Castlevania SOTN on 360 - is it the Saturn or PSX version?

[Aussie2B]

I thought the CG scenes were quite nice for the time. But if removing the scenes means also removing the awesome music that went along with them, I vote no.

What's really bootleg is that if you get the Japanese version to avoid the awful English dubbing, you're out of luck because they released it with Japanese text and the English voicing. What the hell is up with that? It's stuff like that that explains why the 360 is doing poorly in Japan. :/

[roushimsx]

You're kidding right? You got to be, you're telling me seeing the map of Translyvania before the game starts wasn't cool? Sure it hasn't aged well..but when the game was new, those cutscenes were pretty nice to see..

I'm not understanding how anyone found them good looking back then, either. They were roughly on par with CG efforts done in '94-'95 (and even that's pushing it), and considering how rapidly work in CG artwork progressed throughout the 90s, that 2 year span is a pretty big gap. The saving grace for them was that they didn't try to model human characters...good god would that have aged it even further.

What's really bootleg is that if you get the Japanese version to avoid the awful English dubbing, you're out of luck because they released it with Japanese text and the English voicing. What the hell is up with that?

Oh shit, Digital Eclipse'd. MAMEdev really needs to go commercial and whore out their talents. It's a shame the market is dominated by DE, but at least their emulation of Final Fight was better than Capcom Production Studio 8's *shudder*.

[MarioMania]

Why didn't Konami have the extra levels and bosses from the Saturn version, and you could play as Maria, and the CV3 Music

[MegaDrive20XX]

I'm not understanding how anyone found them good looking back then, either. They were roughly on par with CG efforts done in '94-'95 (and even that's pushing it), and considering how rapidly work in CG artwork progressed throughout the 90s, that 2 year span is a pretty big gap. The saving grace for them was that they didn't try to model human characters...good god would that have aged it even further.

Which is why I said " Sure it hasn't aged well", meaning I agree with you to some extent. Plus the lost of the BGM that went with those CG scenes is another point that Aussie2B brought up, just reminded me of how much it kills the mood a bit of the game when just starting up

[Richter Belmount]

Actually them cinemas kill the mood for me.

[djsquarewave]

Oh shit, Digital Eclipse'd. MAMEdev really needs to go commercial and whore out their talents. It's a shame the market is dominated by DE, but at least their emulation of Final Fight was better than Capcom Production Studio 8's *shudder*.

If it means anything, a lot of Japanese companies just steal MAME code for emulated rereleases anyway (see Hamster's PS2 arcade rereleases). I mean, it's not like they're going to go after Konami for stealing their code that lets people illegally play Konami games.

Though I'll second the hate for Digital Eclipse. There's just always something a little...off...about their productions.

[kaedesdisciple]

I've beaten this game about 6 times on the PS1 and yes I'm noticing the glitches/changes. I noticed the Vandal Swords, I noticed all the sound changes, the jury's still out for me on the "enhanced" graphics and I love the fact that those crap cutscenes are gone.

To tell you the truth, I'm just happy we got this game at all. I thought it would be a cold day in hell before a Microsoft console got ahold of that piece of IP.

Plus, $10 for a well functioning port of a great game with some non-impossible achievements? I don't regret this purchase at all. Hell, I still paid less for this port and my PS1 copy combined than what the market value of the PS1 version is, so I'm not complaining.

PSP version? Let's see what the developers do with it...

[heybtbm]

the jury's still out for me on the "enhanced" graphics

I turned off the "enhanced" graphics about 15 minutes into the game. They're more distracting than anything...not quite as ugly as the enhanced graphics on the XBLA version of Contra, but they're close.

If anyone is wondering what "enhanced graphics" means as far as XBLA games, it's just rounding off the hard edges of the pixels. It's a nice idea, but in execution ends up looking like an ugly watercolor painting.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh shit, Digital Eclipse'd. MAMEdev really needs to go commercial and whore out their talents. It's a shame the market is dominated by DE, but at least their emulation of Final Fight was better than Capcom Production Studio 8's *shudder*.

The idea of R. Belmont playing Richter amuses me to no end...but right, I get what you're meaning.

On the Final Fight note - do you know if that's the blurry crap on GameTap? It kinda looks like MAME .36 with custom binds and horrible video settings.