Release Date: June 25, 1998
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment
Publisher: Konami
For my first Halloween Retro Review, I decided ahead of time that I would look at a Castlevania game. I mean, it’s Halloween, and few things go better with All Hallow’s Evening than Dracula himself. But I also decided to add a twist to the review. For the twist, I looked to Japan for the second week in a row.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Playstation is considered by many to be the best game in the series. The game, which begat the Metroid-vania style, is definitely one of the signature titles for Sony’s original console in North America. But Japanese gamers had another way to play the game, which was named Akumajō Dracula X: Nocture in the Moonlight there.
Konami released a version of the game for the Sega Saturn in 1998. Meant for the Asian market only, it’s more an update than a port of the Sony entrant. In addition to the complete original, there are new enemies, items, music, and stages. Biggest of all, however, is the ability to select from three playable characters at the start.
The first character, Alucard, is the starting character in the North American version. The second, Richter Belmont, is the character you begin playing as in the NA version, before switching to Alucard for the remainder of the game. In the NA version, Richter is unlocked after beating the game and creating a new game save named “RICHTER.” The third character is Maria Renard, an NPC that you come across in the NA version but is fully playable in the Asian version.
Maria was intended to be playable in the NA version, and her voice tracks are present on the disc. However, she was pulled from the game due to time constraints. Some of the mechanics are still present in the game. If you start a new game save named “MARIA”, you still play as Alucard, but you skip all Doppelganger enemies.
I had never played the Saturn version before, and figured this Halloween review would be a great excuse to buy it and give it a whirl. I especially wanted to do a Maria playthrough to see the differences. Then reality decided to give me a swift kick in the nethers:
I wanted to play the game, but any time I try to spend more than $60 on a game, my debit card slaps me. I decided against domestic abuse by an inanimate object. There was only one other alternative, therefore, and it’s one I normally steer clear of.
I shall now offer my official disclaimer…<<clears throat>>
NOTE: I do not condone emulation under normal circumstances. While it is legal to emulate hardware, playing ROMs or ISOs of games you do not own on an emulator is not technically legal. I played this game on an emulator for this review, but promptly removed the ISO afterwards. Uhh…emulators are bad…mmmkay?
We good? You bought that? Very well, on with the review!
Saturn emulation is still not perfect. The Saturn’s hardware was only fully cracked months ago, and emulating the bizarre Saturn architecture has not been straightforward even with the help of the cracking. Fortunately, I was able to run the game at a near-steady 60fps using Yabause 0.9.15 for Windows.
Playing Symphony of the Night as Maria is wild. It’s a familiar experience but done in a very unfamiliar way. It was awesome visiting Dracula’s castle and tackling it in a different way. It took me a minute to reorient myself (mostly because my Xbox 360 controller is kinda beat up and I had to learn the controls), but eventually I was cleaving through Drac’s minions in short order. Like the Richter playthrough, you don’t have to deal with the Doppelgangers and can just blast through the game.
It’s during that blast-through, however, that a couple of issues start to creep up.
First, I started to notice that the graphics seemed a bit blockier than the PS1 version. Initially, I wrote it off to emulation, but soon decided that it was something else. To test, I grabbed my original copy of Symphony of the Night for the PS1 and ran it via ePSXe 2.0.5, taking care to keep the same resolution I was running on Yabause and not using any anti-aliasing. While not a perfect comparison, I noticed that the PS1 version did look better than the Saturn version.
That surprised me quite a bit. You see, Symphony of the Night is a 2D game. While Sony ditched the idea of a 2D renderer for its PlayStation, Sega did have a powerful 2D renderer for the Saturn. In order for the PlayStation to handle 2D graphics properly, developers had to get very tricky. Developers at Konami had to trick the PlayStation by rendering 2D sprites as flat, textureless polygons, which allowed the console to display them but took a toll on its RAM. The fact that the seemingly-superior Saturn version fares worse is quite surprising.
Beyond that, other issues popped up. I noticed that the game would become sluggish after a lengthy playthrough. I originally ascribed the behavior to poor emulation, but soon found that not to be the case. Evidently, the game slows down the longer you play without saving. Once you reach a save point and save the game, the game’s performance improves. That seems like a memory buffering issue or just poor optimization. If you save frequently, it should not be a problem. Also, load times were longer, even on an ISO, compared to the PlayStation CD-ROM. That totally baffled me.
The game was fun to play otherwise. Everything about the original game is present and awesome, and the additions are an extra treat for SotN veterans. The ability to choose from three playable characters at the start is a great bonus as well.
Does it still hold up? OF COURSE! This is Symphony of the Night, son! Well, Nocturne in the Moonlight, but you get my drift. The game is still awesome, and owning the Saturn version – which I will do, once my debit card and I finish therapy – is a nice benny for collectors.
Unfortunately, only serious collectors will own this version. There is no version of it outside of the CD-ROM in the Asian region. As far as I know, the Saturn version has not been re-introduced in any form. While I think it is inferior to the PlayStation version performance-wise, the extras packed into the Saturn version make a purchase worthwhile. Keep in mind that if you want to play the original disc on a NA Saturn, you will need a backup cart that allows playing imports on it.
Overall, this was great! I was able to try out a remixed version of a game I love for Halloween. I plan to play much more soon. You know, once my debit card stops trying to slap the taste out my mouth.
Good: Gameplay the same as PS1 original; new stuff to explore and find; three playable characters at start
Bad: Graphically inferior to PS1 version; suffers from odd slowdowns and stutters; longer load times
Final score: 7.5/10
