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Bed; the 15th century
Feb. 9th, 2010 01:26 pmThe new bed is supposed to be arriving today, finally, which led to some drama about what to do with the old futon in this overstuffed slide-puzzle of a house; only when moving it into the living room proved utterly untenable was that plan abandoned, and I still couldn't talk them into just having the furniture people haul it away... There's a chance they might not make it today due to weather, in which case I'll have to figure out where to sleep until they do, but it'll be fine.
Anyway, continuing the walk through the Castlevania timeline via online playthroughs, I've decided to take it century by century, and so today we have the Fourteen-Hundreds---before Transylvania discovered witch trials, but no need to go into that...
This brings us first to one of the old-school classics, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (1476). This was probably the moment when the series first began expanding from the episodic and infinitely-rehashed adventures of Simon (the only non-Simon game released before it was The Castlevania Adventure, and it didn't become entirely clear that its hero was not Simon until Belmont's Revenge came out later) into the elaborate mythos we know today, and was also the first to branch out into different kinds of playable characters. Many of its concepts have been shuffled around a lot since, but at any rate it introduced us to Trevor Belmont, Alucard (who would be much more important and awesome later), Sypha Belnades (founder of a heroic lineage to rival the Belmonts themselves), and some pirate guy. I kid Grant... ^_^; It also had incredibly awesome music for an NES game, just want to mention.
First, I feel like I should include the cinematic intro; written by a third-grader as it may appear, it's still classic. As for the rest, I turn this time to Tom Votava's runs at Speed Demos Archive (ETA: Since writing, Tom Votava's times have been beaten by Josh Ballard). The downsides are that the dialogue scenes do get rushed (they're all there but worrying the pause button might help in reading them fully) and he doesn't use Sypha much at all. On the other hand, all four endings are included in full unhurried glory, and he exploits Alucard and Grant in ways that can be fun to watch; the first time Grant climbed up through the status area to take a short cut I was like "He can't do that! Can he??" For this kind of old-school game, the sacrifices for speed don't detract from the experience the way they do with a newer, story-heavy type of game.
As for reactions, well, what can I say about this? It's one of those things I take for granted, a matter of course, but especially an old-school game like this, I take its depiction of events as a rough sketch and feel free to finesse things and improvise around it.
But speaking of newer, story-heavy games, there is one more entry from this era, far more recent but a direct story-sequel to CV3, Curse of Darkness (1479). I'm flying blind here because I haven't watched it. I have this playthrough by Rodriguezjr filed away to watch, but I'm currently resting up before I do so because, er... I expect this to hurt. A lot. (Not that I expect it's a bad game, but the story is pretty much certain to cause me some dissonance issues and I'm not the best at dealing with that kind of thing.) On the upside, when I manage it, then this will probably become even more hilarious than it is now. And any reactions should wait until then.
ADDENDA: Curse of Darkness had a preorder manga by Ayami Kojima, which helps it make more sense as the game throws you en medias res. Vampire Killer has a translated version (which reads Western-style, left-to-right; I got all confused... ^_^;). There's also another prologue manga of two volumes by Kou Sasakura, available in translated form from TokyoPop. I have it but I've only read the first half.
ADDENDA 2: Okay, I have now watched the playthrough; it hurt about as much as I expected, and I concluded that the thing is essentially bad fanfiction. By and large, not canon in my CV universe; it is possible that Hector and Isaac exist in some capacity, but the events of the game certainly don't happen.
Anyway, continuing the walk through the Castlevania timeline via online playthroughs, I've decided to take it century by century, and so today we have the Fourteen-Hundreds---before Transylvania discovered witch trials, but no need to go into that...
This brings us first to one of the old-school classics, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (1476). This was probably the moment when the series first began expanding from the episodic and infinitely-rehashed adventures of Simon (the only non-Simon game released before it was The Castlevania Adventure, and it didn't become entirely clear that its hero was not Simon until Belmont's Revenge came out later) into the elaborate mythos we know today, and was also the first to branch out into different kinds of playable characters. Many of its concepts have been shuffled around a lot since, but at any rate it introduced us to Trevor Belmont, Alucard (who would be much more important and awesome later), Sypha Belnades (founder of a heroic lineage to rival the Belmonts themselves), and some pirate guy. I kid Grant... ^_^; It also had incredibly awesome music for an NES game, just want to mention.
First, I feel like I should include the cinematic intro; written by a third-grader as it may appear, it's still classic. As for the rest, I turn this time to Tom Votava's runs at Speed Demos Archive (ETA: Since writing, Tom Votava's times have been beaten by Josh Ballard). The downsides are that the dialogue scenes do get rushed (they're all there but worrying the pause button might help in reading them fully) and he doesn't use Sypha much at all. On the other hand, all four endings are included in full unhurried glory, and he exploits Alucard and Grant in ways that can be fun to watch; the first time Grant climbed up through the status area to take a short cut I was like "He can't do that! Can he??" For this kind of old-school game, the sacrifices for speed don't detract from the experience the way they do with a newer, story-heavy type of game.
As for reactions, well, what can I say about this? It's one of those things I take for granted, a matter of course, but especially an old-school game like this, I take its depiction of events as a rough sketch and feel free to finesse things and improvise around it.
But speaking of newer, story-heavy games, there is one more entry from this era, far more recent but a direct story-sequel to CV3, Curse of Darkness (1479). I'm flying blind here because I haven't watched it. I have this playthrough by Rodriguezjr filed away to watch, but I'm currently resting up before I do so because, er... I expect this to hurt. A lot. (Not that I expect it's a bad game, but the story is pretty much certain to cause me some dissonance issues and I'm not the best at dealing with that kind of thing.) On the upside, when I manage it, then this will probably become even more hilarious than it is now. And any reactions should wait until then.
ADDENDA: Curse of Darkness had a preorder manga by Ayami Kojima, which helps it make more sense as the game throws you en medias res. Vampire Killer has a translated version (which reads Western-style, left-to-right; I got all confused... ^_^;). There's also another prologue manga of two volumes by Kou Sasakura, available in translated form from TokyoPop. I have it but I've only read the first half.
ADDENDA 2: Okay, I have now watched the playthrough; it hurt about as much as I expected, and I concluded that the thing is essentially bad fanfiction. By and large, not canon in my CV universe; it is possible that Hector and Isaac exist in some capacity, but the events of the game certainly don't happen.
