Topic: 2015/10: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX) - Revned

[JonLeung]

Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Revned's Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX) maps.

Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night is the first of a number of "Castleroid"/"Metroidvania" games within the Castlevania series, and the only one originally for consoles.  It is also a direct sequel to the PC Engine game Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood, where the ending serves as this game's prologue.  But most of all, Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night is often regarded as the best Castlevania game ever.  If there's still even any question about that, it is undisputedly the largest.

Dracula's Castle - sometimes referred to as Castlevania - is huge; we're talking 188 megapixels!  Alucard has to travel back and forth a lot, unlocking new abilities that allow him to access new areas from previously visited areas - it's modelled after Super Metroid, after all.  Though there is some Zebesian influence in its gameplay, it has its own distinctive gothic horror look.  The varied locales and massive creature sprites are simply amazing to behold.  Mix in some RPG elements, tons of weapons and items and secrets, and what you have is a game that's bigger than big, larger than large, simply humongous!  And then to top it off, well, I hope everyone knows what happens when you find the alternate way to take down Richter...

Longtime VGMaps contributor Revned knew that mapping Symphony Of The Night would be an incredible challenge.  Even one castle is certainly massive in size, but there were many obstacles besides the enormity of it all.  Apparently the PlayStation hardware is built more for 3D than for 2D, and there are various layers and transparencies to contend with, technical obstacles like that.  Though he started this off as a multi-mapper project, receiving help from Edsword, mephea, TerraEsperZ, Wileee and Zeric, Revned soon fully took the reins and completed the first castle after three years.  After a few more years, he surprised everyone with maps of the second castle that'd he'd been quietly working on by himself!  As if that wasn't enough, he also put together maps of the exclusive areas in the Sega Saturn version.  The individual area maps look great, but if your device and browser can handle it, viewing the fully-assembled castles - or the massive 36 megabyte image of both castles together - well, nothing beats that!  He finished all of this by Hallowe'en of last year, so for this "Maps Of The Month" recognition to come almost a year later, it feels overdue, but it also feels only appropriate for it to be in this month and no other.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping the biggest and best Castlevania game of all time, Revned's Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for October 2015.

[JonLeung]

Must not be much chatter about this because we already discussed this at length...here's the original topic where Revned called everyone up to this cause:
https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=231.0
Note that the topic started over nine years ago.  Nine years!  Also, it was topic 231, now we're on 2130...

Do you like the two images I made for the front page thumbnail?  You see the main one above, but what do you think of the alternate version?

I actually made it first but then thought the sideways text was hard to read, so I went back to the original idea, even if a little uninspired.  And then after that I thought it would be amusing to make an upside-down one (since there is that second castle, after all) and I still might but it probably won't go on the front page, that's probably a bit much.

[Revned]

Time sure flies. Hard to believe it's been a year since my scramble to finish the inverted castle. It was a relief finishing after so long, but I kind of miss being able to go back to it whenever I got the mapping itch.

That vertical text is pretty hard to read, so I think you chose well. There's so much incredible art in the game that I can imagine dozens of equally good looking thumbnails, but Dracula's chamber is the most iconic for sure.

[JonLeung]

Time does indeed fly.

I was alerted to the fact that today is the game's 27th birthday (at least when considering its North American PlayStation release date).

Kind of crazy that a third of that ago (9 years) was when this was honoured for the Maps Of The Month.  But, as you said, Revned, and corroborated by the file dates, you sent in the maps of the Inverted Castle (or, I put them up) on November 15, 2014, almost a year before that.  So we're soon coming up on the 10-year anniversary of your completed Symphony Of The Night maps!  And it was cool that other people were able to help out a bit on the first castle.

I still tell people that the FULL map (of both castles together) is my favourite map on all of VGMaps.com.  You've really done something here that hasn't been topped.

I really wish that, since Konami recently released the Castlevania Dominus Collection (bundling and rereleasing the DS games) on the Switch (and other platforms), it seems like Konami is intent on rereleasing so many Castlevania games on the Switch - except this one.  So I know many Nintendo-only gamers that have missed out.  I keep telling them that I recently replayed this on my phone - it's for dirt cheap on both Android and iOS, and EVERYONE has a smartphone... so there's really no reason to miss out (assuming they have a Bluetooth controller compatible with their phone).  Maybe I'm overestimating the number of people willing to play it on their phone, but come on...  Konami should take the hint (assuming that their Advance Collection and Dominus Collection sell well enough) to release the game that put the "-vania" in Metroidvania to an audience that would be receptive to it.

Anyway, I just wanted to say happy 27th birthday to this awesome game.  Revned's hardly around anymore, but if you read this - thanks again!