Topic: Do you think originally there was more than one Simon Belmont?

[TatteredSeraph]

Ooohhh, please, do, Nagumo.  That sounds really interesting.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

My timeline basically has a Multiverse thing going on (Split Timeline not unlike Zelda's).
It ties all of the non-LoS titles.  Not sure if I can fenagle those in.

[zangetsu468]

  Not sure if I can fenagle those in.

Would you want to? 

[theplottwist]

My timeline basically has a Multiverse thing going on (Split Timeline not unlike Zelda's).
It ties all of the non-LoS titles.  Not sure if I can fenagle those in.

If you imagine that Gabriel could've been Mathias' father, then it might be possible.

Eh forget it, doesn't work. Rinaldo is 48 by LoI (1094), and LoS takes place in 1047 where Rinaldo is already an adult.

[Super Waffle]

Simonception.

[Shiroi Koumori]

Simonception.

I'm expecting a waffle fanfic for this theme.

[zangetsu468]

If you imagine that Gabriel could've been Mathias' father, then it might be possible.

Eh forget it, doesn't work. Rinaldo is 48 by LoI (1094), and LoS takes place in 1047 where Rinaldo is already an adult.

Unless he got a sweet sweet lick of that philosopher's stone..

[Nagumo]

Ooohhh, please, do, Nagumo.  That sounds really interesting.

I'm working on it right now. However, depending if I will be busy or not, it might take a week or two. It's five pages in total. So please stay tuned.   

[TatteredSeraph]

Thanks.  Take as long as you need to - we can all wait.

[Shinobi]

that may
Back to the mystery I mentioned before. I'm refering to the mysterious cliff-hanger ending (which is achieved by beating the game under 7 days) which never seems to be properly followed up upon, where Dracula supposedly isn't quite dead. Rondo takes place 100 years after Simon Belmont's era but the circumstances under which Dracula is revided, as depicted in the intro, are clearly different than the one is the ending from Simon's Quest.

           

This is something that has been pointed out before, but doesn't the gravestone under which Dracula is buried have a very strong resemblance to the one from Super Castlevania IV? I see at least four distinct elements which are the same.
   


The question has been pondered before: could Super Castlevania IV have been a sequel to Simon's Quest? When looking at the game's intro the conclusion can quickly be drawn that this wouldn't quite work, as the setting is 100 years after Dracula has been defeated. However, what if the Simon from that game is a similair kind of character as "Simon Belmont III"? Could he actually originally have been a descendant of the Simon Belmont from the NES games? That would defintely explain the mystery surrounding the ending from Simon's Quest. It's not explicitly stated anywhere in the materials, but I wonder if the game was developed with this idea in mind. Obviously, in the current timeline this is not the case anymore. But assuming that my theory is true, I could imagine IGA simply merging the events of the game with the other Simon Belmont games because of how similar all these stories are. 

If I were to ask someone involved with the game about this, I wonder if they would tell me I was right on the money, or just stare at me baffled and confused.

Here's my take, Dracula's grave stone as seen in SCV4 was already made after he died as a human and before he became a bad vampire, also someone already pointed out from the actual translation of the intro that it was never mentioned that Simon will face Dracula once again but it will be his first time to fight Dracula.

In the ending of Simon's Quest, after Simon find Dracula's parts, revived and killed for the second time, he buried whatever remains of Dracula somewhere in a different location as compared from Super Castlevania 4's intro(It's in cemetery while the latter was in the middle of the landscape) and somehow replicate the same gravestone which was already destroyed not only to make Dracula rest in peace but to pay respect to him hence he kneels, after all he was once a feared yet respected hero/ruler like the real life Vlad Tepes Dracula. I think the scene where his hand emerge from the grave afterwards was intentionally a non-canon ending like the Parasite Eve 1's Opera scene ending if you're familiar with it.

[Inccubus]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. Because the following post is already very long I didn't end up replying to most of the points people brought up. However, I'll make sure to do so later.

I think this is has been the consensus for quite a while, isn't? The Japanese version was always a "remake" and the overseas version took creative liberaties and made it a sequel. However, in cases like this it's important to reexamine what we already know. For example, it's important to consider this theory has never been officially confirmed by anyone involved with the series. I suppose there's Cox who considered the game a remake, but I wouldn't consider his view to have any more weight than the average fan.

The fact that the game is called "Akumajou Dracula" might indicate it has some relation the the original Famicom game, but this fact by itself doesn't really say much. First of all, it happens to be both the name of the first game and the overall name for the series after all.

Furthermore, one of the people involved with Haunted Castle denied it's any kind of remake of the original Famicom game, yet in Japan, the title of the game is still Akumajou Dracula. Meaning there is no "rule" that when a game is called Akumajou Dracula this makes it a remake of the first game. There could be all kinds of reasons why the title was chosen. The title may not necessarily imply a relation with another game, but could simply be a busines decesion, like brand recognition. Or perhaps it might indicidate the game is a fresh start. You can't just assume the title implies something specific if this isn't confirmed by the developers themselves.

And last but not least, there's no contemporary official material that outright refers to Super Castlevania IV as a remake. For example, that booklet that came with that Castlevania Best Music Collections Box says the game uses the story from the Famicom game, but "the game's contents are a completely new work". The game is only refered to as a remake by the fanbase. Also, the producer of the game's director himselves denies the game was developed as a full fledged remake. It's hardly a clear-cut case.

About the assumption about the localizers going rogue and making SCIV a sequel, do we really know this for sure? After all, we don't know anything about Konami America and Konami Japan communicated with each other. We don't have any evidence about how things went down.

This is just me playing Devil's advocate, so you could say: "Well, where's the evidence for your theory then?" And the truth would be that I can't provide much of it. However, I found a really interesting preview from the game back from a 1991 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. I found this after I had already developed my theory, and I was suprised and how much it lined up with what I had came up with it.

         
         
Note how it establishes the following things:

• Simon defeated Dracula 100 years prior to the beginning of the game.
• Now the people of Transylvania are looking for a "new and more powerful Belmont".
• The protagonist of the game is refered to as Simon Belmont.

So, assuming the writer isn't simply condradicting himself, this strongly backs up my theory. Of course, I know it isn't that simple. We would also have to consider that this is just one specific preview and perhaps the writer was just making it up. However, when looking at other previews from that period, I couldn't find another one saying the same thing, but what all these articles share in common is that they use the same rhetoric of Super Castlevania IV being a sequel.

They do go about this in different ways. Aside from the preview I posted, there are two other types. The first kind of article describes the game as a sequel but does so in a very generic and un-specific fashion. "Simon Belmont is back!", etc. The second type seems to describe the game as a direct sequel featuring the same Simon Belmont as before.

What I personally think may have happend is that the journalists who wrote these articles may have gotten the information from Konami that the game was a sequel to Simon's Quest and that the protagonist was a "new" Simon Belmont, but then this information may have gotten muddled along the way. Perhaps the English intro of the game adding the bit about Simon "once again" going up against Dracula may have been some misguided way of further making clear the game was a sequel?

But that's just speculation, so let stick to the facts. One could say: "So what? The information is from an English video game magazine, which weren't always reliable back then". So I also decided to look into what Japanese had to say about the game. I did find a magazine which contained a preview of the game (Weekly Famicom News) which I already posted on the Castlevania wiki. This isn't in any of the scans but in the table of contents it says:  "シモン伝説再び!" (The Legend of Simon returns!). As for the conents of the article, it doesn't really say anything about how exactly it relates to previous entries, just that it's the newest game in the series. It also doesn't say anything about it it being a remake or something. Anyway, there's at least one more magazine I want to check out, so I'll let you guys know if it says anything interesting.   
   

This info has a problem, and that is that it is based on a rather big assumption that the EGM writer had ANY information about the game besides the review cart itself. It can easily be inferred that everything they wrote was due to the English intro. My understanding of the time this article was published is that reviewers were lucky to receive a one page synopsis rom the publisher let alone anything at all from the actual studio that made the game.
So going with the facts we only know for sure that the writer had the game. We don't know of anything else they might have gotten.

As for the other article, saying that "The Legend of Simon Returns!" is too non specific. It could refer to Simon Belmont literally returning, or it could be referring to the legend (read story) of Simon Belmont returning.

As for the status of SCV4 as a remake or sequel, it is neither. To get really pedantic, it's a revision. It's a new take on the series using an existing story.
This makes sense given that guys making it were seemingly allowed to be very experimental with the capabilities of the SNES. As a programmer and designer myself if I were them I would have been happy to use an existing story so I could concentrate on the game play instead.
Chronicles is more of a straight remake with some creative license.
Haunted Castle is basically an entirely new game with Simon used as the protagonist because I don't think anyone cared beyond
making-an-Akumajou-Dracula-game-for-arcades". Plus, Simon had some recognition by then.
Vampire Killer is basically an expanded port.

Talking about facts again, the SNES version of the game has changes from the SFC version and we simply don't know if they were sanctioned by the creators or not. Until such time as we can get a comment from them, then the safest assumption is that the SFC version came out as they intended and someone in the US decided to make seem like a sequel.

[Shinobi]

This info has a problem, and that is that it is based on a rather big assumption that the EGM writer had ANY information about the game besides the review cart itself. It can easily be inferred that everything they wrote was due to the English intro. My understanding of the time this article was published is that reviewers were lucky to receive a one page synopsis rom the publisher let alone anything at all from the actual studio that made the game.
So going with the facts we only know for sure that the writer had the game. We don't know of anything else they might have gotten.

As for the other article, saying that "The Legend of Simon Returns!" is too non specific. It could refer to Simon Belmont literally returning, or it could be referring to the legend (read story) of Simon Belmont returning.

As for the status of SCV4 as a remake or sequel, it is neither. To get really pedantic, it's a revision. It's a new take on the series using an existing story.
This makes sense given that guys making it were seemingly allowed to be very experimental with the capabilities of the SNES. As a programmer and designer myself if I were them I would have been happy to use an existing story so I could concentrate on the game play instead.
Chronicles is more of a straight remake with some creative license.
Haunted Castle is basically an entirely new game with Simon used as the protagonist because I don't think anyone cared beyond
making-an-Akumajou-Dracula-game-for-arcades". Plus, Simon had some recognition by then.
Vampire Killer is basically an expanded port.

Talking about facts again, the SNES version of the game has changes from the SFC version and we simply don't know if they were sanctioned by the creators or not. Until such time as we can get a comment from them, then the safest assumption is that the SFC version came out as they intended and someone in the US decided to make seem like a sequel.

Yeah, not to mention even the info for Symphony of The Night in EGM before the game's release was wrong as well like the title was "Castlevania 5" and it has 4 playable characters .

[Super Waffle]

How dare they refer to SotN Maria as a "peasant girl."

Only I'm allowed to trash her.

[Guy Belmont]

I remember reading that Konami Wai Wai World ,  had a descendant  of Simon called Simon Belmont 3 in it. And there was  Another descendant of Simon 1950s who I believe was a actor, in the game book Akumajō Dracula ― Kojō no Shitō.
 I know that one was  a joke game and the other  was in  another timeline,  buuut it does show that there  may have been a precedent for it, sort of like a collective understanding that there was a line of Belmont's called Simon.

[Shinobi]

I remember reading that Konami Wai Wai World ,  had a descendant  of Simon called Simon Belmont 3 in it. And there was  Another descendant of Simon 1950s who I believe was a actor, in the game book Akumajō Dracula ― Kojō no Shitō.
 I know that one was  a joke game and the other  was in  another timeline,  buuut it does show that there  may have been a precedent for it, sort of like a collective understanding that there was a line of Belmont's called Simon.

Nahh before Wai Wai world was made, it was established in Akumajou Densetsu AKA Castlevania 3 that the line of Belmonts has different names so that game was clearly a a parody or a joke.