/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8855971
asked this question last thread but it died so
how do you guys change the controls for a controller on the standalone pc engine version? i know you use f1 but it just says stuff like I and II and select (1)/(2). i don't know what i'm changing. doesn't seem you can do it in the launcher either.
the standalone version i got is this btw, dunno if there's an earlier one that makes it simpler
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cPPsCMPpjX9WQFtIS144qe5FXK_pOnoT/view

>>8855986
It looks like 1/I is jump while 2/II is attack. SELECT is item crush and RUN is your pause button.

previous thread right here
>>8806369

is crtbro in this thread? how is progress on harem dress maria?

God bless those hard-working perverts.

>>8857405
Crtbro here, not the same pal that made the arabian costume, i did made some tilesets tough.

>>8857597
i see
i don't know if you saw those last thread so i'll just repost
>>8847406

>>8857919
Thanks for reposting.

>>8857919
The quality is great but I'm wondering if dividing attention like this will hurt everybody in the long run. It's going to be enough of a challenge to get the harem images/sprites implemented. Having people work on other things on top of that might torpedo all of it. It might help to zero in on one thing, get that implemented, and then move to the next in a more structured way.

>>8858564
Good id3a man.

I wish there was something I could do, I can't code and I'm not artistic in the slightest. I'll give the skilled perverts working on it some encouragement in the meantime. Godspeed, anons.

i think the best course of action is to first redraw the sprites, since that's easiest and is part of all ventured hack ideas so far. pic related are the 69 unique sprites maria has (let me know if you spot any duplicates), each assigned a number. this will be useful for organization. what we need to do now is decide on a palette for the redrawn sprites (i'm not sure exactly what the limitations are). then, using what we have so far as reference, as a group we can actually edit the sprites as long as we stay within the designated sizes (again, not sure exactly). along the way, we post our edits and make criticisms and share advice and can make edits of the edits as we fill in the sprites. while that's happening, we can figure out how to hack the new sprites and palette into the game. then at least that much will be done, on top of which further hacking can be done. level edits, cutscenes, gameplay modifications and any other ASM could be figured out in the meanwhile. thoughts?

>>8859918
This is missing a few that I can spot; her floating in the air before being rescued, getting hit while crouching, her hair animating when getting hit, and when she gets stuck in the portrait.

>>8859918
Do you have the tiles for her sprites? So I know what her size restrictions are

>>8859826
Kek, that is ballsy

it's good seeing you perverts still at work.

>>8859918
if we can do hacking such as adding a whole new sprite sheet for maria, wouldn't it be possible to also rearrange how her sprite tiles work? so we have more freedom with animations instead of having to follow the size limitations of all her sprites

>>8860325
That could fuck with the game mechanics though. If the size is off then suddenly its harder to judge platforming since her collision will get all weird.

>>8860925
i'm mostly talking about sprite size to fit larger dress, like >>8857919

Why is every Rondo fan a certified lolicon

>>8857575

>>8861619
I assume it's because Maria has a huge rack. I dunno, I'm just here because hacking on an old game is interesting.

>>8860929
True, but I'm not sure we can know what can be done or should be done without a baseline to compare it to. An actual sprite sheet of the harem costume would give us all some context to this. That has to be step 1 regardless of anything else that needs to be done.

>>8855971
Not that guy doing the Maria sprite from Rondo, but I just wish that I could do pic related in the actual game. Imagine doing something similar to that Charlotte's pose from Portrait of Ruin, while pressing and holding up button and then hearing Maria's cute voice from the menu.

what will maria's birds become when she has the harem dress? should they get a reskin too?

>>8863686
Change them to ninja stars? Something that makes the costume more action oriented.

>>8864408
how about making them into astarte's temptation projectiles

What happened to this, wasn't someone making a sprite hack?

>>8859918
i've been playing rondo and you're missing a sprite or two, maria singing when she uses the book item crash

>>8859918
>>8864610
missing animation

>>8864413
Don't know what that is but if the birds need to be changed then pretty much anything that would indicate the harem costume is Maria's "getting serious" garb. Put away the pink dresses, get battle ready, and kick ass.

Or just fuck around and put the birds in the same costume.

>>8865773
>get battle ready
>in a belly dancer outfit

>>8865773
I was under the impression that the harem costume is Maria's "wanna get dicked down" garb.
I'd make the projectiles hearts myself

is there anyone here who knows how to rip pce sprites properly? the spriter ressources rips for rondo are awful, a better rip of maria (this time with tiles so we knows the size restrictions) should be done before we really start getting into the harem costume.

Guys, i am the guy who made the dancer sprite edits, undortunely i was not able to do stuff this week, because i been busy this week, and i run into an issue with my internet connection, my vpn kills my actusl internet connection wherever i disconnect the app so i cannot post from my PC.

>>8866646
https://pcengine.proboards.com/thread/1121/tile-editing-on-pc-engine

A thread that might be helpful.

Rondo Maria is the best.

>>8861619
Have you seen the tits on this kid? They get smaller when she gets older in SotN so get while the getting's good.

Just want to point out that Limited Run Games will be reprinting Rondo so it would be nice to have a hack to go with the updated release.

>>8865845
Yes, actually. Its functionally a middle eastern version of ninja gear.
https://youtu.be/M2ticd144OE

>>8869135
>ninja gear
Don't tell me, you think Japanese assassins ran around in black costumes?

in castlevania dracula x chronicles ritcher belmont and maria are almost the same height...so i have a question: maria is too tall or richter is a manlet?

>>8869247
Both, she's tall in SoTN and Richter's a manlet king. So I'd say there was a compromise in height and she was made taller in DxC

>>8868257
Judgment was such a pile of shit.

>>8868257
For me it's DXC. Easily the best Maria and Richter designs to date.

How can Maria defeat Dracula if she doesn't have the vampire killer?

>>8869360
It was a cheaply done game. They changed her to work with the 3D.

>>8870035
bad design: maria looks less femenine.

Between the two its Richter's DXC costume that looks more off to me. Both of them are probably more period accurate outfits but Richter looks way too much like a Revolutionary War soldier or something. Its a bit jarring. I don't think Castlevania should be that dedicated to period era clothing.

>>8870035
original maria renard design: the femenine maria renard.

dracula x chronicles maria renard design: the tomboy maria renard.

>>8872287
he was always manlet anyways. what he needs: disco shoes to look taller.

>>8870035
I really like her portrait in Harmony of Despair. It's Maria from Rondo but in different not anime-like style.

dracula x

>>8872383
That looks like a creepy porcelain doll.

Ok folks, i am gonna start spriting some key frames for Maria, hopefully will be done before this friday.

>>8872427
Her game sprite looks like sherley temple

>>8872427
Ah, that "I really need to shit but I'm in line at the supermarket" posture.

Shanoa is best girl

>>8855971
Shanoa > Charlotte > Maria > Yoko

>>8873582
if you want a reference for what the sprite boundaries are, bizhawk and mednafen both have VRAM viewers that show the sprites.

>>8872383
I don't know about the Xbox version, but as someone introduced to Richter & Maria through Portrait of Ruin, I hate what they did to her in the PS3 version. Sure, she shouldn't be OP or anything, but fuck, dude, aside from maybe one of her subs, the white cat, I think, she doesn't even have elements attached to her attacks, and the fucking dragon kept hitting floors and ceilings from what little I remember.

>>8870381
That's actually a pretty good question, I think, especially in light of what the canon was like after Iga. Usually there's the excuse that someone is using Dracula's own power on him and he's probably not at full power anyway, but I'm under the impression that Rondo Dracula is max strength and I'm not sure Maria has Drac-related powers. Granted, Lament had keys fashioned after the holy beasts, and Maria's family is related to Richter's aren't they? So maybe there is something in there; even Vampire Killer relies on Dracula's power in the sense of having a common alchemy/vampire origin, so maybe it isn't too out there.

>>8855986
>>8855996
okay i finally figured it out. i was wondering why there were like three to four times of the same button, and as it turns out, there's more than one controller for this console. so i just used the first, two button one since there's typically not a lot of buttons in castlevania anyway.
so far i'm likin it but it is a bit weird how you don't have to upgrade your whip, but maybe that's good since there's an axe knight in the second level.

>>8874227
I think the entire vampire killer lore is anime nonsense that the franchise should ignore. They can't even settle on whether it's "officially" a whip or a chain. It should have just stayed as a family heirloom rather than having any innate magic powers.

>>8874227
I looked it up myself after asking it. Thing is, you don't need Vampire Killer to kill Dracula. It just makes it easier. From what I read, the protag in Portrait has an option at the end to either use VK or not as there's some hesitation since use of VK by non-Belmonts kills them or something, idfk.
What I do know is that in Haunted Castle, Simon uses a fucking sword.

>>8873621
>>8873696
not retro, not canon

>>8873586
As a child actress, Shirly Temple used to get locked in a cage or a windowless room by the director if she misbehaved on set and was only allowed out when they felt like she'd do as she was told. Fucking monstrous, that.

>>8874354
I pretty much agree with everything you typed here, anon. Maybe it's just because played LoD first, but playing PoR right after and getting to the middle of the story really threw me for a loop for a bunch of reasons.
>>8874359
>It just makes it easier
>the protag in Portrait has an option at the end to either use VK or not as there's some hesitation since use of VK by non-Belmonts kills them or something, idfk
More specifically, while Bloodlines made in the mid-90s slated John Morris as being a legit heir to the whip (while tying Castlevania to Bram Stoker's Dracula novel), PoR in, what, 2006 or so? Retconned this into being that the Belmont family pretty much just handed it off to the Morris family because they couldn't touch it until 1999 (I don't think this has gotten an official explanation yet). The thing is, Morris men can unlock the whip's full power, but using it eats at their life force so they die way sooner than they should, something they didn't realize until generation 2 with John. Not wanting his son Jonathan to suffer this same fate, John hid the truth and trained him to be able to hold his own without the whip.

Come the events of PoR, Jonathan's cheerfulness hides his selfesteem issues form being a supposedly subpar heir and resentment towards his father until he's on the up and up about what happened. That said, you can go out of your way unlocking the whip's power and suffer no issues using it.
>you don't need Vampire Killer to kill Dracula
Specific to PoR, Dracula actually isn't at full power in this case, so it isn't too surprising that Jonathan et all can beat on him using anything. Better point of comparison might be Order of Ecclesia, where nothing in Shanoa's arsenal can deal lasting damage to Dracula, though I don't know the full context there since OoE doesn't say what year it takes place in, so who knows if Drac is full power here or not. Dude sure fights like it, though.

>>8874364
>not canon

>>8874369
Old Hollywood was brutal. Producers gave a 16 year old Judy Garland amphetamines and got her hooked on them, they poisoned the original Tin Man with toxic makeup, and set the Wicked Witch on fire for real. When Mickey Rooney was a kid the producers of his films pretended to shoot his dog if he didn't perform well enough.

>>8874443
Mickey Rooney had the longest career in film history so they must've done something right with those threats. Srsly, tho, yeah, it's fucked up. Thank god for... Hays Code, I think it was called? The thing that set standards in Hollywood.

>>8874354
Nigga, it's a magic whip. It turns into a chain and even into motherfucking fire! AND! As said already, it also turns into a sword in Haunted Castle. If that's not a magic whip, idk what is.

>>8874385
Ah, I didn't read that deep into it. I also never played Portrait. Well, not /never/. I tried it out but it bored me to tears so I quit very, very early on. Played Ecclesia and Dawn of Sorrow, though, even if not /vr/. Hated the more typical Annie May look Dawn adopted over its predecessor and liked that Ecclesia returned the series to something more like its old look.

>>8874369
>>8874443
Hollywood fucking with children, what a surprise.

>>8874553
It's even worse than that. The room they used to lock her in was only about 6ft/1,85m square. Remember, no windows IE no lights, either, which can be pretty horrifying to a 3-5-year old. It was also sound proof so no one could hear her crying.
If Shirley was particularly obstinate, they'd take a huge chunk of ice and put it in there with her, either making her stand about uncomfortably cold or make her sit on the ice block bare-assed.
The director, can't recall his name, threatened to do awful things Shirley never went into detail about if she told anyone about the abuse. She did, however, tell her mother way back then, but the woman was either a shit parent more interested in money than her own kid or a legit retard because she told Shirley she didn't believe her.

>>8874551
>Nigga, it's a magic whip
To be fair, the whip's current origin in the original timeline, of which PoR is a part of, is that a powerful vampire pissed off an alchemist by fucking over his family, leading him to make a whip with alchemy that ultimately did not work on said vampire. This is because the whip hand't obtained its full strength, that is, it wasn't complete without a tainted soul of a vampire who trusted the wielder. This wouldn't come about until Leon Belmont and his betrothed got involved in matters, resulting in a whip empowered with hatred and destruction, which is a weird thing for what up to this point was a holy whip or at least was assumed as such for much of the series. If this sounds compelling so far, rest assured that Lament of Innocence's story is contrived as fuck and you'll see that if you ever get around to playing it, if you haven't already. You'll probably like it less than PoR.

Personally, I don't mind the whole the changing into different materials part of it, it's the reason given for why from the IGA games that dominated the franchise for much of its later life and how it came to be.

>>8874575
>original timeline
>original
No. No no no no no. No. Also no.
Castlevania has gone the whole multiple timeline route? Fuck me, I'm done. I mean, I was already done with everything becoming either an Igavania or whatever the N64 entries can be called, but now I am SO done because it sounds like storyfaggotry may have killed the series even further. Sure, the series always had a story, but I never gave a fuck. "Man goes on a whip-and-skip adventure to kill a bunch of early Hollywood movie monsters" is all the story I need. I will not be playing th Cv game you mentioned. No.

>>8874575
>IGA retconned sonia because she sleot with alucard ZOMG SEXISM
>IGA wrote the shitshiw story of Lament.

>>8874394
the dsvania's are not canon
now fuck off

>>8874596
IGA had a habit of ignoring any game he didn't personally work on. He did it to Castlevania 64, COTM, and even Bloodlines until the last one was forced back in.

>>8874589
>Castlevania has gone the whole multiple timeline route?
I mean, it's more like it's just two with the second one being a reboot from like 2010 or so.
>but now I am SO done because it sounds like storyfaggotry may have killed the series even further
This, however, is arguably correct. While it bears worth mentioning that even the early games had stories like the whole Curse of Man thing, somewhere along the way it very much strayed far away from being about whip 'n' skipping and more about some nonsense implying that basically, you should never ever desire to kill someone else no matter how much they have it coming and also the ends justify the means.
>I will not be playing th Cv game you mentioned
>whatever the N64 entries can be called
Good, as much as like LoI, it's dumb as fuck and you're better off without it. The N64 games are actually fairly straightforward, though, so if you can get into DoS and OoE, you can probably get into the N64 games.
>>8874596
Hell, even though that was probably meant to be the implication, Legends doesn't actually give that many details in either the game or the manual. It's not out of the question that Sonia and Alucard didn't even bang, Trevor would be like twenty-something regardless.
>>8874606
And this is something that annoys me at times, because what Iga replaced them with weren't much better, and while I have heard that Iga himself considered the Kobe games to be an alternate timeline, it doesn't change the fact that nothing was added to that supposed separate timeline because the guy basically hogged the spotlight for years until his bullshit caught up to him.

>>8874589
>Castlevania has gone the whole multiple timeline route?
I mean, it's more like it's just two with the second one being a reboot from like 2010 or so.
>but now I am SO done because it sounds like storyfaggotry may have killed the series even further
This, however, is arguably correct. While it bears worth mentioning that even the early games had stories like the whole Curse of Man thing, somewhere along the way it very much strayed far away from being about whip 'n' skipping and more about some nonsense implying that basically, you should never ever desire to kill someone else no matter how much they have it coming and also the ends justify the means.
>I will not be playing th Cv game you mentioned
>whatever the N64 entries can be called
Good, as much as like LoI, it's dumb as fuck and you're better off without it. The N64 games are actually fairly straightforward, though, so if you can get into DoS and OoE, you can probably get into the N64 games.
>>8874596
Hell, even though that was probably meant to be the implication, Legends doesn't actually give that many details in either the game or the manual. It's not out of the question that Sonia and Alucard didn't even bang, Trevor would be like twenty-something regardless.
>>8874606
And this is something that annoys me at times. Whenever I come across translations of interviews with him, it seems to me like he had a real tendency to shit on the games that he shunted to the side and then use their ideas for his own games. That second point shouldn't be an issue, but when you're being a dick about it...
>COTM
Guy gave it flak for not being Castlevania enough because it used cards. Yes, really, and he says this when SoTN technically did it first with the familiar cards.

>>8874602
no u, no matter how much you dislike them.

>>8874596
I don't like that Lament of Innocence gives Dracula a different origin that separates him from the Dracula of pop culture.

n

>>8874606
I think it was the other way around. Bloodlines was originally a gaiden and then they made it canon.
>>8875974
The only reason why Lament of Innocence even exists in the first place was because he made Dracula's age greater than it was supposed.

>>8874752
>you can probably get into the N64 games.
I can't. With a few notable exceptions, I just really don't like 3D gaming, which is most of the reason I like /vr/ anyway.

>>8855971
Holy shit this threads still going, /vr/ really is dying

>>8876136
There's actual worthwhile stuff going on in this thread, namely a RoB hack in progress.

>>8876116
>I just really don't like 3D gaming
Aw, ah well, then.
>>8875974
I would maybe be more fine with that myself if it was actually done decently. As it stands, not only do I not give a fuck about "Dracula" being a human alchemist from way before the 1400s and frankly don't like the sudden importance of alchemy in general, Mathias giving himself a different name stops making sense when he doesn't abandon it when it's no longer necessary. Let's get this straight, the genius tactician who knows a whole family's worth of enemies is out there looking for him is going to change his name to a historical figure known for fighting Turks and just keep running with it to the point that both the N64 games and at least one DS game is going to call him Vlad Tepes? The same arrogant asshole who fucked over everyone for petty revenge on God for shit that was likely his own fault?

Point of comparison, I remember reading a translation of Adventure 1's japanese manual hinting at Dracula being some no-name sorcerer who take the name later, and somehow, not knowing who the original man was works better for me, I suppose precisely because of that. It sounds creepier when it's a devil worshipper whose only stated goal is becoming a demon king and is willing to abandon everything about himself even in his "ascension".
>>8876085
>because he made Dracula's age greater than it was supposed
Was it SoTN that did that or was it originally Rondo? For some reason i think it's Rondo. What's especially silly is that i don't 1091 or whatever still doesn't work.

1791 - 800 = 991

We're missing a century here, at least if "Dracula" refers specifically to Mathias and isn't some general title of whatever human is pulling Dark Lord duty. Could all be avoided if, you know, Iga and whoever else didn't insist on a higher age and formerly unknown origin.

don't forget that twlight zone death coverup.

>>8877146
Considering Bloodlines is practically an unofficial sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula it seems like they were heavily adopting the book/movie.

looking through the game in a graphics viewer to see if maria's sprites are uncompressed. no luck so far but i did find this fish

>>8878670
What about it?

>>8878670
>Maria has pink panties with a submarine on it
makes sense

!

>>8878672
Its the snack that smiles back

ok. here are the sprites as seen in YY-CHR.NET, the program i used. i tried editing some of them but the game crashed in both emulators i tried when it tried to load maria's sprites at the start of a level. it almost looks like the sprites are partially compressed, but i can't say for sure. in any case, for now at least we have information about how some of the sprites are aligned.

>>8878670
Pepperidge Farm: Rondo of Blood

>>8878846
Remember that old consoles store the sprite and palette data separately. If you change the sprite and there's a mismatch with palette pointers that could cause trouble. Typically you'd just get a miscolored sprite but maybe PC-Engine handles it differently?

>>8855971
I still need to play it. Got into Turbo CD last year (mostly for the shmups) but just never got around to it

>>8875974
It literally just gave him the Coppola film Dracula's origin, it's just missing the kickass muscle dragon armor

>>8879167
It set it way further back in time though. Centuries before Vlad the Impaler.

>>8877146
>Was it SoTN that did that or was it originally Rondo? For some reason i think it's Rondo. What's especially silly is that i don't 1091 or whatever still doesn't work.
It was in the SotN specifically, which is where they put the ages of the characters on their stock bios. I think IGA later admitted that he wasn't thinking clearly when he wrote Dracula's age.

>>8879412
I don't understand why people get so hung up on video game ages. It's obvious they're randomly assigned with no care. Every RPG is like "Bio: A retired grizzled general with years of battle experience. Age: 35."

>>8879670
Koji Igarashi is possibly the only person who ever gave a shit about Castlevania canon and keeping a consistent lore. Prior to the SotN, the Castlevania games were loosely connected at best.

>>8880076
Storyfags ruin everything.

>>8879670
>>8879670
>I don't understand why people get so hung up on video game ages.
I dunno, this thread seems unconcerned with Maria's age

>>8880135
Oh, you misunderstand, her age here is VERY important indeed.

>>8874606
Not technically retro but I hate when devs do this. Kojima sperged out and made Portable Ops non canon even though it was referenced in Peace Walker

>>8878670
Please say it's part of an attack or something.
>The attack that smiles back
>>8879670
Well for one thing, The Dracula you're beating the shit out of at the end of every game is implied to be the historical Vlad Dracula III, I might be misremembering but I think CV 3 is supposed to take place in 1476, isn't it? That's the year the historical figure died, so being 800 in the 1790s is weird if that's what we're running with here. Pic related, the Power of Sire item as a pickup is a picture of CV's Dracula that turns into an image of historical Dracula when used. And the thing is, a character's age can quite easily play into a character's, well, character and whatever story they have going on. Imagine if someone like Death had a given age, how old can say a lot about both the character himself and about the series' world.
>>8880102
I disagree, I think a game's story can actually help to direct and focus its gameplay, no matter how seemingly little, though maybe that's different sort of thing anyway.

Second, if CV Drac is all the way from 1091 or so, then that's a lot of years that can be used for something, just saying.

>>8880571
Fuck story. I just want to bomb some dodongos.

>>8880582
But anon, don't you see that without story to build up a world necessary to have the proper components in place, you may very well have no dodongos or bombs?

>>8880279
>even though it was referenced in Peace Walker
The "Leave all that crap in San Hyeronymo behind" line was Kojima's way of telling the players to ignore Portable Ops.

>>8880590
PacMan doesn't need any motivation to eat pixels and run from ghosts and neither do I.

>>8880681
Damn right, anon.

>>8880681
The ghosts are trying to kill him

>>8880730
Hey storyfag, here's a chicken and the egg scenario: if the ghosts are trying to kill him, what's /their/ motivation, then?

Answer: who gives a shit, just play the fucking game. If you people had your way, we'd see a future entry into the Tetris series where Squareblock commits suicide after being fat-shamed by Longpiece and the Z-and-S twins are traveling around the country with L, his Bizarro-World counterpart and a psychic baby (who wasn't in the original, but hey, it's /deep/ now) trying to find Longpiece before the ghost of Squareblock drives her to do the same herself.
What's the gameplay like? Who fucking knows! All anyone will tell you about it is how they got some B-list actor to play Bizarro-L in the FMVs and that the baby is an allegory for innocense or something, idfk. What I do know is that I'd rather bomb some fucking dodongos.

>>8880681
The ghosts are trying to kill him and the pellets help him live, whatever the fuck is the reason for this situation, there's a motivation.

Bringing it back to Zelda, There'd be no reason for bombing dodongos if there was no context, namely that dodongo's insides aren't as tough as its outsides.

>>8880783
>that tetris story
I'd play it.
>What's the gameplay like?
Probably fucking rad.

>>8880791
Why are the ghosts trying to kill him? What do they have to gain from his death or lose from allowing his life to continue unhindered?
For that matter, if the professor can make a radio out of fucking coconuts, why the fuck are Gilligan and company still stuck on the goddamn island?

You guys are making me remember the Pac Man game that was part of rec.arts.int-fiction's Arcade competition circa 2000 or so. Text adventure Pac-Man was some messed up shit. Maybe not as disturbing as the Lode Runner one, but still.

>>8880797
>Why are the ghosts trying to kill him?

>Blinky, the shadow
The past you can only outrun for so long.
>Pinky, the speedy
Events that you cannot deal with at the worst time that interfere with attaining your goals
>Inky, the bashful
The parts of your personality and character that restrain you from pursuing the wants and needs you would have otherwise.
>Clyde, the pokey
The holes in your views preventing awareness.

>>8880859
That explains nothing.

>>8879128
i'd think that the editor only changes which color from the palette the sprite is using. i had the palette set to maria's usual palette just for visual reference

>>8880571
>Death, age: 4 billion years

>>8881048
>knows a dark secret or two because he's seen a dark secret or two. If it breathes, he's killed it.

Been playin this on 3ds inject and I'm loving it so far, but I really wanna play it with my ds4. What's the best pc engine emu for pc that doesnt involve fucking with retroarch?

As a side note, the bosses in this game are so dynamic with their move sets and fun to fight. Especially love the minotaur and werewolf fights so far

>>8881091
Is Magic Engine still good/available? That and Rew were the only ones I ever used for TG16/PCE/CD back then. Now, I just emulate on my phone. I use pce.emu for that.

>>8881091
>the bosses in this game are so dynamic with their move sets and fun to fight
That's what puts Rondo's bosses over the ones in the other older CV games. They actually have to react to you while you hit them and have a full moveset for you to react to. Even when it's not particularly difficult, it's just so engaging. It's not a slugfest like SCIV, they're not fucking juggernauts that ignore damn near everything like the NES games, they don't quite make it a point to overwhelm you like X68000 and/or Chronicles, you get your hits in and then pay attention to well-telegraphed attacks so you don't get hit yourself.
>Especially love the minotaur and werewolf fights
Same, Minotaur is probably my favorite.

>>8881107
Thanks for the suggestions bro, finna give magic engine a shot. I almost bought that castlevania collection on steam to play rondo. I'm glad I didnt cuz it's not even on there apparently. Konami can be such a baffling company

>>8881139
Yeah I just beat CV 1 recently, and the bosses on there can be unbelievably cheap. Namely, Frankenstein & Igor and death. Fighting them without using the "stun lock them with the holy water on their first active frame" strat seems like it would be fucking miserable lol. I still really enjoyed playing 1 though because the level design is really good for a first attempt at that type of game

>>8881194
Back in the 90s, Magic Engine was a pay emulator. If that's still the case and you can't find a cracked one, I may still have a copy of it somewhere that I can upload on, like, uguu.se or some place or other for you.

>>8874574
Poor Shirley...

>>8855971
dude who made that tileset mockup last thread, i am still busy with the sprites and other workaround, but i wanna do something by the end of the week, still busy, mostly because i cannot get twitter to dethrottle my account that nobody watches, i only get shit notifications of ''in case you missed these tweets''

but here's something i did, and its a WIP of sprite mockups i like to do

>>8874589
>>8874752
There ARE strongly implied timeline splits beyond Lords of Shadow, but it's nothing like Zelda and is just where Konami relegates retellings/remakes (stuff like Haunted Castle and Dracula X); according to IGA, the original games are always higher canon and belong in the main timeline branch, so say, the original Castevania for FDS/NES gets priority over X68000. This is also where spinoffs and games taken off the chronology (namely Legends) go. So yeah, loosey-goosey.

>>8874596
>>8874752
>Hell, even though that was probably meant to be the implication, Legends doesn't actually give that many details in either the game or the manual. It's not out of the question that Sonia and Alucard didn't even bang, Trevor would be like twenty-something regardless.
Considering the ending it is the implication and it opens up some weird shit that that from Trevor onward the Belmonts would be at least partially drawing power from now-granddaddy Dracula themselves and muddying shit up. He shouldn't have axed it completely because a lady Blemont is a cool idea in general, should have just said "ignore that last bit"

>>8874575
It sorta makes the VK into a sort-of Master Sword but I suppose LoI did it before Skyward Sword. Still, I don't mind how Lament elaborated on the VK's origins, it makes it a more legit family heirloom and way more personal feud

>>8882754
The big reason it comes off as silly is because the story tries to shoehorn in all the video gamey shit that you're really just supposed to take for granted. You upgrade the whip in the games from leather to a chain because that's how video game upgrades work. Once you start having characters openly talk about "oooh but it's a magic whip!" the story starts to collapse under its own weight. It'd be like trying to explain the hearts and meat in the walls. It's fine for video games to just do stuff because it's mechanically functional and the story to ignore it. The gameplay is more like an abstraction of the events rather than the events themselves.

>>8870381
Better to ask why a guy with a German forename and French surname is wandering about Romania wearing a headband and kenpo gi.

Because the monsters all die to all of the bird shit. Although I suck at playing as Maria as I always roll off every cliff. Also because she dies in 4 hits.

>>8878846
where is this located in rom?

>>8874596
>>IGA retconned sonia because she sleot with alucard ZOMG SEXISM

what the fuck are you talking about psycho he retconned it becasue it fucks with his and maria relationship after symphony and there being a half belmont half vampire child running around is stupid as shit.
also that game sucks so why do you even care

>>8882740
>at least partially drawing power from now-granddaddy Dracula themselves and muddying shit up
Isn't that what we get with LoI anyway? Mathias gets his vampirism from Death offering his soul to the crimson stone, Leon fully upgrades the whip by imbuing the soul of the recently vampirized Sara into it, even remarking that he can feel the power of hatred and destruction from it. OoE in particular seems to emphasize that negative emotions like anger and hatred form Dracula's power, embodied in Dominus, which I think gets referred to as the ultimate glyph of destruction, it sure operates as such Dominus union even lets you kill red skeletons. Personally I'd rather the Belmonts stay entirely human myself because holy power ftw but given all that and item crashes implicitly if not explicitly being magic in close relation to vampires as well, they're not really all too holy either way.
>He shouldn't have axed it completely because a lady Blemont is a cool idea in general, should have just said "ignore that last bit"
Even if the games are noncanon or alternate canon, it really would've been nice if Iga had done more to implement stuff and characters like that, yeah. Although, if I remember right, dude once said something about BELMONT WARLORD CHROMOSOMES, though I can't remember if they could only be Y chromosomes or not. I think this was supposed to be part of why the Morris family couldn't use the whip without hurting themselves, but it's been a long while so that part might be bullshit.

>>8882754
>it makes it a more legit family heirloom and way more personal feud
I don't think I disagree, but at the same time, while I don't mind a origin for the whip and why Belmonts hunt Dracula, I don't like how Lament handles it, especially since, while later Belmonts probably don't even know about it, Leon basically curses his own family in the process of cursing Mathias out of revenge. Hell, considering that "The Night" that gets mentioned frequently and is noted for choosing and empowering someone, usually if not exclusively a vampire, may be Chaos, probably an embodiment of mankind's evil, Leon may have inadvertently started the cycle between Belmonts and Dracula with what turned out to be one hell of a curse.

>>8882740
>lady belmont
I was working on a this NES-style unofficial Castlevania with a friend of mine where the game played similar to, like, Secret of Mana where you control multiple characters, all on screen simultaneously, and cycle between them using select.
The story went that the Belmonts had twins, Lucy and Lucius and the splitting of the bloodline between two children caused the Belmont power to weaken giving Dracula a greater opportunity than normal to get his groove on. We were doing this in 97 or 98, shortly after we both played SotN. We hated that SotN had that infinite mega jump and shit like that, so we wanted the game to be more like NES Batman with its wall jumps and greater emphasis on actual platforming than that bullshit.
Shame we never got around to finishing it. I think it would have been well-received as a fan game back then.

>>8884120
Would it even matter if a given Belmont man and wife had twins? I suppose maybe the idea is that the firstborn gets the lion' share of power, but that'd be nuts considering how easily your firstborn can die, even in the modern day, and what Belmont has just one kid anyway?

any real pce fans in this thread or is it just castlevania fanboys from /v/

>>8884268
The idea was that first-borns got the lion's-share, yes and, in the event of his/her death, it transfers to the next in line, but with twins, it never fully manifests with either. We were originally gonna have them be born by caesarean so neither was truly "born first" (Scottish play rules), with the procedure killing their Belmont mother and sending their father into madness. With no Belmont "born of woman," the power that kept Dracula at bay was weakened severely.
With no parents, they were then raised by a certain rather acrobatic midget. Being raised by Grant explains the wall jumping mechanic in-game, we thought.

>>8884408
Grew up on TG16, if that counts, and started emulating PCE in '98 or so.

>>8884506
That actually sounds like a nice setup that can go in more than one direction.
>with the procedure killing their Belmont mother and sending their father into madness
>Being raised by Grant
Oh...oh no...

>>8883764
what was posted starts at 0x9D6C00 of the .bin file

>>8884725
Is there something wrong with Mr Danasty?

>>8874596
>IGA retconned Sonia

>>8885312
No that part's great, Mr. Danasty is the best, it's the implication that Trevor has gone insane and Sypha is fucking dead that gets me.

>>8885525
Ah, but you see... Sypha isn't a Belmont, so she can't be their mother.

>>8885823
>with the procedure killing their Belmont mother
Son of a bitch, you're right.

>>8885880
Keep in mind, we were programming and writing this thing in the late 90s, long before most Westerners knew Sypha was a woman. Remember that in CvIII, the dialogue when you meet any secondary character is "Take /him/ along?" which led lots of us to assume that Sypha was a faggoty-lookin' dude with a girly-soundin' name, especially since the booklet also explicitly referred to Sypha using male pronouns.
Anyway, we were planning on Grant having been much older by the time he became adoptive father to Lucy and Lucius as Trevor would have been their grandfather, not father. Their unnamed Belmont mother (we couldn't decide on a name for her; the top contenders were Lydia, Julia and Sara) would have been Trevor's daughter.

>>8882740
>He shouldn't have axed it completely because a lady Blemont is a cool idea in general, should have just said "ignore that last bit"
This. Not even that hard to do, he's already unlikely to have boned her before the game and it's downright impossible after his boss battle since he seals himself asleep because he's ashamed of his bloodline at this point. IGA just had a grudge against Konami Nagoya, but they didn't even make the worst Game Boy game (OG Adventure bar none).
>>8883992
Now THEIR union is all but confirmed to have resulted in progeny (Renard+Alucard=Lecarde)!

>>8885965
I always thought the Lecardes were direct descendents of Alucard. The names are similar and remember: Eric has, according to the booklet, the "Alcarde spear" in Bloodlines. I just kind of jumped to the conclusion that this was a typo.

>>8885951
I was going to say something about how 3's ending involving Sypha makes it rather explicit that she's a woman, but then it's like, I don't know how many people even saw the ending with Sypha and the people behind Captain N sure didn't seem to know.
>>8885965
>Not even that hard to do, he's already unlikely to have boned her before the game and it's downright impossible after his boss battle since he seals himself asleep because he's ashamed of his bloodline at this point
Even without the shame of his bloodline, I can't imagine Adrian being the kind of guy to leave his woman alone to raise a child, especially since that sort of shit would not fly in that day and age. Considering the promise he made mother and what was happening while he did so AND given his own father's reasons for going off the deep end, Alucard wouldn't even risk that shit, not at that point in time.
>IGA just had a grudge against Konami Nagoya
Iga probably had a grudge against everyone not on his team and who didn't share his vision. I hate that I can never seem to find it when I want it, but I remember reading an interview when HoDiss was released where, when asked about how people were disagreeable to the appearance of his male protags, Iga basically doubled down on it and said that anyone who didn't like it, tough, graceful men were part of his vision and that's the sort of thing everyone was just going to have to expect. Like damn, dude.

>>8885989
Alcarde Spear = アルカード・スピア = Alucard Spear

>>8886035
I think you're right about the ending, but I'm not sure that friend and I ever beat it with Sypha. We were both firmly members of the Grant Gang. Alucard came at a distant second and Sypha an even more distant third.

Never saw Captain N back then. I moved to the US too late to have seen it.

>Iga probably had a grudge against everyone
>"tough titties if you don't like my faggot protags!"
Ugh. Alucard I can /sort of/ understand the redesign. Sort of. Original Alucard was silly looking, IMO, and Nulucard looks dope, but the redesigns of Simon and Trevor are hot garbage. Not that the original designs were good or anything but the redesigns look like costumes leftover from a gay bondage porn. A decent middle ground design between pretty-boy faggotry and tough guy would be ideal, preferably leaning a tad bit more towards tough guy.
Kyle from Lunar would be a perfect template for Trevor. Actually, now that I think of it, that's basically what Netflix Trevor looks like.

Idk wtf to do about Simon. Every version of him looks like shit.

>>8886076
I FUCKING KNEW IT!

>>8886202
>We were both firmly members of the Grant Gang
Based, I'm doing another playthrough of 3 now and I took Sypha over Grant precisely because I love the shit out of him and would abuse his abilities too much.
>Alucard I can /sort of/ understand the redesign
Alucard is probably the one character who's more modern redesign actually makes sense and may even look better than his original incarnation, not to mention good in and of itself. He's practically a full-on vampire and slept for like 300 years. That look is unnecessary and silly on everyone else, I like Juste Belmont but there's really no good reason for a 20-something human descendant of Simon Belmont to even have white hair, nevermind that womanly face.
>Kyle from Lunar
If he's who came up from a quick google, then yeah, I can agree with that. In fact, Trevor kind of does look like that when you fight his fake in SoTN and PoR. His CoD design can shove off, though, it's just a derivative of Richter's SoTN look at a time when it wouldn't make sense. Three years after Dracula's Curse and he switched from leather armor to that?
>Simon
Aw, I like Simon's looks. The older ones, anyway, like 1, 2, and X68K. IV is okay, I just don't like it as much.
>Never saw Captain N
Behold.

>>8886307
Is that supposed to be Sypha? Ahia, that's bad.
Also, before the Netflix series, I was pronouncing it see-fuh, not sai-fuh.
I know it makes no sense, but in my mind, Sypha was the same person as Noah/Lutz from Phantasy Star I and II (IV hadn't come out yet and he was absent from III). They look quite similar, sprite-wise, IMO.

>>8886340
If it helps any, there's an item in HoDiss that increases your MP regen rate called Cipher's Charm, possibly a reference to Sypha pretending to be a man so people would be less likely to try to kill her for being a witch.

>>8874602
Are they really not? Which games are?

>>8886420
cipher is amerimutts ruining the translation again

>>8886076
>>8886202
Yeah later games corrected this legendary mistake lol, canonically Alucard even bequeathed that spear to the Lecarde clan.

>>8887201
They pretty much are canon, that anon's just being salty about it for one reason or another.

>>8887201
>>8888236
64vanias and Circle of the Moon are pseudocanon because some versions of the IGA-timeline leave them out (the time-split suggested by >>8882505 may apply)

>>8888289
I think anon was talking about the DS games which pretty much are canon, but yeah, as I understood it, the Kobe games either were shunted by Iga to noncanon/altercanon status because reasons or they were always intended gaidens by their developers. Personally, I'm doubtful of that regarding the N64vanias, but I could totally see that with CoTM.

This thread made me want to play Dracula X, ad what the hell is this? Level 1 was fine, but level 2 has stupid gimmicky shit like the armor knight over those fucking stairs that is a pain in the ass to kill without holy water, that one bat that blends in the background and caught me by surprise once, the eyes that in this game move really weird for some reason and Richter jumps really fucking high with very little speed. The boss also tanks a million hits. Did they think Rondo was too easy (which it is) so they tried to make Dracula X harder, but poorly? Also, it's annoying that you can hit candles that are offscreen. I haven't played Rondo in a while, but I don't remember it having anything similar

>>8888785
Just got to level 3 and holy mother of stairs. It's as if they looked at Castlevania 3 and thought that was the aspect that's worth the most

>>8888886
IIRC, Level 3 is a pain in the dick. At one point, if you fall off into any pit on that stage, the game continues but from there, you're now stuck into a bad ending. You can't get the good one from that.

>>8855971
Ash in drag.

>>8888785
>>8888886
Dracula X is kinda like if you wrapped up Rondo and the NES games into one game on paper but with shaky execution. I'm playing through it again on 3DS and put a save state right at the end of the pillar section so I can do both bad route and good route, and I'm finding myself restarting from that point fairly often because I'm just not as patient this weekend as I usually would be. Necromancer in particular is kind of a dick and the stage afterwards doesn't help.
>Richter jumps really fucking high with very little speed
Really? Are you doing the full jumps and everything? The high height is one size fits all, yeah, but like Rondo, there's layers to how Richter's jump works regarding how far you go. Jumping is actually a pretty fast way to move in X compared to other games, and can actually work well as a dodge maneuver. Like that forward swing the armor knights use.

>>8888139
Why did he give it to them? And how tf do they even know each other?

>>8890456
I'm imagining Alucard trying to live in civilized society and when trying to get a job they ask his name and he's like "uh...Al...ucard... Al Lecarde."

>>8890456
I imagine that revelation was planned to be saved for the big Nostradamus/1999 game that never happened. Supposedly, he created the spear to complement the Vampire Killer whip. This makes the most sense to happen as part of a post-SotN contingency, meaning the Saturn version where it's a random weapon lying around out of nowhere is non-canon. Now, the Lecardes are an offshoot of the Belmont family tree, a more distant one than the American Morrises were. Who else was described as a distant relative of the Belmonts? Renard. Hmm.

>>8879670
>Every RPG is like "Bio: A retired grizzled general with years of battle experience. Age: 35."
Shit, the Resident Evil protags in RE1 were like, ex special forces with years of training blah blah blah shit, and age like...20.

Ages are just completely incidental in games. Everyone is an omnicompetent wunderkind who has over 300 successful missions.

>>8890580
So he's progenitor to that family in your scenario?

>>8889924
Apparently I was really confused yesterday. Yeah, I was almost only doing the half jumps.
>>8889331
Didn't Rondo have something similar too? Either way, that part was surprisingly easy with the axe and because I took my time while doing everything. I feel like the boss here is easier than in Rondo, too, because you can just spam your whip while crouching at the right position and you can damage most of his health.
I got to stage 4 and rescued Maria. The ghosts were a bother but generally manageable. The fleaniggers were a torture, but that's normal for these. I then opened the door to Stage 5.
Stage 5 was generally easy, too, especially now that I had a fuck ton of hearts and a cross from the beginning of the level, so I just Item crashed all White dragons I encountered. I recued Annette and got to the part with those fucking birds. I'm at the boss right now, and it's the same as the hidden one of the first level in Rondo. I don't think I'll spend too much time on this one

>>8891235
No. You can fall places and be locked into /the next stage/ but every stage save level 5 and 5' has some point where you can branch from the "normal" to the alternate route and vice versa. Of course, after taking one or the other, you're locked into that one for the rest of the stage and only certain routes have prisoners to save. All the same, you're gonna go through the game at least twice to get all the girls and unlock all the levels and many more time than that to get enough $$$ to unlock all the technic demos.

>>8891235
Just a tangent based on screenshot:
>Rondo Maria: calls Richter "onii-chan" (big bro) and Annet[te] "onee-chan" (big sis). This is meant as a term of endearment in Japanese, although the Renards are said to be distantly related to the Belmonts.
>DracX Maria: now actually called Annet[te]'s literal sister, begging several questions. As it so happens, the term for "adopted sister" and "sister-in-law" are the same in Japanese, leading to even more confusion come Symphony of the Night.
I'm still not sure how you fuck up this badly. If you ask me, it's a bigger mess than anything Legends did and should've been stricken from canon before that.

>>8891235
I'm not playing this ever again. First form Dracula was cheap as fuck. I spent like a minute inbetween hits because he refused to appear anywhere near me. And a single miscalculated jump made me start all over again, too, so that was pretty shitty. The second form was kind of fun, but you can cheese it with crosses. Also, Death raped me to oblivion lel, I didn't expect it to be that complicated.
It was fun, I guess, but I'd rather RoB and any of the other classicvanias over this one, personally. Also, Maria is pretty cute here, too, and I liked the drawings at the end.
>>8891373
>You can fall places and be locked into /the next stage/ That's why I said "similar". Rondo has a stage select, anyway, so being locked to a path doesn't really matter in the end
>All the same, you're gonna go through the game at least twice to get all the girls and unlock all the levels and many more time than that to get enough $$$ to unlock all the technic demos.
At least in rondo it's fast and easy thanks to the stage select. The stages are pretty fun, too, so at least to me it wasn't tedious to complete them over and over again.
Also, where did the dancer Maria hack discussion go? It hasn't been talked about in some days

>>8891094
Well "my scenario" is a joke but yeah I guess that's what it implies. Though it wouldn't be too outrageous a possibility considering this is the same guy who one day decided to become Japanese and start calling himself Arikado like the biggest weeb ever.

>>8891583
Pretty sure Maria is meant to be Annette's actual younger sister. And since Richter and Annette were at least dating if not engaged prior to the events of Rondo it makes sense Maria would think of Richter as a big brother figure. The weirdness comes from them seemingly meeting for the first time in Rondo itself when you rescue her. Not an impossible situation but unlikely. The only thing I can think of is it was sloppy exposition as a way to introduce her to the player. The distant Belmont relation is also probably some hastily slapped on detail. "Why can this kid beat up Dracula again?" "Uh...she's 1% Belmont!"

>>8890456
In an internal Bloodlines-era document, the Spear was rumored to be the pike Dracula’s head was impaled upon and left to rot in front of his castle’s gates, which is apparently something that happened in real life with the real Vlad Tepes.

Eric Lecarde’s own biography is censored in parts, but it’s noted that the Lecarde, Tepes, and Bartley families all have dragon crests as their symbol. Also, an old man named Michael Belmont was the one who showed Eric the way to the spear.

>>8891686
>Also, where did the dancer Maria hack discussion go? It hasn't been talked about in some days
They're too busy fapping.

>>8891795
Problem with that is she calls him oniichan right away when he rescues her in Rondo, before she knows who the fuck he is. It's just her kawaii moe character quirk. They only seem to have met previously in SNES Dracula X, or at least recognized him as Richter right off the bat.
>>8891937
That internal doc, while interesting, is filled with canned ideas that are obviously no longer canon, like the mention of the deleted Bolt Ericson playable character and a reference to THREE magic whips (Morris' Vampire Killer, Belmonts' Excalibur, and the "Death mercury" lost to time), which is why the Belmont whip didn't have a name in early games. Clearly it has to be taken with a giant grain of salt, also given lots of things in it are lost in translation too. The wiki was hasty in incorporating it wholesale without question.

>>8891686
The only thing I don't like about Rondo is that you have to have two different save files to see both Maria's and Richter's "save the prisoner" FMVs since once you've saved one, you can't save them again so the alternate FMV is never available to you without starting a new game.
Oh, and that both forms of Dracula are a piece of piss. Takes a literal minute to beat him with either character.
Vampire's Kiss, however (fuck calling it "Dracula X/XX), is just straight bullshit all 'round. It's not that it's difficult, but it's annoying. Difficulty is fine. Ninja Gaiden is difficult. NES Batman is difficult. But these games aren't bullshit. One hit or off jump could lock you into the bad ending is bullshit. The lack of fun is bullshit. The slog that are some of the areas and bosses is bullshit.
>git good
Beat it. Got good ending. Still think it's bullshit.

>>8891937
>the pike Dracula’s head was impaled upon
Aw. I wanted it to be Longinus' lance/the spear of destiny. That's so boring.

Fun "fact" but supposedly, Vlad's head (in some accounts, it's his headless body) rests somewhere in my hometown. I say it's a "fact" because his supposed illegitimate daughter (who I don't think ever actually existed), Maria, lived and died in Naples and was rumoured to have smuggled it into the kingdom.

idky someone made this bullshit up. The city has ~3000 years of history and the area has several millenia more of human settlement so we have plenty of other amazing shit in our past without needing to resort to just inventing shit. Okay, our founding myth, fine. The story that it was founded by a literal mermaid is cool as shit, even if untrue, but c'mon with this Dracula nonsense.

>>8892042
>you can't save them again so the alternate FMV is never available to you without starting a new game
Hang on, what? Is this something with the original release or something? I got Rondo on Wii and last I remember is that you can just switch characters on the same file and select Dracula's level and kill to see the different endings. Am I just dumb and not remembering shit right?

>>8892071
Dracula is marketable.

>>8892725
You can switch characters to beat Drackipoo and see the different endings, yes, but... Say you're playing level 7 with Richter, yeah? You get past the bridge, go to the top of the first tower and head right to the balcony.
You beat that bird-lookin' thing and get the key. Yay, you.
You go to the left through that first tower, down the second tower (past the harpies) and to the left into the bottom of the third tower. To the left there is a locked door so you use the key, open it and save Annette. So now you get your little Richter-saves-Annette FMV. Cool.
You double back to the third tower, climb up, head left and through the castle, past the armoured knights, the skeletal dogs and the werejaguars to get to the pendulums. You go past them, too, and, finally, onto the fight against Shaft's ghost.
Winning isn't too bad so onto the level 8: Dracula himself.
You fight. You win. Ending FMV plays. Hurray.

Well, now you wanna know what the FMV will look like if you save Annette with Maria so you select her, select level 7 and do everything as before only now, behind that locked door is eight $700 money bags and no Annette. You don't get to see the FMV. Sucks to be you.

So you start a second save file to see the FMVs with Maria instead of Richter and curse the shortsightedness of the developers.

Apologies if I've overexplained but I wanted to be certain that there is absolutely no ambiguity.

>>8892986
Oh, I see, I honestly missed what you were saying the first time, apologies.

Yeah, it would be nice to have an option to view the FMVs for different situations without having to go through the rigamarole of playing through the game, but then, that's kind of part of the charm, isn't it? Different series, but that's exactly what I would do with the first two Paper Mario games just to listen to boss themes and whatnot. Shit, I'd start a new Mario 64 file to just to see shiny, uncollected stars and unpressed switches.

>>8892042
Speaking of rescue, let me confirm, you can't rescue everyone in a single run, right?

where is harem dress anon at

>>8881690
What game is on the image ?

>>8893952
You can'go directly to Tera's stage from the point you rescue Maria, so the game encourages multiple playthroughs in that instance. But if you're feeling lazy, you can either finish the rest of the Stage as Richter or just get a game over on the spot (switch to Maria if you like) then redo the alternate pathways from there.
By the way, Rondo's lead programmer once said that a total of four playable characters was planned. Now, I don't got nothing but a hunch since we know nothing about them, bur I think the playable characters would've been Richter and the other rescuable maidens, but Maria was added later as the composite girl.

>>8894097
iirc the "rival" shown on the site once wasn't meant for bloodletting like that richter and teen maria, but was actually a cut character from rondo

>>8894019
Haven't played it or even seen it before or ever watched a single ep of the tie-in cartoon but c'mon, bro: that's Card Captor. That shit's famous even among people who've never seen it.

>>8894097
My headcannon already made the assumption the other two were meant to be whoever preceded Lecarde and Morris (or whoever would precede them). I'd imagine Lecarde still has his spear but Morris now has a magic gun of never-ending silver bullets.

>>8894104
The 'rival' was said by IGA to be a playable character that "mirrors overseas consumer tastes" so it was mostly likely for the 32X game, which was primarily a SoA project I believe. Doubtful they had it in mind for Rondo, in fact the Rondo devs knew they were prob making a Japan-only game and thus they had freedom to do things they couldn't previously. BTW, "The Bloodletting" is a BS title that IGA doesn't recognize, magazines back in the day said that it was another version of Dracula X (probably its own retelling). The only instance of the title was Konami's vague CES 1995 listing for a Sony PlayStation / Sega Saturn game, sounding like either an early western title for Symphony of the Night or possibly from the period of development it had more Bloodlines connections.

>>8894097
I agree that Maria's moveset was probably finalized after they settled on two, but screenshot almost makes it seem like she was originally supposed to be a Belnades....

>>8894120
Maybe. It'd make things go full circle, since Symphony was supposed to connect more to Bloodlines.
>>8894128
I wouldn't discount the possibility that there were -two- 32X projects: an alternate Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, and a sequel. IGA suggested one 32X game in the interview he deconfirmed the title, but he might've been under NDA at the time, and we know Symphony became a Rondo sequel after his 32X game was cancelled, so he probably carried over story ideas with him. That would explain why Maria's 32X design looks older, like a proto-Symphony design. Then again, considering Richter's outfit, transforming Maria from a little girl into a frilly pink dress into a "biker chick" might've been another thing done to appease 90's American tastes. Hard to say, really, we know so little. Wonder if someone could re-ask IGA these questions now that he's been years out of Konami.
>>8894135
I don't think it does, but if true, they've been thinking of ways to reintroduce the Castlevania III trio (poor Grant never had a chance). We know they've had a version of Yoko in mind since Bloodlines.

>>8894220
WHY DO KONAMI HATE GRANT?!
Fuck them, he's awesome. If he doesn't get his own game, I swear to all that is holy, I'm gonna find me a pocket watch, make daily visits to their offices, freeze time and cornhole everyone in there until they do.

>>8894128
>Dracula 32X isn't The Bloodletting
What the hell? Why don't wikis fix this shit already? The fanbase has been using the wrong name all this time and they know it? Bullshit. Is it some misplaced sense of pride or something?
Also, if The Bloodetting is just pre-Rondo Symphony, that may explain why the Richter's stage is called "Bloodlines" - it might not be a mistranslation, but rather, a proto-localized remnant they neglected. And this means a Saturn version was planned early on..interesting. Was it canceled then other devs picked back up?
>>8894280
Grant's great but his stage is an outta-da-way bitch.

>>8894383
You're an outta-da-way bitch, you titty-suckin' ho.

>>8894383
I think it's just a matter of The Bloodletting having been the common name now that it can't just be omitted in whole. They should probably not that the name was never official or used by Konami though.

>>8894128
>>8894220
In my headcanon the 32X was just a retelling of Rondo for the west, because they wouldn't want to release a Turbografx version due to the poor sales of that platform overseas; which in turn got scrapped on 32X due to the poor sales of that... and which became Dracula XX.

It would explain the americanized Richter/Maria sprites, and also why DXX was made and released so late.

>>8894117
Its a mock-up

>>8885965
>Renard+Alucard=Lecarde
It all makes sense now...

>>8894684
That seems likely.

>>8894383

>>8891583
>>8891795
>Pretty sure Maria is meant to be Annette's actual younger sister.
That was just localization/transcreation. Annette and Maria were not sisters in the original PC Engine version, but they were in the Super NES adaptation (Dracula XX) and that was the only version of the game localized when SotN came out.
The term 義妹/gimai means sister-in-law, but it can also be used to described someone who was adopted into a family.

>>8895610
https://youtu.be/PJgT6VnT2vU

She at least has a preexisting relationship with Annette while Tera and Iris don't know who she is at first. They do talk like they're close rather than casual acquaintances. The weirdness is Maria talking about "my" blood rather than "our" blood like you'd expect if they were biological sisters but that's not THAT strange for someone to refer specifically to themselves when they're the one taking advantage of it at the time. Even if Annette also has that blood, she isn't trying to kill Dracula.

>>8893203
>>8892986
>>8892725
>>8892042
I wish PCE had a cheat device so I could play as Maria from the start and see if the game would be confused about what FMV to play if you use Maria to rescue Maria.

>>8896754
i wish rondo of blood had level design edit tools so maria-centric level design could be possible. although maybe part of maria's appeal is finding loopholes in level design meant for richter.

>>8896754
A cheat that unlocks Maria would probably just lead to the room she was locked in to be empty, like when you go there in an NG+

>>8894989
>>8894684
Been digging through my folder of magazine scans, and, I know now why I had this headcannon

Pic related, translation:
>We've talked about Dracula XX last month in the import section, already out on Duo [note: other name for the PC engine] and Megadrive. In France, it will also be a port of Dracula X on Duo and Megadrive... Konami France has indeed decided to officially release the game over here for the start of the next school year. Only the title has changed, as we will indeed see Simon Belmont in his hunt against vampires [unfunny uninteresting and joke about hair confusing vampires and werewolves].. .This game remains one of the biggest 16 bit for the end of the year; if we ever figure out why we've been liking Castlevania so much for 4 years already...

This sounds VERY confused (Simon Belmont, vampires/werewolves etc) and NOT from a fan of the series which could explain it, but it does talk about a port of Dracula X (Rondo) on Megadrive.

>>8897618
You're likely right. : (

>>8897595
Me, too. I'd make more vertical levels.

>>8897680
what's the cinemanga section about?

>>8897714
some sort of festival to watch anime on the big screen

>>8897680
Thanks! What magazine/issue is this?
>>8897714
Nintendo Magazine System (UK/AU) also gave anime highights so I'm not surprised if it just wasn't a usual US thing.

>>8897971
Joypad #44 july/august 1995

https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/affiche_mag.php?mag=84&num=1810&album=oui

>>8897618
Alternatively if you forced Maria into the stage without having her be officially unlocked the game would likely default to one of two behaviors. Either it would play the normal Richter FMV because that's what the game calls for at that point regardless of who you're using, or it would crash because it would check for a Maria FMV and not find what it's looking for.

>>8898993
Gay.

>>8898993
>Maria saving Maria
Stop giving me weird fanfiction ideas.
I'd love to see that happen in that room with Shaft. Well, I could always edit it myself.

>>8894001
Probably working on the sprites still. Patience, friend.

>>8899091
>fanfiction ideas
Did you mean "fetish?"

>>8880859
Pic is wrong because Pink is the one that always tries to ambush you, while Blue is the one that acts randomly between two set ways, and Orange is the "incompetent" ghost that tries to get close to Pac Man but always gets cold feet around close intersections.

what would Maria wear if she were saving herself?