A Quick Update

The blog is on pause while I attempt to get ALL the 2d Castlevania games.  (My other blog "Wargame Dork" is actively updated on a 4 posts per month average however!  Lots of retro gaming content is showing up there too.)

Sadly I still need 3-4 games and they are all the most expensive ones.

Castlevania Legends (Game Boy)
Vampire Killer (MSX)
Haunted Castle (Arcade, PS2 port)
Castlevania X (SNES)

All of these games are generally not considered that good yet most even for a loose cartridge/disk go for 50+ US dollars.  Yeah.  I am cheap.  And even worse would be to try to get the Gameboy Color versions of Castlevania Adventure 1 and 2!!  Super rare in the European English editions, and probably sought after in Japan as well.

CV X I can kind of ignore as it is just a remixed and not as good version of Rondo of Blood which is helpfully on the PSP amongst other legal options.  (Wii IIRC along with a remake of one of the GB CVs which I have and may cover.)

I am not really covering or caring about the 3d CVs otherwise that adds another handful of games I do not much care about.  Especially the Wii fighting game with the ridiculous character redesigns.

The other Dracula related type games I am kind of searching for but VERY casually.

So don't forget about Blogging Castlevania.  Its just.. hiding in its coffin till NOT ELIZABETH BATHORY WITH BIG HONKIN HOOTERS shows up to wake it back up! :v

Work Continues!

That's right!  Both CV 2 and CV 3 have been completed.  I just now have close to 800 screencaps to turn into comic reports of my trials and suffering.  CV 3 is BRUTAL even with the odd savestating.  Dunno how I ever would have completed this game on an actual NES legit.

Have I risen from the grave?

                                                                      I believe I have.

My long delayed Castlevania 2 comic will begin very soon.  I have nearly 400 screenshots taken with the whole game completed over a rough 5-7 hours of gameplay rarely referring to any maps or FAQs.

Halloween Approaches!

Yes this blog is still mostly on hiatus, but I do think about it quite often.

But there was a nice little article by the normally completely annoying Jeremy Parish today (he is one of those obnoxious snotty Nintendo worshipping types who acts like any other game system simply didn't exist, or at least was beneath notice.  Which of course makes him COMPLETELY wrong.  The Nintendo machines had some fantastic games.  So did almost every other game or computer system out there.) about the Castlevania series, albeit its a tad short:

http://www.1up.com/features/castlevania-chronicles-killing-dracula-25-years

If you are in the mood to be inspired to do some vampire slaying for the season you could do far worse than to read it.

Now what have I been up to Castlevania wise?  Well on my main blog (Wargame Dork) I have posted my initial house rules for my Castlevania D&D 4th edition campaign that is set to start tomorrow and hopefully will continue past the first game.  (Unlike a 2nd ed AD&D game I joined where we had a whopping TWO game sessions and then the host and her husband the DM basically quit communicating with the group entirely.  Which is NOT COOL.)

I have been rereading the 2 D&D system Transylvania/Vlad the Impaler sourcebooks that have been released that I know of (a 2nd ed "Masque of the Red Death" AD&D Ravenloft supplement, and a D20 system supplement about Vlad the Impaler by Avalanche Press, they of the cheesecake covers and bad customer service infamy.)  and refreshing my knowledge.

The AD&D 2nd one is MUCH better than the AP one.  Its classier in its presentation and coverage of Vlad's atrocities while not whitewashing it, while the Avalanche one seems to revel in going into detail of the physical and sexual abuses the Impaler Prince both perpetrated and had inflicted on him.

But both books help give me the detail I need for my fantasy Europe.

I have also picked up a couple 1 dollar foam weapons from Target which seem to be all but Belmont weapons.  Double bladed axe, and flail/morning star.   Why?  Just because.  My friend mentioned having a 16 bit costume party recently so upon me remembering I bought things makes me think maybe a Richter Belmont costume might be in my future plans.  Probably a "on the quick" one.  White jeans, a headband, wristbands, blue tunic.  Then I can go around telling monsters they don't belong in this world while your average person has no idea what the hell I am on about.

PC Engine was 16 bit man.  And a seriously underrated games machine in the west.

I may even get back to playing through the CV games proper.  My Let's Play of a D&D Turbografx (US name for the PC Engine) title should be done this week, and there is a chill in the air now.

My iMac (the slow one that still works) is even ready for the season:

We shall see though.

If nothing else, expect my Castlevania campaign notes either here or on the main blog, with links from one to the other.

DIE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES! YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD!!

                                                   ( Video from Youtube by MrYaridovich )
Blogging Castlevania will return this March.
See, my high powered Windows XP Dual Booting iMac decided to have its SECOND hard disk die on it since August 07.  (And third drive fart total, but the drive fart I could reinstall from.)

So I looked at prices and the reality of things and with a heavy heart and big income tax return decided it is best to return to the land of Windows where I can easily fix my own machine when I have to.  (iMacs don't make it easy and its minimal what you can do.  I can swap out parts on a PC for years saving me THOUSANDS of dollars.)

So until I can get the new PC home, up, running, then swap motherboards in April due to Intel having its biggest goof since the original Pentium 66mhz chip minor flaw, I am currently stuck on a tiny slow 1.8ghz 1 Gig of Ram G5 iMac which doesn't make for high efficiency Comic Life Deluxe use and the Mac emulation scene sort of blows.

Thus my continuing mission to play through Castlevania games must take a break.

And of course when the new machine comes in I sort of have a backlog of recent PC titles I want to work through.

But I will return.  Its just not a priority right now.

More Work for the Project

Instead of playing more Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land, or doing work on my main blog I have been preparing for my grand experiment in playing 2d Platformers with Dracula elements in them.

I have dug out most of my games so far, not even realizing I owned Castlevania 2.  It was unboxed and antimanualed, but I have it.  Sadly it was in a Funcoland crappy case so I swapped it with my case for Super Mario Brothers.  The one that didn't have Duck Hunt with it.  (I have that one separate.  I may be one of the only NES owners who in its heyday got SMB AFTER the system.  I got the one in 86 with ROB and the Zapper so mine had Gyromite (which is actually kinda fun if you get rid of the damn robot.  I traded mine for Dungeons & Dragons stuff.) and Duck Hunt.)

I have even found a couple old gaming magazines with info on the games.  Sadly just Symphony of the Night era mags so far, but I haven't dug through my EGM Buyer's Guides yet.

My challenge now is to figure out how exactly to play some of them.

See I am a Mac user.  Our emulators suck balls because this one Bannister guy programs most of them and keeps the gamepad controls as a paid product.  And he revises the programs now and then which start yelling at you for having out of date versions, especially if you use the paid enhancer program in its free version.

Now I guess I could use Windows emulation but I don't much like Windows.  If it wasn't for Blood Bowl, Dawn of War 1-2, and other older PC titles before I became a card carrying latte sipping MacTard in late 05 I wouldn't bother with it at all.

(Though at this point a 500 dollar laptop probably would outperform my 2.8ghz dual core Imac at most gaming tasks even with Boot Camp.  An 07 high end Mac is probably a 2010 Emachine special laptop.)

Also in Windows land I have a nice Konami collection with all 3 NES Castlevanias on it, albeit without the funnybad manuals.  I just see no screenshot function.

So I may mess around with Windows emulators to properly play my legitimately purchased software so I can take pretty pictures.

What?  I should just use my digital camera and buy the games on Wii Virtual Console?

Yeah.  For the NES games NO.

Once I get out of NES land we will see what tricks I have to pull, but for now its emulation.

I mean, have you ever SEEN RF cable or even RCA Composite on an HDTV?  Ugh.

Good Evening!

I bid you.. welcome.

Enter freely, and of your own will.

What is this blog gonna be about?

Well, one of my favorite gaming franchises is the Castlevania series.  Gametrailers' recent 5 part retrospective on the games plus the combination of Halloween season and my watching of the Spanish language version of the 1930's Dracula movie made for a dangerous combination.  (Lupita Tovar was amazingly gorgeous.  And the kinda fat guy playing the sanitarium chief was awesome.   Their Renfield was easily a match for Dwight Frye's iconic performance.  Its just really really GOOD.)

So I busted out Castlevania Chronicles on the PS1, a game I got years ago and never completed, and finished it.  Still hungry for more monster whipping I dropped a tenner on WiiWare and bought Castlevania Rebirth and finished that too.

And now I am working on a Castlevania campaign using 4th edition Essentials Dungeons & Dragons, taking place in a fantasy Romania in the year 1500.

 (Not the fanciest formatted poster, but beats what most players wanted posters do.  Still probably won't get any interest in the real world.  Already had IRC folks ask where I lived cuz they want to play though.  I hate my antisocial state.)

I feel the need to whip monsters and watch guys in capes drink blood.

I want to share these adventures with all of you, adding in various things related to Dracula and the era he was created from.

So this blog will have reviews of Dracula goodies, information on my Castlevania RPG campaign, discussions of the movies starring the REAL greatest Vampire of all time, and..

The most important part of the blog.

My adventures through EVERY 2D CASTLEVANIA GAME RELEASED IN THE USA (with possible sidesteps into foreign only games and maybe some of the 3d ones.).

See I have most of the games already.  Just won an ebay bid for the first 2 Game Boy games complete with manuals and I own every other US released game in some legal format except for Dracula X on the SNES and Legends on the Game Boy.

Yes, that's another self imposed restriction.  I have to legally own every one of the games.  I will most likely play them through emulators so I can take screencaps and save my progress where it is convenient to me.

Sadly Ebay and Amazon sellers seem to think most older games are worth ridiculous amounts so my 2 missing games from the series will be a ways off, hopefully till I can find them complete and under their original MSRP.  (But I would pay 5-10 bucks for working cartridge only if I had to.)

I am not counting the Kid Dracula games either, but again, if I can get them cheap or any of the knockoff Castlevania games like that weird Sega Game Gear game with "Doctor Social" in it I may visit those games as well.

I make no promises to FINISH every single game, especially as most of the Gameboy Advance and DS titles are quite long and I have already completed them.  But each game will get at least 3 hours of play before I can move on.  Expect maybe 2-3 posts per month if I can finagle the time.  I do have an existing hobby games blog as well that is still my prime blogging project.

If I can get things cheap I may even visit the MSX Vampire Killer game, the Haunted Castle arcade game which got a PS2 release in Japan, and various formats of the same game.

So get out the Wolfsbane, ready your holy water, and make sure your silver daggers are sharp.

Its time to start whipping one of the most legendary villains in all of fiction in the face!