Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Is Getting an AI-Free SNES Port, and You Can Play It Now

This is pretty dang impressive!

I think a complete new Saturn port. (The existing one is a lost cause.) Would be the only retro port of this I would be interested in.
(I play the iOS port on an m2 iPad and it is genuinely great and so cheap at £2.99 the 360 port was quite disappointing and £18 or something.)

I'm just glad the SNES is getting more than just Classic Kong.

I wish there was a modern devkit for the system that's widenly used like the SGDK.

Visually the SNES should be able to do a very close copy of this with it's impressive colour palette and array of native hardware tricks. But I wonder if they will incorporate a DSP chip to help with some of the more taxing sections and avoid slowdown?

I wanted to see the parallax trick on the clock tower on the background as you climb the stairs to Dracula's chamber.

@h3s You should have a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLg1NLHEOTk

You have to be realistic and… this isn’t going to be completed. Basically because it’s just one person working on it, and it’s an overly ambitious and massive project that shows limitations right from the start:

With a single enemy on screen, Alucard’s “Dash” shows inconsistency with the afterimages and noticeable flickering. To make matters worse, it doesn’t even use the console’s native capabilities, since the music, according to the author, is handled by the MSU-1, meaning external hardware takes care of the music, preventing the CPU from having to manage transfers to the SPC700’s ARAM, which is limited to 64KB of audio memory where sound effects, the driver, and the soundtrack all have to fit. That could complicate things, and the MSU-1 solves it in one fell swoop.

As a curiosity, sure, it’s interesting, but… let’s be realistic.

@ludotaku Thanks

This is interesting to see. In addition to the color capabilities of the system, another thing the SNES has going for it is the pixel resolution matches the original PS1 game as it was 256 pixels wide. Strange that the Saturn did not support that resolution which is why the graphics in the game look a bit off in spots like diagonal surfaces having some issues. If such a project was to go beyond a demo stage, the matching resolution would be helpful as assets throughout the game could be used without modification in terms of size and it would look correct.

IMPRESSIVE!! Something just seems so “right” about this. It feels like it should have been on the system originally (also). Can you imagine if this game had come out on SNES as well? Hooo boy.
Can’t say I’ll actually play this after all is said and done but I love it so much.

@2ElvesVS1man If they continue on to make something more than just a single corridor level - those Alucard trails are going to have to go. It's gonna cause some bad sprite drop out - and not in a pretty way (snes does reverse sprite dropout compared to other consoles).

@ChromaticDracula As a cart? It would have been a fraction of the original PS1 game. This needs an insane cart size or a SNES CD. Even if you dial the graphics back for the SNES to handle - there's just too assets in the original. It would have to be seriously watered down to fit on a cart. This is why the MD "version" took a different approach and making a cut-down mostly action only version (missing a lot of the levels).

@turboxray I totally understand! I’m one of the few who actually likes Dracula X. I know it was watered down quite a bit from its PC Engine counterpart but it’s quite enjoyable still, especially for how accessible it is.
Point is, if they can sort of do with this what they did with that, I think it’d be playable/enjoyable to some degree. I maintain I’m not sure I’d actually play this watered down version though. I will not argue what the superior version would remain!
It just seems like a cool alternate reality what-if kind of thing. This on Super Nintendo just seems so cool, if even just to have the prequel and sequel on one system.

@turboxray Pigsy I remember he said he was doing all levels for MD including Saturn levels, his initial idea was an action platformer but he said it would not be much more work to include the metroidvania game. He also mentioned the rom size which he says there is no promise of keeping it under 5MB, I think he said, but if you projecting based on his breakdown on current storage use and to do list it seems to me 6MB is the likely rom size given he gave a lower number. But in his latest video it suggests that he will only release the Arcade version of the game in the middle of the year, I'm guessing this version maybe 4MB as people have asked him to keep at this size so it can be played on standard flashcarts.

@turboxray Flash ROMs can be whatever size a programmer wants to make them. Memory is the least problematic issue with making a game like this.

Yeah I would love to see Castlevania symphony of the night on the super nes.that would be awesome because I'm a big fan of Castlevania and symphony of the night is indeed my favorite Castlevania game of all time.no matter how much times they try to emulate this game,this will always stand out as the best Castlevania game of all time to me.

@2ElvesVS1man you're talking about the very first short clip from a pre-alpha demo. 🤷‍♂️

Switch 1/2 when?

@UtopiaNemo
Exactly, and if the animations already show flickering from exceeding the per-scanline pixel limits that the PPU can draw, what we’re seeing isn’t “realistic” in the sense that it will have to reduce the number of residual images the protagonist displays. And if the game runs using MSU-1 for the soundtrack, expect a “large” file, speaking in comparison to the average cartridge size on the console, that could only be run via emulation or an EverDrive that supports that feature.

As Turboxray also points out, “those Alucard trails are going to have to go. It's gonna cause some bad sprite drop out,” without a doubt. So I see it from a different perspective than you do: yes, it’s a pre-alpha version that already shows the console’s limitations based on what has been shown so far.

@UtopiaNemo Since you have reading comprehension failure, let me quote myself:
"It would have been a fraction of the original PS1 game."

The see the past tense there? That means my statement, which is a reply to someone else saying this should have come out for the SNES bitd, is in that context. Rom sizes were definitely limited back then, and costly too.

Nowadays? Of course you can do whatever you want - assuming you got the skill to make a mapper or find someone to do it for you. Or cheat and use the MSU-1 + cart ram. But you can't SIMPLY just put a 64megabyte rom setup on the snes. It doesn't have the address range for it, and no emulator supports that. And you've excluded anyone who has a flash card already. What you can theoretically do and what is practical.. are two very different things. Ask me how I know.

So saying "Flash ROMs can be whatever size".. that's a false statement for BITD, and that's an ignorant statement for the system today.

@h3s They've done a pretty good job fixing it.

@mootint I specifically remember him saying that NOT all levels will be in the game. And I can definitely see that if they're limiting the project to 4megabytes (they're not employing compression either, so they're hitting that limit even sooner).

@turboxray when said he would do all levels he mentioned how much more work in percentages (as he was just picking and choosing from the complete levels for the arcade version) and he wants to give people want they want and make everyone happy and it give him more freedom on the Arcade level design as he does not need to satisfy everyone.
I think he must be planning on two separate games then, and the Arcade game might be 6MB.