I've played Caslevania: Circle of the Moon, and Caslevania IV, and I'm going to get CoS. But I'm curious if there is anything story-wise I need to know? I've only read up on some of the other games but it seems as if most of the games consist of Dracula being revived by some means and you have to kill him for the 1023030 time
yeah I'm confused on this point too. What is this whole "handhelds follow after Dracula's death" while "consoles follow before Dracula's death"? Who actually gets credit for killing Dracula? Alucard?
Though Dracula X: Rondo of Blood's sequal, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night makes small references to Castlevania 3 (Ralph C./Trevor Belmont is mentioned and you fight dopplegangers of the other 3 heroes as bosses). And Aria of Sorrow is a direct sequal to SotN with a returning character and decendants from characters from Castlevania 3 (Belnades, etc). Then Dawn of Sorrow is the direct sequal to AoS.
Also Simon's Quest obviously takes place immediately after Castlevania 1.
The GB Castlevanias might run in a straight timeline but I never followed them.
Alucard and the other Belmont that's in AOD. They killed him in 1999 and trapped his soul in an eclipse. There's the classic storyline and the IGA one which is pretty much the same as the classic one only edited. The girl from the GBA is no longer mother of the Belmonts because he thought it foolish for such a strong family to have it's origins from a woman. Stupid, I know.
Agreed. I've always liked looking at the Zelda games as a collection of folktales; retelling the same, well-known events in different ways, and such. I don't see the need to pound the games into some sort of logical timeline.
Well, there is a timeline that starts with Lament of Innocence and (currently) ends with Dawn of Sorrow. I got this neat mini artbook that lists all games up to Harmony of Dissonance and it has all the original games and the IGA generation. It skips the N64 games and CotM.
Agreed. I've always liked looking at the Zelda games as a collection of folktales; retelling the same, well-known events in different ways, and such. I don't see the need to pound the games into some sort of logical timeline.
That's what I liked about the handling of Zelda 'history' in Wind Waker, about earlier stuff being a legend even within the game world. Neat. It's not too precise, and doesn't try to... uh, connect the current timeline to the old one too strictly.
The girl from the GBA is no longer mother of the Belmonts because he thought it foolish for such a strong family to have it's origins from a woman. Stupid, I know.
Agreed. I've always liked looking at the Zelda games as a collection of folktales; retelling the same, well-known events in different ways, and such. I don't see the need to pound the games into some sort of logical timeline.
That's cool, I never thought of it like that. It's kinda like the Nihongi, the same story told over and over again but from a different perspective.
The girl from the GBA is no longer mother of the Belmonts because he thought it foolish for such a strong family to have it's origins from a woman. Stupid, I know.
Let me elaborate. Sonia Belmont mating with Alucard is no longer the reason that the Belmonts have special blood. Rather, centuries prior, whatever happened in Lament of Innocence is the reason (I never bothered to finish that game).
Igarashi took over the Castlevania series with Symphony of the Night. He was the one who started taking the storyline seriously and started piecing stuff together. Before that, there really wasn't anything consistent.
Wasn't Castlevania I and II just set in a generic time frame, with CVIII just being set "100 years before?" Outside of the mysogynistic Sonia Belmont stuff Iga has been pretty good at keeping a decent timeline in the series
Not really. He was a little off with one of the years in bloodline or something. But yeah, its always best to take the timeline with a grain of salt. i do wonder though, Super Castlevania IV a remake? I was really surprised a few months back when I first played the game, but for the most part, I hate that game. It is a remake, right?
Not really. He was a little off with one of the years in bloodline or something. But yeah, its always best to take the timeline with a grain of salt. i do wonder though, Super Castlevania IV a remake? I was really surprised a few months back when I first played the game, but for the most part, I hate that game. It is a remake, right?
Wasn't Castlevania I and II just set in a generic time frame, with CVIII just being set "100 years before?" Outside of the mysogynistic Sonia Belmont stuff Iga has been pretty good at keeping a decent timeline in the series
Yeah, going through manuals and whatnot, that's the case. The first reference I could find to a specific date was Bloodlines, which is like the 10th CV game released. And that date is just set off of the novel Dracula, as the game takes place 20 years after (making it 1917).
So yeah, as far as I can see there was no timeline before IGA came on, and he's done a pretty decent job of putting it together to it makes sense (more or less).
Castlevania 2 was the direct sequel to Castlevania 1 (they both starred Simon Belmont), and Castlevania 3 (Ralph/Trevor Belmont) was a prequel.
Ralph/Trevor boinked Sypha Belnades.
Castlevania 4 was a remake of CV1.
After a shakeup, Toru Hagihara produced "Dracula X: Rondo of Blood" for the PCE CD
Richter boinked Annette Renard
, and Tomikazu Kirita (AFAIK) produced "Castlevania: Bloodlines" for the Genesis. Since different groups were making CV games, there was very little cohesive storyline.
KCE Nagoya made "Castlevania: Legends" for the GameBoy, starring Sonia Belmont, and said that it was the origin story of the series.
Alucard boinked Sonia.
Koji Igarashi (Iga) was a writer/producer from Tokimeki Memorial who joined Toru Hagihara's team as his assistant for Symphony of the Night, the sequel to Dracula X, and since he was a fan of CV3 he had the game become a sequel to that one as well.
Alucard boinked Maria Renard.
Castlevania moved to 3D on the N64, which was generally disliked, and only liked by a small group of fans.
Then Iga wrote a timeline for the series, which adjusted a few things, gave dates to others, and sort of made sense of everything. Dracula revives every 100 years, unless some abnormal event disrupts his cycle.
Toru Hagihara retired (at least from producing), and Iga was promoted to his place. Konami decided that they wanted to have one person in charge of everything, so they gave that role to Iga, since he had demonstrated that he was a real fan of the series.
After getting authority, he took down the timeline he had written, struck the N64 games from it, saying that they sucked and were unworthy, and struck CV Legends from it, saying that Sonia was unsuitable as a Belmont hero (because she was female). When people pointed out that both Dracula X and SotN feature Maria as a playable hero, he said that Toru Hagihara included her in Dracula X as a "joke character" and that KCE Nagoya was responsible for making her playable in the Saturn version of SotN.
The Iga canned Tomikazu Kirita's Tomb Raider-style "Castlevania: Ressurection" on the Dreamcast, because A: He said it wasn't fundamentally better than the 3D N64 games, and B: It was going to star Sonia Belmont.
Cynics and conspiricy theorists suggest that Iga went after those three games because that allowed him to take out Castlevania Ressurection, and eliminate Tomikazu Kirita (a senior producer on a lesser team) as a threat to his authority.
Then Iga noticed that there were very few openings left in the timeline to allow for new Belmont vs Dracula fights, so he changed the Japanese series name from "Dracula" to "Castlevania", to allow for side stores that don't have to affect Dracula.
He gave Sonia's former "origin story" position to his new N64-esque 3D PS2 game, and decided that the GameBoy Advance games should be side-stories, while the console games continue to use up those limited number of "Belmont vs Dracula" stories in a vain attempt to get people to like 3D Castlevanias. He then struck the first GBA sidestory from Castlevania history, because I guess he didn't like it.
The third GBA sidestory game (Aria of Sorrow) said that Dracula will finally be "killed" once and for all in 1999, and that he will be reincarnated into niceguy Soma Cruz, which leads him into having various troubles and adventures. This gave Iga the new idea of having portable games be about Soma, while console games are about Belmont/Dracula, rather than making the distinction about "real" and "sidestory" games.
I love his games, but wow, how dense can he be. Think about it, women as heroes are a no go, but men that look like women are. What a moron. Thank you for that great post, by the way. Most excellent/
oS. But I'm curious if there is anything story-wise I need to know? I've only read up on some of the other games but it seems as if most of the games consist of Dracula being revived by some means and you have to kill him for the 1023030 time
