in one of those areas and having the intro-less version play when you respawn? Just wondering if anyone knows for certain before I bust out the rom and start looking for it... (it's back to 4th of july celebrations for now, lol)
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Dunno if this helps, but on Akumajo Dracula Best 2, there's a song entitled "Road of Enemy (Before Boss BGM) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLN4i-GbQoc)" (titled "Road of Enemy #1" on Akumajo Dracula Best Music Collections Box), and another called "Road of Enemy #2 (Before Last Boss BGM) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAo_WhUEYgA)". You say slightly different, though, so that can't be it.
And just because it rocks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f5VyBA7ATY
I really need to play this game soon.
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Ah yeah, there are two slightly different versions of "Road of Enemy (Before Boss BGM)", and they put the unused / I-don't-know-where-it-is-in-game version on the CD. Road of Enemy #2 is indeed a totally different track, that one's not a problem. 8) I think I'm just going to throw the weird one up as "Road of Enemy (Alternate)", as the last track, where I usually put unused tunes and the like.
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Belmont's Revenge added to the first post! If you check out the youtube uploads there's some fun pop-up-video stuffs in Chromatische Phantasie and Passpied. :P
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Bah! I hate looking at "Passepied" without that first E. ;) I'll just be renaming the track here...
I also prefer Soleil to Soleiyu. ;) *Renames those*
Great job, as always.
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Ugh, I know, I have mixed feelings on following names when they sound like bad translations or typos.
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Hey, when's the next soundtrack due? :p
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I hit a bit of a dead end with Bloodlines, for the time being.
I sampled the entire soundtrack, learning along the way that there might be something a bit messed up with the CCAM I was using. The signal is nice and clean overall, asides from the right side suffering from some distortion. I need to check with other people who've done the same mod and see if they've had the same issue.
And, I also realized there are two model 1s. Apparently the very first model 1 is region free and that has the most desirable sound. I have the later model 1. :/
But that doesn't mean I'm giving up! I just wanted to go back and do a streak of some non-Castlevania stuff first. I just did Gargoyles Quest, and wanna do about 3 others before I worry about CV again. :)
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Well, hey, post the non-CV stuff, too. :) I'm interested in Gargoyle's Quest.
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Oh lord that'd be a ton of stuff to post. :)
http://www.youtube.com/explod2a03
There's a master list on the left side (110 soundtracks so far), and most soundtracks should have a download link in 'track 1' for each soundtrack. Newer stuff sampled from hardware will have two download links (flac + mp3). If you see just mp3, that means it was likely sampled from nsf / gbs / SID / etc playback on the PC.
But here's gargoyle's quest!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG0udWNgw9U
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Coooool. Subscribed.