Topic: Hardcore Gaming 101 releasing a Castlevania book soon

[Dremn]

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/books.htm

HG101 Presents: Castlevania

Welcome to the hell house! Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: Castlevania includes 158 pages with full reviews of over thirty Castlevania titles - starting from the 1987 Nintendo original up to the 2014 Lords of Shadow 2 - plus reviews of clone games, soundtracks, books, trivia, and more!

Purchase on Amazon - Coming Soon!

We should find out more about it in a month.

[Nagumo]

Nice, Hardcore Gaming has lots of good articles. I hope this one will be well researched.   

[Shiroi Koumori]

Cool! I'm excited for this.

[PFG9000]

I'm looking forward to it.  It's kinda like The Castlevania Dungeon: The Book.

[Intersection]

Good stuff. Hopefully they'll take the time to reassess each game, instead of simply compiling reviews.

[Abnormal Freak]

I always wondered why HG101 didn't cover the Castlevania series, especially with Kurt seemingly abandoning the Dungeon main site. Now I know why. I'll definitely pick this up.

[Sindra]

Nice, Hardcore Gaming has lots of good articles. I hope this one will be well researched.   

Consider it's done by Kurt "Former CV Dungeon Master" Kalata, that's pretty much a sure thing.

I asked him what he plans to reference in terms of the soundtracks (so I can make it relevant to pimping on OSV) and he said he'll have a full listing plus unofficial albums. I'm hoping he goes into a bit of detail as to the relevance and significance of each OST, since it's such a huge factor in the history of Castlevania as a whole.

[uzo]

I hope so. Music is a big part of Castlevania's legacy.

This whole thing sounds really cool. I'm interested to see how it turns out.

[RichterB]

Very interested!!! Hope it's fair and balanced in its treatment of games. (i.e. none of the typical "Dracula XX is a watered down Rondo" and "CV64 is broken and had no unused elements left out on the development schedule.") Since it's Kurt, though, I expect big things.

EDIT:

By far, the best book of this type I have experienced for video games has been MM25: Mega Man & Mega Man X Official Complete Works. I've been hoping for a Castlevania-focused book like that. But how does something like this get approved by Konami rights-wise when it's an indie website?

[X]

I'll be keeping my eyes out for this volume too! Can never have too much CV in one's life. I just hope the LoS section doesn't take up most of the space. That right is reserved for the original canon.

[GuyStarwind]

Yeah this looks pretty interesting. May have to get it.

[beingthehero]

But how does something like this get approved by Konami rights-wise when it's an indie website?

It's a book of reviews, you don't need a company's permission to review the products it sells, bubba. 

[Foffy]

I've always been interested in the extent of clone games with the series. I know there was a fan game that tried incredibly hard to be a Castlevania game, and I know the PS2 Van Helsing game references the Belmont family.

[Chernabogue]

I asked him what he plans to reference in terms of the soundtracks (so I can make it relevant to pimping on OSV) and he said he'll have a full listing plus unofficial albums. I'm hoping he goes into a bit of detail as to the relevance and significance of each OST, since it's such a huge factor in the history of Castlevania as a whole.

That sounds great!

[K.K. Drunkinski]

I've always been interested in the extent of clone games with the series. I know there was a fan game that tried incredibly hard to be a Castlevania game, and I know the PS2 Van Helsing game references the Belmont family.

If you're including fan made games and other games with vampires with references to CV, that could be a whole book to itself, and would be a monumental task to make sure you got 'em all. As far as clones that were official releases on actual consoles though, in my opinion "Vampire" (a.k.a. "Master of Darkness", a.k.a. "Vampire: Master of Darkness") for the Sega Master System is hands down the best of 'em all.

But about this new book coming out, I'm ultra excited. Can't wait to get it on the bookshelf.