Definitely a 32X game (rumoured). Never heard of a MCD variant. And I also had heard that development was shifted over to what would become Symphony/Nocturne. There was that one screenshot that looked like it used an edited Richter sprite from DX.
Edit - this is the one I saw, but it is obviously a fan-edit.
....What am I reading? Castlevania Bloodlines's art is amazing!
Can try Novus products....
People use this for refurbishing Pinball plastics
Definitely a 32X game (rumoured). Never heard of a MCD variant. And I also had heard that development was shifted over to what would become Symphony/Nocturne. There was that one screenshot that looked like it used an edited Richter sprite from DX.
Edit - this is the one I saw, but it is obviously a fan-edit.
Hmm, Hard Corps has heaps going on and lots of tricks to make it look like scaling and rotation is happening (lots of round objects and background laters as 'sprites') but the low colour palette makes it pretty gross looking. At least after Contra Spirits. Always frustrated me they didn't put that effort into a late-cycle SNES Contra, the results could have been spectacular. Also the sound effects and music are just awful, the worst kind of Mega Drive soundtrack ('robot farts').
Contra Hard Corps' visual effects are really cool! I love the scaling, real or faked, the cool bossfights, the games' variety of level settings and enemies... it's a good-looking game, and really seems to push the hardware with all of those effects. Bloodlines has nothing like it.
Bloodlines released AFTER CV4 and RoB, and as you say, graphically is 'nowhere near' them. Castlevania IV uses the new hardware great. It's got beautiful graphics, amazing music (maybe the best in the franchise!), it uses Mode 7, I couldn't ask for more. Rondo of Blood does the same; the CD audio is great, the game has nice cutscenes, it uses the CD for great graphical variety and some cool animations here and there (bosses, particularly!)... amazing game. And then, after both of them, comes Bloodlines, with average graphics, music that's good but not as good as the previous two games, and no particularly interesting hardware features being used. It's just a fairly average-looking Genesis platformer, and that's about it. Graphically, that's hugely disappointing compared to the previous two games! I know that the Genesis doesn't have CDs or Mode 7 or such, but still, Hard Corps is visually impressive. So is Rocket Knight Adventures. Why does Castlevania look so comparatively average, particularly compared to the two previous games in its franchise (CV4 and RoB)?
Nah, the lacking graphics are actually the first bad thing I noticed about the game. Second was the idiotic broken whip controls. Third was how unfun-hard it is.
I'm not sure what you mean here, but I'm 100% on the side of those who say that Super Castlevania IV has the best whip controls in the series, and Konami was stupid to never use them again.
Yeah, nowhere near. Either SCIV or RoB look worlds better than Bloodlines. And as I said, Bloodlines doesn't really have any cool uses of tech either, unlike both of those games, or Contra Hard Corps as well. That tower you "rotate" around is neat, but the NES can do that -- see Kirby's Adventure. The only other thing I can think of is the mirrored-water section, which is slightly interesting, but Rocket Knight Adventures does it better. Most of the game is just standard platforming, and platforming that's never anywhere near as great, or as fun, as the two previous games. Bloodlines is an average to good game, in my opinion, a grade letter or two below SCIV and RoB, which are two of the best platformers of the generation.
The Mode 7 parts of SCIV are great and aren't gimmicky at all... well, the rotating room kind of is, but it's cool anyway. The spinning hallway, though, looks awesome!
Compared to SCIV's music? I know the Genesis's sound chip is probably part of the issue, the system is best at techno-style sounds, but it's distinctly worse than SCIV. SCIV looks and sounds AMAZING.
Of the NES games, the only one I own is the first game. I got to Death once, but gave up after a while, because that boss fight is really hard and the corridor before it is ridiculous. With saving I might have kept trying, but I don't want to have to replay the whole game just to get to that part again (so maybe I'll get the GBA version sometime...). I've never played Castlevania II, and have only played a few levels worth of the third game. I've wanted it pretty much since I got a NES, but never wanted to pay the price for it, and never did play it much in emulation back when I played emulated games.
The password saves the number of continues you have left, and as far as I know you cannot get more. This means that if you use a continue in order to not have to restart the level you just got game over in, you lose one of your VERY few continues permanently for the rest of the game. So, if you want to have any continues left in the later, harder levels, this game essentially requires playing each level over and over, trying to beat the stupid thing without dying -- because lives as well as continues is saved, and extra lives are few and far between. And if you do use continues, you'll get stuck in the later stages having to master THOSE without dying. No thanks! No other Castlevania game has anything remotely like it, and that's a very good thing because it's terrible! Bloodlines should have had unlimited continues, as all other games in the franchise do.
Nah, there's lots better.
If by great you mean somewhat forgettable, sure.
Branches out a bit? How so, by making it something of a throwback back to the NES games, and either ignoring or messing up most of the advances the previous two games had added to the series?
I said it was average, not bad.
All true.
Well technically Nocturne is the third game... after Drac XX.
ABF's hyperbolic dismissal of Bloodlines is well-known by now, I guess.
Hahaha, wow. Thanks for that.
Almost all of NIntendo (EAD, HAL, Intelligent Systems) and Rare's N64 games are indeed better than any games in their genres on the PS1. I love platformers, so this is important. All five of their 3d platformers are better than anything in the genre on PS1/Saturn, their two kart racers are better than any on the other systems ("CTR is better" people are crazy!), 1080 is better than any of their snowboarding games, neither one has a thing on either Zelda game (and OoT is, after all, still the best game ever made), Wave Race is the best water racing game of the generation (Hydro Thunder is close, but that's better on N64 than PS1 too), F-Zero X is better than any PS1-exclusive futuristic racers (and anyway Wipeout 64 is the best Wipeout game of the generation and Rush 2049 the best racing game ever made, but those are third party, even if they aren't on PS1/Saturn), I haven't played a PS1 or Saturn tennis game as good as N64 Mario's Tennis, or a party game matching Mario Party 2, or a third-person shooter anywhere near as great as Jet Force Gemini. Paper Mario is my favorite JRPG of the generation, too.
Do you mean this is what you're actually playing at the moment, and not a list of your favorite systems? Interesting idea... hmm.
