Castlevania Miscellanies

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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Blinge
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Blinge »

xorthen wrote:Too bad Konami or whoever decided to turn it into some stupid cartoon and make it a gay fanfic for gen z.
Gay fanfic how? What was the moment it changed?
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by FinalBaton »

I'd like to point out that the title of the most recent bot thread in Off-Topic absolutely sounds like a character dialogue in the US version of Castlevania II : Simon's Quest.

''I think I have done the cursed''.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Blinge wrote:
xorthen wrote:Too bad Konami or whoever decided to turn it into some stupid cartoon and make it a gay fanfic for gen z.
Gay fanfic how? What was the moment it changed?
NSFW:

https://youtu.be/UtSwKpJW1Fw

The show's awesome though.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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can't be arsed to verify my age on YT to watch that..
so now i'm imagining all sorts :shock:
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by FinalBaton »

I thought the Sufami CV4 boxart made it clear way back :lol: looks like some bdsm play going on between Drac and BERUMONDO
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Blinge wrote:can't be arsed to verify my age on YT to watch that..
so now i'm imagining all sorts :shock:
I think there is some kind of orgy situation. I watched some of the first season and I wasn't too into it based on the writing. The whole show seems like it's just trying too hard to me. But whatever, I don't want to rain on any parades if you like it I guess I just don't get it.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Blinge »

Blaming the direction some netflix adaptation took doesn't show a series going downhill.

That's like saying you don't like the Resident Evil series anymore because the movies were bad.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sumez »

Yeah the CV series took a pretty steep downhill turn way before that embarrassing Netflix show
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by vol.2 »

Absolutely. I don't consider the show to be related to the games in any way.

I'm still just at the beginning of the first PS2 CV at BIL's suggestion. I think it's alright as long as you aren't hung up on it being anything like CV. I took a break after opening up the second hub area because I felt like it was getting a tad tedious, but I'm sure I'll get back to it.

Haven't played anything newer than that, and I won't unless there is some major return-to-form.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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An old acquaintance who worked for Konami Hawaii had a great story, about some bigwigs from Japan arriving with a beta of LOI. "Wow!" he exclaimed after his turn. "This combat engine is great. I can't wait to see the proper stage design!" Plot twist: It wasn't a beta. It was the retail master, and he almost got fired. :lol:

A perfect summation of LOI. Thoroughbred combat engine. Pac-Man map design. IGA should've spent less time slagging off CV64, more observing its perilously towering, pest-ridden stage design. That plus LOI's ferocious combat would've made a very decent 3D Castlevania.

LOI's still a very good, albeit paper-flat 3D character action game, as-is. Superb OST, among Yamane's best ever; the electronic influence might not please everyone (it does me! SOTN's secret track is great, I loved seeing it gain a little ground here :cool:), but there is no denying the enveloping darkness elsewhere. And while the map is pancake-flat, its secret design is actually pretty good. Many fond hours chasing down those optional trinkets, post-clear.

I enjoyed it enough to clear out its "@crazy" mode with the self-imposed stipulation of no healing during bosses. It's nowhere as finessed or challenging as DMC1, but it controls just as sharply, with a comparably shattering sense of impact. A good game that stood out in its time, among so many milquetoast DMC-alikes (including DMC2). I like its dodge input more than DMC1's slightly finicky one, too (it works more like DMC3's Trickster dodge, that game being well over a year away at LOI's release)
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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For sure. I have zero regrets picking it up, especially because it can currently be had for cheap (trends suggest that will change). I had fun learning how to play the game, but I didn't get automatically engaged in it in the same way I do with other similar games (for example Bloodstained et al). I think that's really the thing letting it down. It's an excellent game when you playing it, but there is some kind of missing x-factor to it all. I wouldn't say that other CV games exactly have stellar writing per se, but there is a kind of narrative cohesive to the overall aesthetic that doesn't permeate the gameplay in quite the same way, and the camera sometimes feels like it's fighting me more than the enemies are themselves.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sengoku Strider »

vol.2 wrote:
Blinge wrote:can't be arsed to verify my age on YT to watch that..
so now i'm imagining all sorts :shock:
I think there is some kind of orgy situation. I watched some of the first season and I wasn't too into it based on the writing. The whole show seems like it's just trying too hard to me. But whatever, I don't want to rain on any parades if you like it I guess I just don't get it.
Without spoiling a good scene, there is indeed something of a fully depicted all-nekkid 3-way involving Alucard and a pair of siblings.

But I don't find the notion of Alucard being bisexual in any way a radical departure from how he's depicted post-CV III or vampire lore in general. I can't recall anything else off hand in the series that would label it 'gay fanfic.'

The first season left me flat too. I don't remember why I even watched the second season, it took me a couple of years to bother. But I'm glad I did. The plot becomes vastly more interesting, with some good characters introduced that stick. Particularly around where all the castle monsters come from.

The third season is almost a long aftermath to everything that happened in the second, and gives them a chance to flesh those characters out much more. By the end of it I was all-in on the series.

I'm only a couple of episodes into the fourth season, but so far so good.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sumez »

The second season of that show was one of the most embarassing things I have seen.
I'm not sure why Alucard being bisexual matters. That's definitely not the problem the show has.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Sumez wrote:The second season of that show was one of the most embarassing things I have seen.
How so?
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sengoku Strider »

I just watched season 4 ep. 6. Aside from their ambitions clearly outpacing their animation budget, that was epic. I don't know what you're all on about, I wish the actual games had stuff that good.

============================================

It took a long time, but Castlevania Bloodlines finally grabbed me. When I got the Castlevania Collection like a year & a half ago, I mainlined that whole thing in like 10 days.

Except for Bloodlines. After going through CV III (four times in a row for each character's trophy, no less) and Super IV, I couldn't make myself play it. Aleste P-capsules instead of hearts. The gameplay seemed a little mushy. A weird whip sound. The bosses were wimps doing goofy Gunstar Heroes tricks. Nobody was even named Belmont. It felt like some kind of off-brand knockoff, sorta like this but in Castlevania form:

Image

But the Bloodlines trophies were the only ones I had left, so I kept going back every couple of months. Yesterday I finally sat down and plowed through the last two stages, which turned out to be the most interesting. It was once I hit that last stage, with the crazy fractured screen effect and the Super IV theme kicking in right at the end, that it all clicked for me. I banged my head against the bosses until they finally went down, then immediately cranked it up to expert and went back at it with ELecarde.

Expert is where the game really came alive for me. NES CV III damage values (four strikes and yer out), upped enemy counts & HP, more projectiles everywhere. I'd only intended to give it a couple of minutes, but instead I stayed up until 3am on a Sunday until I'd finished the whole damn thing. The pacing and intensity felt so much better. I actually ended up really liking it, and I'll probably go back at expert with John Morris even though I've 100%ed the trophies. If I'd been a Genesis kid I would've been pretty happy with it. Even though it's probably still 3rd place among 16-bit CVs, it belongs in that club.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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I was a Genesis kid, and I didn't play Bloodlines until the Collection came out on Steam. It came out in 1994, which was way past the prime time for Genesis; many (NA) players had moved onto SNES and would very shortly be playing PS1.

I still not completed (finished 3rd level), but I thought it was at least good enough to revisit. It's an interesting alternative story game in the CV canon.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Blinge »

Yeah the idea that it's some sort of knockoff or pale imitation is misguided at best.

Oh no, it looks and plays a bit different :cry:

Nope, It's one of the best Castlevanias! all my homies love bloodlines.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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vol.2 wrote:I was a Genesis kid, and I didn't play Bloodlines until the Collection came out on Steam. It came out in 1994, which was way past the prime time for Genesis; many (NA) players had moved onto SNES and would very shortly be playing PS1.
Au contraire, 1994 was peak Genesis. Playstation didn't hit the West until September '95. Saturn in May '95. 32-X not until the end of '94 (Nov 21).

Bloodlines hit in March of '94. Take a look at the other major or notable releases that year:

Sonic 3
Sonic & Knuckles
Contra Hard Corps
Ecco The Dolphin: Tides of Time
Mega Man: The Wily Wars (I know, big asterisk next to this one)
Dynamite Headdy
Streets of Rage 3
Shining Force II
Dune: The Battle for Arrakis
Earthworm Jim
Mega Turrican
Virtua Racing
Super Street Fighter II
V-V/Grindstormer

And though it was techhically a fall '93 release, this was the year of NHL '94, widely considered the best sports game of its era. I knew kids who didn''t care about video games at all buying Geneses just for that game. Everyone was playing it.

So that is already an absolute murderer's row of all-time classics (and the not so classic Mega Man + SoR3).
But then there was the big one, at least for its time - Mortal Kombat II.
The Toy Retail Sales Tracking Service reported that during the key shopping month of November 1994, 63% of all 16-bit video game consoles sold were Sega systems.
Sega never hit these heights again, '94 was their moment.

And then Nakayama panicked over the Atari Jaguar for some reason and it was pretty much all downhill from there.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Sengoku Strider wrote:Expert is where the game really came alive for me. NES CV III damage values (four strikes and yer out), upped enemy counts & HP, more projectiles everywhere. I'd only intended to give it a couple of minutes, but instead I stayed up until 3am on a Sunday until I'd finished the whole damn thing. The pacing and intensity felt so much better. I actually ended up really liking it, and I'll probably go back at expert with John Morris even though I've 100%ed the trophies. If I'd been a Genesis kid I would've been pretty happy with it. Even though it's probably still 3rd place among 16-bit CVs, it belongs in that club.
Bloodlines/VK (there's very little difference at Expert level) is one of those console games whose "super" difficulty is better thought of as its default. I know I have to be reminded Normal even exists when recommending it.

(if it helps anyone, you can unlock Expert without clearing Normal first via Konami code - hit [start] as the game logo rises out of the blood, then enter [UU DD LR LR B A] and you should hear a chime - Expert will now appear in the Option menu's difficulty selection. if you screw up the code, you'll need to wait a few seconds for the title logo sequence to restart)

(also, while you're in Options, go to the Sound Test, and play effects 05, 07 and 03 - Konami 573! - now, entering POW mode will switch the BGM to Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, or Beginning, causing massive fanservice feels and making it XTRA PAINFUL when you get bumped out of it! The only solution is to GET IT MORE Image)

I thought the change from hearts to jewels was pretty well-done, albeit superfluous. We take explosive gory violence for granted, post-SOTN - but BL was the first CV to really embrace bloody horror/action aesthetics - something the faster-paced, larger-calibre combat reflects (I like to think of it as the series' response to Tecmo's famous CV rejig; a veritable Akumajou Ryukenden). Lopping a Harpy's head off, then battling its thrashing headless corpse was more the preserve of Splatterhouse, at this point.

It's a classy joint, to be sure - no tracking fountain blood into Versailles' sumptuously shadow-lit great hall! - just a bit more liberal where appropriate, a shade beyond X68K's flayed faces and X's restless charnel pits. These are ultimately all games about preposterously buff men destroying armies of dead things, after all.

Spoiler
Image


^^^ bzzzz! Holy fuck, that ass is ripe. Changed to lime green in the pussy-ass PAL ver... but that one still has birdstep, so they can't have been looking all that hard :o

Spoiler
Image


^^^ stabbing your foe to death at close range is once again a thing! (GIF tm/c Squire)

In retrospect, hearts would've worked fine, having already entered series' legend. But exchanging a lovingly rounded, arse-redolent symbol for cold, hard, Mad Murder Machine-fuelling carbon - small jewels bouncing to a halt, large ones thudding hard, to preserve the classic small/big drop - made perfect aesthetic sense; just like turning the ambiguously bonking cross into a gashing razor boomerang, and ditching the dagger (non-piercing, against these beefy hordes? nah) and stopwatch (nothing can stop this bath of blood).

It also gave the US manual, in Konami's usual cheerful cheesy style, the great line "A fool and his jewels are easily parted." Image Image
Blinge wrote:Yeah the idea that it's some sort of knockoff or pale imitation is misguided at best.
Indeed, it was always referred to in promotion as a "Dracula Gaiden" affair. The series was in expansive mode ca 1993, with MD, PCE and X68000 originals in simultaneous development. I suspect the post-script, 1995's relatively quick n' dirty Dracula XX, was Konami throwing a bone to the series' former signature MFG, though I've no idea if it was for any lack of success on the Sega/NEC/Sharp fronts.

VK being a stylistic departure would be a lot more obvious to JP audiences, with it ditching the "Akumajou Dracula" name entirely - because after a brief tour of its ruins, 95% of it does not involve Demon Castle Dracula at all. That would be false advertising, or some shit! They would have to subtitle it Akumajou Dracula: Buff Young Buddies' Great Road Trip ~ Europa Daisenryaku, driving printing costs through the roof.

The GB games do similar in Japan, they're not Akumajous either ("Legend of Dracula I & II"). They weren't half some clever cunts, those oldschool JP devs. Image
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Sengoku Strider wrote: Au contraire, 1994 was peak Genesis. Playstation didn't hit the West until September '95. Saturn in May '95. 32-X not until the end of '94 (Nov 21).
Last gasp is more like it. I don't know where you're getting your sales numbers from (AFAIK, SEGA refused to publish any), but the Genesis was on life support by the end of 94 and SEGA was pulling desperate shit like the 32x to try and stay relevant.

If CVBL had been released a year or two earlier, it would have fared much, much better. By mid 94, me and most people in my sphere of existence were playing SNES, and DKC was the christmas 94 game I remember. Even though I still owned a Genesis, I wasn't thinking about buying games for it anymore.

If the reality you are insisting on is correct, then I must have had an anomalous experience.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Blinge wrote:Yeah the idea that it's some sort of knockoff or pale imitation is misguided at best.

Oh no, it looks and plays a bit different :cry:
Sounds more like CV4 :D
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

Post by Sengoku Strider »

vol.2 wrote:Last gasp is more like it. I don't know where you're getting your sales numbers from (AFAIK, SEGA refused to publish any), but the Genesis was on life support by the end of 94 and SEGA was pulling desperate shit like the 32x to try and stay relevant.

If CVBL had been released a year or two earlier, it would have fared much, much better. By mid 94, me and most people in my sphere of existence were playing SNES, and DKC was the christmas 94 game I remember. Even though I still owned a Genesis, I wasn't thinking about buying games for it anymore.

If the reality you are insisting on is correct, then I must have had an anomalous experience.
Well, everything I wrote is pretty straightforward, save that apologies are due on the 63% quote. It was from an old EGM, and the site I read quoted it as referring to '94. But when I tracked down the original editorial it was titled "Sega Sets the Pace for '94," but was from the March '94 issue, and so that particular line was clearly referring to November '93:
Spoiler
Image
This chart originates from a pre-meltdown NeoGAF, where console numbers were treated as sacrosanct, and any heresies promptly dealt with by the headsman's ax. Nintendo was willing to give out shipment numbers from that period, which they were able to compare with Japanese sources for the Mega Drive stuff:

Image

These numbers include Europe, where the SNES wasn't as successful, so the waters are muddied a bit. I think it is certainly reasonable to believe DKC Christmas saw Nintendo catch Sega in North America.

The "everyone moved on to SNES" thing was demonstrably not the case though. Most kids/households simply weren't going to have multiple concurrent consoles, and the Genesis was still selling on the strength of Sonic, Madden/NHL & Mortal Kombat.

The real last gasp year for the Genesis was 1996. '95 still saw a number of big or notable releases:

Phantasy Star IV
X-Men 2: Clone Wars
Alien Solider (obligatory Sega channel asterisk)
Beyond Oasis
Ristar
Crusader of Centy
The Adventures of Batman & Robin
Comix Zone
Ecco Jr.
Mortal Kombat 3
Vectorman
Earthworm Jim 2

So you can see Sega were still very invested in the system. They abandoned ship at this point in Japan, but like the Master System before it, it continued on overseas.

1996 is where you can see they'd made a concerted effort to shift all their consumer development over to Saturn. Sega CD saw its last releases in 1995 (except for Compile's Japan-only Shadowrun VN which didn't make it out the door until February '96). The Game Gear only saw 10 releases in '96 and aside from Jurassic Park in August of '97 was done by the end of that year.

1996's notable Genesis titles:

Sonic 3D Blast
Vectorman 2
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

Outside that, all the annualized sports franchises were still going, and a number of licensed children's properties were still showing up, and a bunch of other 3rd party odds & ends.

1997 is really the final year of the Genesis. Notable NA releases:

Virtua Fighter 2
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Golden Axe III (Sega Channel)

As well as your Maddens, FIFAs & World Series Baseballses.

1998 saw one single, solitary release: Frogger stumbled out at some point that year, and the Genesis was done...unless you lived in Brazil. Games continued to be made there for a couple of years still, and they saw releases like YuYu Hakusho in 1999 that nobody else outside Japan ever got. I believe the Brazilian Mega Drive is still in production to this day, after a gap in manufacturing for a few years.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Image

oooh. new experimental plays got me this time with Alucard. I think I can shave a good few minutes off that.

Using just wolf to reach Coliseum early is an easy enough trick.
Jumping up to the Bat area in library using wolf+mist is not.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Yeey sub 1 hour
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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I've gotten a sudden urge to replay Castlevania 64. I've got a modded Wii U here that plays 64 stuff just fine, but I'm buggered if I know how to add games to it :D
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Pureez can someone mod SoTN and add Grant Dynasty as a playable character?
Grant Mode. kthx

also maybe Sypha but y'know, i don't wanna push my luck.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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BIL wrote: VK being a stylistic departure would be a lot more obvious to JP audiences, with it ditching the "Akumajou Dracula" name entirely - because after a brief tour of its ruins, 95% of it does not involve Demon Castle Dracula at all. That would be false advertising, or some shit! They would have to subtitle it Akumajou Dracula: Buff Young Buddies' Great Road Trip ~ Europa Daisenryaku, driving printing costs through the roof.

The GB games do similar in Japan, they're not Akumajous either ("Legend of Dracula I & II"). They weren't half some clever cunts, those oldschool JP devs. Image
Wasn't the JP version of Simon's Quest also missing the Akumajou?
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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Yep! That one's just Dracula II: Noroi no Fuuin/The Accursed Seal.

I like that, outside of II, the JP side of the series is totally bereft of numbers, save for its sub-series (Dracula Densetsu II, and SOTN's "Dracula X2" nickname, seen in the final via one of its save icons). Besides indicating what should've been a lengthy sub-series, Rondo's "X" also has a cute double reading as "Ten," with the previous Draculas - on FC, MSX2, GB, AC and SFC - adding up to nine.

Contra is the same way, no numerals at all. I prefer series keep that stuff minimal, particularly ones as distinct as the trad CVs, where just about everything past the FDS original feels like an independent sequel, rather than anything so perfunctory as a franchise.
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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I find it interesting that Akumajou Densetsu is missing Dracula from the title, probably as a way of saying "You know the deal by now". Honestly, I feel that game is more fitting of the title "Castlevania Legends" than that GB game. Mainly because it's actually a closer translation of Akumajou Densetsu than the original JP title of "Legends".
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Re: Castlevania Miscellanies

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I'd never thought about the Castlevania Legends / Akumajou Densetsu thing, haha. CV Legends is deserving of very little indeed, dull as dishwater compared to the inventiveness of GB2. Its JP subtitle "Dark Night Prelude" was badass, too...

Always thought "Legend of the Demon Castle" was a classy name for a prequel taking place on a vastly larger stage than the original game. Despite being on FC, it even titles the fortress "Castlevania" on the map screen, so it's the real CV Legends in my book. :mrgreen:
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