Topic: Gametrailers' Castlevania Retrospective

[shelverton.]

According to VGCharts, Castlevania 64 is the best-selling game!

VGChartz is not the most reliable source unfortunately. It often completely ignores entire regions, especially PAL sales for some games. With Circle of the Moon, they only have the sales for Japan, so I honestly wouldn't use VGChartz as proof at all. I strongly believe CotM sold better than CV64, but I definitely think CV64 sold a lot too. VGChartz do seem to have improved in the last couple of years, but they really have no clue about older games.

[Ahasverus]

CVLOS is the best selling game in spain for three weeks in a row, VgChartz doesn't count Spain, for example.

[shelverton.]

CVLOS is the best selling game in spain for three weeks in a row, VgChartz doesn't count Spain, for example.

Are you sure? I think the numbers for LOS are quite accurate actually, it has the sales from across Europe which should include the entire continent, shouldn't it? The chart with software sales haven't been updated since october 16th, but I know for a fact that the game was near the top of the swedish charts too, albeit for a short while.

[Ahasverus]

Yeah you have a point, I think we'll have to wait until Konami's fiscal results in february

[RichterB]

Wow. A lot more info there than I expeced. Thanks though! They don't sound too bad at all. Hopefully, I'll get to play them someday....

What if we added all of the various Cv1 remakes? Would that make Cv1 the best selling game? Or the several available versions of SotN?

One last note about the N64 games: If you do get a chance to play them, don't expect perfection; they are rough around the edges and are limited by the technology of the time. But all that said, they have a lot going for them as you saw I noted.

As for CV1 remakes or SotN versions being the best-sellers, hard to say. They might be up there, though.

As for Retrospective Part IV:

CotM: then again, it had DRAGON ZOMBIES.

Exactly. How is that not awesome?   And that huge goat-monster thing in the cathedral was crazy. And the Camilla boss was really out there on the art direction. (I know you're not a big fan of CotM, but I just wanted to note that it also had a nice soundtrack, and I liked how the game stages advanced via new moves in what somehow seemed like a more natural way to me than most Metroidvanias).

...As I look back at all this portable action, I realize how CV wouldn't have survived without these entries. Ironic. Also, despite that things got repetitive around the time of DS, there still were a lot of interesting tidbits along the way. I still haven't played OoE because I was burned out on IGA at the time, but I do intend to track that down and play it eventually; its conceptual art direction looks great (best since CotM, IMO) and the new map and NPCs intrigue me.

One other thing that surprises me is how polished and creative Belmont's Revenge looks despite its age, and how there's charm to The Adventure yet, as well. (The retrospective did a poor time explaining Rebirth, as it was a re-imagining more than a remake). Now, I don't know what went wrong with Legends. It has a lot of good bosses and stage ideas in theory, and Sonya's pretty cool, but the whole thing comes across as tedious and mediocre. It was one of the first CV games I bought when I decided to get back into the series, so it worked well enough at the time. But even then, it was underwhelming. It does have one of the best/freshest re-imaginings of Bloody Tears, though, in its stage 1 theme. I find it funny how IGA started to throw things out left and right. I think he decided some could come back in the end? I forget. I couldn't believe that he never continued with Leon after setting things up with LoI. Maybe some traction would have been made. Oh well.

SALES NUMBERS & LORDS OF SHADOW:

VGChartz is not the most reliable source unfortunately. It often completely ignores entire regions, especially PAL sales for some games. With Circle of the Moon, they only have the sales for Japan, so I honestly wouldn't use VGChartz as proof at all. I strongly believe CotM sold better than CV64, but I definitely think CV64 sold a lot too. VGChartz do seem to have improved in the last couple of years, but they really have no clue about older games.

Good points. I just noticed it and was surprised. And a part of me thought it was possible given the fact that it was one of the last socially "mainstream" Castlevania games before the series went totally niche in the 2000s. CV64 was riding off the buzz of SotN and the fact that this was a return to CV's "home" Nintendo console where #IV was. Either LoD or CotM are the extreme cutoff points of CV being remotely relevant. After that, for better or for worse, it was just known as "Igarashi's series of good portable games and occasional, unnoticed 3D games"   (No disrespect to IGA, though).

Getting to LoS...even if its sales are good, they're going to be deceiving. Some of it is brand loyalty, some of it curiosity, and some of it (I've heard around the net) may be European natives wanting to support the home team (Mercury Steam). Myself, it was combination of points one and two. It wasn't a case of "this game has me totally convinced, I need a pre-order." Really, my curiosity of this "reboot" and the hunger for a new 3D Castlevania are what pulled me in.

But what I'm getting at is that there may not have been "tons" of newcomers from the God of War, Devil May Cry, Wii Sports or "fill in the blank" crowds, as intended. And because this is a "reboot," it may have gained some extra curiosity sales that it won't repeat going forward with the same formula. In summery, I think it'll probably do decent numbers, but that those numbers won't be for the reasons some might think and won't guarantee sustainability.

(Hope you all liked by infamous blocks of text!  )

[thernz]

Oh, I found the giant goat boss boring, but I'll agree with the music. The original tracks were excellent. The scale in CoTM is pretty much its defining asset. How expansive it seems, dwarfing the characters, the echoes in voices. Its "scale" is probably only beaten by LoS. As for throwing things around, IGA's really just keeping a tradition. Castlevania has always been about numerous different people against a single foe. It was never truly about the protagonist character in any of them, besides, say, Simon. It was never about a Belmont, but the Belmonts. It seems like IGA is just slowly piecing things together story-wise. It isn't so much a convoluted story as it is just empty. I'm guessing it's because of the rate the games were released, IGA worried about having space to tell that story. It's a tad frustrating, but maybe it's better that way so we don't get story crammed down our throats when the games don't even do them well. I mean, even LoS had nice presentation, but its story was really lacking despite all the added details.

I'm thinking LoS will garner good sales though. I mean, apparently it didn't have that big of a budget, so it won't be that hard to profit from it, right? It's already apparently selling well so. There seems to be a pretty good reception towards it from people who aren't really fans. Its appeal is kinda all around the place, lol. It attracts some fans, it repulses others, it attracts non-fans, but then others are just disinterested. los you are so

[Ahasverus]

I think the big goat kinda looks like Pan.

[thernz]

pan is actually a fanservice nod to my fan character named pan.

[knightmere]

I can't even count the things wrong about this post.

Nothing wrong with people having OPINIONS, but apparently you can't seem to handle the concept of people having one different then yours.  

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Indeed.
However, this thread is also important with regards to that:
Clicky

[RichterB]

Indeed.
However, this thread is also important with regards to that:
Clicky

This kind of takes on a new meaning with LoS' release. "Don't feed the trolls." lol. Or maybe better yet, don't feed the ghouls.

[DragonSlayr81]

^^^ Don't feed the Swamp Trolls!

[Valtiel]

It's actually a bit easier than that.  Yes, you have to redraw that particular piece from a slightly different angle, but the way the artists do it is they actually have a spritesheet for that one part, with an anchor point.  It may sound complicated or difficult, but in Muramasa they have a sprite for, say, shoulderpads in a boss's armor.  The rotation and scaling is done on-the-fly so there's no redrawing, but there IS redrawing when there's another different animation, one that would require such shoulderpad to be, say, showing a radically different angle.  However, the overall work for these details is easier to do than redrawing the entire body (which would be what you would have to do in traditional animation), and also allows customization of such body parts by having one replace it in the same spot.

Although I'm not all that fond of the technique, Odin Sphere and Muramasa have shown that it makes for some brilliant-looking animations.  Those games have very low level design, though... it's usually just a long corridor in which enemies randomly show up.  Castlevania has the whole platforming aspect.  I suppose that if CV did it that way, it would end up looking like the beautiful backgrounds of Donkey Kong Country, with the designs of CV, and the animation style of Muramasa.

Now THAT, plus some CV rockin' music, would make for a great CV title.

That's exactly the point. All those games suffered from very low budget, something Konami would be able to work around. And CV would need CREATIVE level design, instead of corridor repetition (yeah, it sounds silly considering how much CV is accused of being about corridors right now, but try to look past the Metroidvanias).

A CV game made with such an high quality 2D art would be a serious heavyweight, and possibly a groundbreaking title.

[Nagumo]

The last part of the retrospective seems exciting, going through all the games in chronological order and all that. I like how they talk about forgotten stories that are now reclaimed while showing footage from CotM.

yay for canon     

[Richter]

Hahah it reminded me how annoying the music in Harmony of Dissonance was, it's like the used Gameboy Color technology to compose it. Makes me want to get out Aria of Sorrow, which I shall.