I placed my preorder on Amazon.ca
39.99 but only coming out on the 20th
39.99 but only coming out on the 20th
Hey, I bugged out my game. I doubt it's permanent, but right now it doesn't show the enemy names when I kill them, and I can't use any souls from the R button, even if I switch them. Odd...
Another cool thing, I was playing the game (when it bugged out) on the bus to work this morning, and heard the game music playing, and sound effects that didn't synchronize with my game, and my ds volume was turned all the way down? Turns out the guy sitting across from me was playing his with the volume all the way up. l33t.
Another cool thing, I was playing the game (when it bugged out) on the bus to work this morning, and heard the game music playing, and sound effects that didn't synchronize with my game, and my ds volume was turned all the way down? Turns out the guy sitting across from me was playing his with the volume all the way up. l33t.
I've found it, finally...
Managed to get the last copy at Futureshop in NS.
Managed to get the last copy at Futureshop in NS.
You! Invaders! Get You the Hot Bullets of Shotgun to Die!
Konami is sometimes a very very dumb company.
Here's an interview from 1up.com with the current producer of Castlevania. Upon first read, I thought some of the questions were downright stupid... so I'm pasting the whole thing in with comments. Enoy!
(WARNING, COULD BE SPOILERS!)
GM: Dawn of Sorrow was tougher than the previous two GBA games. Was this a conscious design decision?
JP: Hmmm... Maybe I'm just getting really good at these games, but I found Circle of the Moon and Harmonny of Dissonance FAR tougher than Dawn of Sorrow. Even Aria of Sorrow was harder due to how familiar most of DoS was. Maybe EGM just sucks.
IGA: The game is quite easy if you use the correct souls. It seems difficult at first glance, but you'll be able to find really useful souls along the way.
EGM: Did you design the castle to be less linear than the previous games?
JP: Again, it seems like EGM hasn't even played the previous games. CotM, HoD, SotN and even Castlevania 2 are far less linear than Dawn of Sorrow was. Maybe a little research before the interview guys?
IGA: You can move freely to some extent, but you will need specific items to progress. Much like in SOTN, I wanted to give the player a little bit of freedom. When it comes to map exploration, it's actually more difficult than Aria of Sorrow.
EGM: How did you approach the design of Celia's fortress....since it isn't technically Castlevania?
IGA: With Aria of Sorrow, that is the cursed castle of Dracula. But this cult fortress is a modernized replica of the castle, you'll see cars and machinery. So, sometimes it's close to the traditional castle, but on the other hand it uses a lot of dark alchemy and machines.
JP: All I can say here, as that there were way too many familiar areas in DoS from Aria of Sorrow. So I think his real approach was to... recycle as many elements as possible. I'm not sure what the point of this question was, unless it was to catch IGA in a lie... This is an area that Konami is really going to have to expand in the next of the series. Perhaps remove some of the castle, and add more horizontal mapping, a town or two, some mountain open air areas, etc. More exploration overall could definitely revitalize the series.
EGM: How did you go about balancing the collection of souls?
JP: I only have one coment: Make some really easy to get, make others so that you'll rarely ever get them. Also make most of them suck. Okay that's 2 comments.
IGA: You'll start to receive souls as you play, and once you start amassing them, you'll want more. Three-star souls are quite rare, and it's really up to the player. As a hardcore gamer, you'll feel that you really want to get them, but beginners might not want to take the time to collect them. You can clear the game without getting any of those rare souls. You'll find lots of joke enemies as well.
EGM: It seems that most of the traditional Castlevania bosses are AWOL. Why make so many new bosses?
JP: Many of the old bosses are enemies in this one. New bosses are good. What a stupid question.
IGA: After defeating boss characters you get specific boss soul powers, so we designed all-new bosses around these powers that you'd need to traverse through the game.
EGM: We love all the weird, wacky souls that you can collect. Our personal favorite is the Waiter Skeleton....what's yours?
IGA: He throws tons of curry on level 3. Personally, my favorite soul is the Bone Ark. No, it's totally strong! You're invincible! I also like the Ghost soul, because it comes out of Soma's mouth. I was hoping that the ghost would be able to attack some enemies, but nah, that would be too easy. You can go through doors into locked rooms. Think about the total balance that we've delivered this time.... some really useful souls, others utterly useless and funny. The development team made stuff really useless just for fun.
JP: I suppose that explains a lot...
EGM: Were you able to get everything you wanted into the game?
IGA: No, I didn't have much time to get everything in. The enemies are really close to those in SOTN. We ended up having to port several of them in directly from that game. If we had a lot more time, I would have created a lot of new enemy designs. The DS has a pretty good capability for doing 3D backgrounds, actually. One thing I would point out about developing for the DS, we had a lot of problems making transparencies here, even more than on PS1. So, I sort of faked them with color balance. I also wanted to include a third potential candidate for the resurrection of Dracula, a worn-out salaryman who's 37 years old, the same age as I am. He's got a bad combover, a family, two daughters, The older daughter hates him, tells him that 'you stink! I hate you.' He's a middle manager at a large Japanese company. Ha, my team all told me that they hated this character and wouldn't let me include him. This character wanted to buy a house, so he borrows money from Celia's cult. In the middle of the fight against Soma, he'd win the lottery and just decide to leave the race.
One other story I was thinking of is that in AoS Soma was a high school student, so now he's a ronin, a wandering masterless samurai. My team wouldn't go with that, either.
I wanted more enemy types, and more background variations, but time didn't allow. I would have also liked to use the touch panel for more stuff, including a potion mixing alchemy feature. The conditions for mixing would vary depending on what you wanted to make, you'd have to stir in different circles. It would have been a good gimmick, but implementing it would have been tough. Oh, and I wanted to include a feature where you'd use the microphone to speak to the enemies.
JP: And this explains a lot too, especially about the re-used enemies and backgrounds. Hopefully they'll have a bit more time to implement all of this into the next castlevania.
EGM: I think fans are really happy that you finally let Arikado come back into action....
JP: Arikado... Alucard... I get it now.
IGA: I thought Arikado was a really cheesy guy! I thought you guys already knew who he was! Officially, we've denied it in the past, but now we'll come out and say it. Hammer, however, is still mysterious. What's his last name?
EGM: Next year is the 20th anniversary of Castlevania....do you have anything special planned?
IGA: Actually, I've been so busy with my two games that I only recently realized that it was coming up so soon! Maybe I should delay Curse of Darkness until next year (laughs).
EGM: Well, you have two years until the 10th anniversary of Symphony of the Night. That way, you can make the ultimate version of that for PSP with all-new voiceovers.
IGA: Do you think Sony concept approval would let us? I doubt it.
JP: Interesting to note, when the only thing that PSP owners are interested in playing are old emulated 2d games, and Sony has already been restricting those games on the PSP (probably the reason Suikoden 1 & 2 is staying in Japan). Sony should take a look at what the Gameboy is doing. Because it's still so successful and Nintendo OBVIOUSLY isn't policing the titles anymore due to the amount of absolute GARBAGE being released for the GBA. But then it's all about having variety and a large amount of fun titles, even if they're not technically impressive.
(WARNING, COULD BE SPOILERS!)
GM: Dawn of Sorrow was tougher than the previous two GBA games. Was this a conscious design decision?
JP: Hmmm... Maybe I'm just getting really good at these games, but I found Circle of the Moon and Harmonny of Dissonance FAR tougher than Dawn of Sorrow. Even Aria of Sorrow was harder due to how familiar most of DoS was. Maybe EGM just sucks.
IGA: The game is quite easy if you use the correct souls. It seems difficult at first glance, but you'll be able to find really useful souls along the way.
EGM: Did you design the castle to be less linear than the previous games?
JP: Again, it seems like EGM hasn't even played the previous games. CotM, HoD, SotN and even Castlevania 2 are far less linear than Dawn of Sorrow was. Maybe a little research before the interview guys?
IGA: You can move freely to some extent, but you will need specific items to progress. Much like in SOTN, I wanted to give the player a little bit of freedom. When it comes to map exploration, it's actually more difficult than Aria of Sorrow.
EGM: How did you approach the design of Celia's fortress....since it isn't technically Castlevania?
IGA: With Aria of Sorrow, that is the cursed castle of Dracula. But this cult fortress is a modernized replica of the castle, you'll see cars and machinery. So, sometimes it's close to the traditional castle, but on the other hand it uses a lot of dark alchemy and machines.
JP: All I can say here, as that there were way too many familiar areas in DoS from Aria of Sorrow. So I think his real approach was to... recycle as many elements as possible. I'm not sure what the point of this question was, unless it was to catch IGA in a lie... This is an area that Konami is really going to have to expand in the next of the series. Perhaps remove some of the castle, and add more horizontal mapping, a town or two, some mountain open air areas, etc. More exploration overall could definitely revitalize the series.
EGM: How did you go about balancing the collection of souls?
JP: I only have one coment: Make some really easy to get, make others so that you'll rarely ever get them. Also make most of them suck. Okay that's 2 comments.
IGA: You'll start to receive souls as you play, and once you start amassing them, you'll want more. Three-star souls are quite rare, and it's really up to the player. As a hardcore gamer, you'll feel that you really want to get them, but beginners might not want to take the time to collect them. You can clear the game without getting any of those rare souls. You'll find lots of joke enemies as well.
EGM: It seems that most of the traditional Castlevania bosses are AWOL. Why make so many new bosses?
JP: Many of the old bosses are enemies in this one. New bosses are good. What a stupid question.
IGA: After defeating boss characters you get specific boss soul powers, so we designed all-new bosses around these powers that you'd need to traverse through the game.
EGM: We love all the weird, wacky souls that you can collect. Our personal favorite is the Waiter Skeleton....what's yours?
IGA: He throws tons of curry on level 3. Personally, my favorite soul is the Bone Ark. No, it's totally strong! You're invincible! I also like the Ghost soul, because it comes out of Soma's mouth. I was hoping that the ghost would be able to attack some enemies, but nah, that would be too easy. You can go through doors into locked rooms. Think about the total balance that we've delivered this time.... some really useful souls, others utterly useless and funny. The development team made stuff really useless just for fun.
JP: I suppose that explains a lot...
EGM: Were you able to get everything you wanted into the game?
IGA: No, I didn't have much time to get everything in. The enemies are really close to those in SOTN. We ended up having to port several of them in directly from that game. If we had a lot more time, I would have created a lot of new enemy designs. The DS has a pretty good capability for doing 3D backgrounds, actually. One thing I would point out about developing for the DS, we had a lot of problems making transparencies here, even more than on PS1. So, I sort of faked them with color balance. I also wanted to include a third potential candidate for the resurrection of Dracula, a worn-out salaryman who's 37 years old, the same age as I am. He's got a bad combover, a family, two daughters, The older daughter hates him, tells him that 'you stink! I hate you.' He's a middle manager at a large Japanese company. Ha, my team all told me that they hated this character and wouldn't let me include him. This character wanted to buy a house, so he borrows money from Celia's cult. In the middle of the fight against Soma, he'd win the lottery and just decide to leave the race.
One other story I was thinking of is that in AoS Soma was a high school student, so now he's a ronin, a wandering masterless samurai. My team wouldn't go with that, either.
I wanted more enemy types, and more background variations, but time didn't allow. I would have also liked to use the touch panel for more stuff, including a potion mixing alchemy feature. The conditions for mixing would vary depending on what you wanted to make, you'd have to stir in different circles. It would have been a good gimmick, but implementing it would have been tough. Oh, and I wanted to include a feature where you'd use the microphone to speak to the enemies.
JP: And this explains a lot too, especially about the re-used enemies and backgrounds. Hopefully they'll have a bit more time to implement all of this into the next castlevania.
EGM: I think fans are really happy that you finally let Arikado come back into action....
JP: Arikado... Alucard... I get it now.
IGA: I thought Arikado was a really cheesy guy! I thought you guys already knew who he was! Officially, we've denied it in the past, but now we'll come out and say it. Hammer, however, is still mysterious. What's his last name?
EGM: Next year is the 20th anniversary of Castlevania....do you have anything special planned?
IGA: Actually, I've been so busy with my two games that I only recently realized that it was coming up so soon! Maybe I should delay Curse of Darkness until next year (laughs).
EGM: Well, you have two years until the 10th anniversary of Symphony of the Night. That way, you can make the ultimate version of that for PSP with all-new voiceovers.
IGA: Do you think Sony concept approval would let us? I doubt it.
JP: Interesting to note, when the only thing that PSP owners are interested in playing are old emulated 2d games, and Sony has already been restricting those games on the PSP (probably the reason Suikoden 1 & 2 is staying in Japan). Sony should take a look at what the Gameboy is doing. Because it's still so successful and Nintendo OBVIOUSLY isn't policing the titles anymore due to the amount of absolute GARBAGE being released for the GBA. But then it's all about having variety and a large amount of fun titles, even if they're not technically impressive.
That's funny, though your last comment is even funnier, because it's so true and ironic.
Sony doesn't really police PS2 games except to make them ruin them(Ys6 Anyone), and they'll flood it with shit and it's doing good. Yet they're blocking shit on the PSP, and it's doing bad... I wonder if they realised what they're doing?
That alone is probably a great reason for why the system is falling to pieces.
Also, it seems like it's been a long while since I seen an actual good interview, where the interviewer didn't ask idiotic questions. Jeez though, I think the Cave Story interview had to be the worst one I'd ever seen.
Sony doesn't really police PS2 games except to make them ruin them(Ys6 Anyone), and they'll flood it with shit and it's doing good. Yet they're blocking shit on the PSP, and it's doing bad... I wonder if they realised what they're doing?
That alone is probably a great reason for why the system is falling to pieces.
Also, it seems like it's been a long while since I seen an actual good interview, where the interviewer didn't ask idiotic questions. Jeez though, I think the Cave Story interview had to be the worst one I'd ever seen.
"We're not retreating, we're advancing towards future victory!" - Sarge, Red vs. Blue web series.
I love that last comment from both the developer and you, Joe. You can almost taste the bitterness in the developer's comment. No wonder PSP has so very few titles. Of course, that's exactly what I said would happen, cuz we all know developers love pointless restrictions, but hey?
I'm no hero. Never was, never will be. I'm just an old killer, hired to do some wet work.
Augh. Noes! Now you've filled my brain with the idea of a remake of SOTN, quite possibly my favorite game EVER, and dashed my hopes all in the same paragraph. How could you be so cruel... The PSP has so much potential that 2D developers COULD use, Sony needs to wake up and smell the deep woods - that would be their wakeup call as they SHOULD be smelling the BO of the ridiculous numbers of gamers who would actually go out and buy the system simply because of this one title.
-_o
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow