Appreciation Thread: Castlevania...64?!?

[HMARK Center]

Yes. Yes, I'm appreciating it. 64 and Legacy of Darkness.

I was late to the party on Castlevania; didn't have it for NES, only got to borrow my uncle's copy of SCIV for SNES a few times before he finally gave all his games to me later on. Also never had a PlayStation, so Symphony of the Night wasn't in the cards for me.

Hence, it was the N64 CV games that got me really into the whole Castlevania universe and history.

The games are rightfully panned for their wonky camera work, but there's still one thing I dig about them more than almost any other CV game since Super Castlevania IV and Bloodlines came out: unlike the "Metroid-Vanias" since SotN (which are obviously fun in their own right), I really felt like the N64 games did a good job of bringing back a feeling of ambiance and subtle terror to the CV universe, with a musical score that was less rocking than some of the other games, but still captured the feeling well...along with bringing back instant death traps and ridiculous platforming jumps that were so long the hallmark of the series.

Heck, even just the art behind it was something to enjoy. I was never that big a fan of the art style used in SotN, always preferred the more Gothic trappings of the older games, so seeing a Belmont who better resembled Simon and a Dracula who actually looked scary were fun to me.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

So yeah, if you're like me and you marked out when you heard Cornell would be in Castlevania: Judgment a few years ago, and if you have any video games you enjoy associating with Halloween like this, jump on in.

[Cyno]

Wasn't a fan of the original for a lot of reasons, but I thought Legacy of Darkness was really solid. Fixed a lot of the issues I had with CV64. Cornell was also a blast to play as.

LoD gets a lot of love from the CV diehards, but it's a shame its reputation is unfairly besmirched by its predecessor in the mainstream.

[hassanchop]

I appreciate both games, but I prefer the latter, because I believe not only did Legacy of Darkness fix the problems, it had a better story, it had familiar soundtracks, and it was interesting to see the story of werewolves in it. I think one of the problems of the first one is that the characters were kinda bland, and why was the Belmont given the name Reinhardt Schneider? And I think the second character Carrie, her name was a mistranslation as she was named Carrie Belnades in the Japanese version instead of Fernandez, so she is a direct descendent of Sypha from Castlevania 3. And the other problem is that the first one was a rushed incomplete and unfinished product. Here's an article regarding that:

www.unseen64.net/articles/castlevania-64-beta-analysis/

Cornell was supposed to be in the original game, Reinhardt was called Schneider Belmont, Carrie’s bad ending which involves the kid who is supposed to be an incarnate Dracula proposing to her was intended to be a bigger part of the plot, a 4th character which seems cool yet somehow implausible for the time period because of the chainsaw, and there was originally supposed to be whip swinging!

[HMARK Center]

Yeah, I hate looking back at that and thinking what could've been; as you guys say, LoD was a pretty solid upgrade from CV64 (had to love the fact that Cornell had almost an entirely new slate of levels to play compared to the first game), and maybe if they hadn't rushed the first one so badly things would've gone better, and sequels down the road could've introduced a lot of the cooler things about the beta.

[Cyno]

I have to wonder if Belnades wasn't just a really bad mistranslation of Fernandez to begin with, with how the katakana is and all. Hope this shows up for you guys, but Belnades in katakana would be ベルナデス while Fernandez would be フェルナンデズ phonetically, but you can replace the "fe" kana with "be" since fe isn't a standard syllable in Japanese (the only native f syllable is "fu"). And l's never show up in regular Japanese language and they tend to be replaced with r's in saying foreign words.

Anyway, yeah. Carrie is part of the same family as Sypha, Yoko, and Juste's mom. And Charlotte and I believe the Renard sisters from Dracula X and SotN are distant relatives. And I think officially Reindhart isn't a direct Belmont descendent, but a relative like the Morris family. Then again, CV64 and LoD weren't even considered canon by Igarashi and co. until Judgment when Cornell showed up. And that will be the first and likely last time I mention anything remotely positive about Judgment.

[hassanchop]

Oct 5, 2012 13:27:47 GMT -5 Cyno said:

I have to wonder if Belnades wasn't just a really bad mistranslation of Fernandez to begin with, with how the katakana is and all. Hope this shows up for you guys, but Belnades in katakana would be ベルナデス while Fernandez would be フェルナンデズ phonetically, but you can replace the "fe" kana with "be" since fe isn't a standard syllable in Japanese (the only native f syllable is "fu"). And l's never show up in regular Japanese language and they tend to be replaced with r's in saying foreign words.

Anyway, yeah. Carrie is part of the same family as Sypha, Yoko, and Juste's mom. And Charlotte and I believe the Renard sisters from Dracula X and SotN are distant relatives. And I think officially Reindhart isn't a direct Belmont descendent, but a relative like the Morris family. Then again, CV64 and LoD weren't even considered canon by Igarashi and co. until Judgment when Cornell showed up. And that will be the first and likely last time I mention anything remotely positive about Judgment.

From what I've gathered her last name is spelled as ヴェルナンデス which has "v" instead of "b" or "f", that makes her a descendent of Sypha since she also shares the same one in Japanese, I'm guessing they're using V instead of B.