Topic: New Castlevania!!!???!!! (DS)

[Genya Arikado]

The DS is better because of the game library, the touch screen and mic.  It just makes games more real.

[jimmay17]

The DS is better because of the game library, the touch screen and mic.

[Profbeanburrito]

I don't know, Maybe it's just me but it seems like all anyone cares about are graphics anymore.. Graphics don't make the game. Sure it's nice to look at and I do love good graphics, who doesn't? But all my favorite games are mostly 8 and 16 bit games, my number 1 game being Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and those graphics aren't amazing, good for it's time though.

It just seems to me that nobody will focus on a fun game if the graphics suck, It kind of bothers me I guess.

But, to each their own, right?

[jimmay17]

In Reply To #485

True. Some people do focus on graphics too much, but we're not really asking for next-gen, photo-realistic graphics here. A lot of us just wish they could match the graphics of Symphony, which is what? Ten years old now.

[Long John Silver]

Compare, just for example, the enemy deaths: I loved them in Symphony, but the DS games are really unimpressive. CD technology just allowed for so much more to be going on, and for it all to look so much smoother.

Er, what? You don't know what are you talking about. CD has nothing to do with enemy animations, programming does. It's just that the DS titles' programmers weren't as skilled or imaginative. The ds could easily have equally impressive deaths as sotn did. I mean, look at dos's zombie death for example.

The only thing CD technology introduced was more space for cd quality music and videos and big loading times.

Sotn without music, videos and cutscene talk is only 46 mb. It's less than a standard DS cartridge (64 mb), so sotn itself would fit perfectly fine. As for the rest, the actimagine technology would fit the videos within 5 mb range and the music could be done with mp3 like format, so even if it didn't fit on a 64 mb cartridge, it would on a slightly more expensive 128 mb one.

[jimmay17]

In Reply To #487

I was referring to the fire effects in enemy explosions. Compare the ones in SoTN to PoR and DoS and tell me they purposely made them look that cheesy. The worst example I can think of is the manticore fire death in DoS. The fire--a bunch of opaque, unshaded, little identical orange flames--looks atrocious. CDs can do effects cartridges can't (or won't without a lot of extra effort).

[Steve]

I hear this a lot, but I've yet to see a single game prove it.

Someone hasn't played Contra 4.

On the other hand, games that show how inferior the DS is to the PSone CD technology aren't hard to find. Compare Legend of Mana on the PSone to Children of Mana on the DS.

Children of Mana's budget was probably a small fraction of Legend of Mana's.  Like Dawn and Portrait, it was held back by a lack of ambition and artistry, not so much technology.

[bobby digital]

In Reply To #488
I'm sorry, but you keep going on and on and on about all the great things CDs do..please shut up.

Do you know what hardware is?  CDs hold data.  That's it.  Hardware makes the special effects, not the CD.

[Long John Silver]

CDs can do effects cartridges can't (or won't without a lot of extra effort).

...

Dammit, no. Cds can't do that shit. Cd is a storage device, not a display one.

This is another coding item. Ps1 has hardware additive/substractive blending support, ds doesn't. It still uses it sparingly (with software implementation of it), but mostly doesn't. Why, who the hell knows.

Maybe iga's one of those "old-fags" who can't stand a bit more realistic looking flames and need it to look all cartoony, opaque and with no contrast.

[jimmay17]

Oh internet bitchery.

[Long John Silver]

The cartridges can now hold up to 4 gb of data or so btw. That's almost as much as a dvd.

Well at least my m3 device for ds can.

[jimmay17]

In Reply To #493

Really? Let's hope they use it to its maximum potential for the next game. I don't hate the DS on principle, I've just been really disappointed by it. Contra 4 does look really good, though. I might have to pick it up when I get some money. Speaking of Contra 4, I wonder if that kind of full use of both screens would work for the next Castlevania; just a thought.

[Long John Silver]

Contra 4 uses only 32 mb cart btw. To compare, both cv titles use a 64 mb one.

[Steve]

Contra 4 uses only 32 mb cart btw. To compare, both cv titles use a 64 mb one.

Yet Contra 4 looks twice as good.

[Mikepjr]

Well... lets look at those screens closly..
... to me it looks like a early build.. and if you look behind the message box you will see that the main character is talking with someone.. their are 2 people there.. i still think the portrait of the girl is not the main character.

AS for what i was saying about the graphics.. the DS can not even display as many colors as the PSP.. or.. thats how it seems.. and so far the DS has only had a few good games.. that stylus thing really alianates people like me who just want to use buttons.. which is why im tempted to ditch my DS for a PSP..

And graphics can be very importaint.. they go hand in hand with everything else thats needed for a good game.. if one thing falls flat of the rest of the things a games chances can suffer.. would you play super mario galaxy if it looked like an old atari game? yes i know bad example... would you have wanted to buy and or play SOTN if it had looked like an old atari game or worse? No.. you would not.. would you like to turn on PoR and hear crappy bleeps and blops like on the atari.. no.. my point simple put is that graphics music sounds gameplay and story all have to be equaly well done or a game fails, they all go hand in hand.
I cant ever go back to NES because it hurt my eyes back in the day.. the colors looked too twitchy and too bright.. the SNES is another story.. games on the SNES looked perfect... for the time.. unless the artists were lazy lol.

It would be great if a custom cartrige could be made to store more then 64 megs.. and the reason nintendos handhelds still use cartriges is because CDs spinning and a lazer reading the disk takes a lot of power.

As much as i want a PSP.. dealing with the short battery life worrys me.