Hot damn is Castlevania IV overrated

[Bastardcat]

Hey, whether or not the TG16 was 16 bit is debatable, but if Konami was going to pretend that no one outside of Japan existed when Rondo of Blood came out, I think it is fair to ignore it when doing comparisons.
Most people either had to import it or wait for it to be made playable via emulation to get their first taste of it. It wasn't a game you could mosey on down to the video store and rent in olden days, as was the custom.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Wasn't the reason for it not being released due to the failure of the TurboGrafx in the West as well as some kind of exclusivity agreement that NEC or Hudson had that prevented them from doing a straight port to another system like the Sega CD?

I don't think Konami didn't release it in the US due to a lack of trying.

[Bastardcat]

No, their "lack of trying" came in form of a very poor imitation released for the SNES.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

And I believe that was all they could do due to the issue with some kind of license agreement keeping them from doing a straight port. I think if there was nothing keeping them from doing it we might have very well seen Rondo of Blood show up possibly on the Sega CD in the US if the Turbo CD wasn't profitable enough.

[Bastardcat]

Lack of a license is no excuse for how 8-bit the game felt. It was a huge step backwards from SCIV. Every part of it screamed "Hastily cobbled together!"

[TrekkiesUnite118]

How is it a huge step backwards? You can finally jump on and off the stairs as well as do back flips and item crashes. The only ting CV4 has that Rondo doesn't is the 8 directional whip. Which really isn't that great to begin with.

[Bastardcat]

Play the two, start to finish consecutively, and you'll see what I mean.

[Kamahl]

Play the two, start to finish consecutively, and you'll see what I mean.

I've done that multiple times, Rondo is by far the better of the two .

[Bastardcat]

I've done that multiple times, Rondo is by far the better of the two .

For clarification, I meant the SNES version of Dracula X.

[Kamahl]

For clarification, I meant the SNES version of Dracula X.

Oh, then yes, it's terrible. In stage one having to deal with bottomless pits and medusa heads is just wrong... In Rondo you could always deal with medusa heads even without 8 directional whipping. CV IV's stages might be a bit boring, but they aren't just plain terrible like the ones in Dracula X

[Bastardcat]

I'm starting to think that all developers have an A-team and a B-team. Games like Castlevania IV, and Rondo of Blood(TG16) get done by the A-team, and the crappy titles are handed off to the B-Team.

[Kamahl]

I'm starting to think that all developers have an A-team and a B-team. Games like Castlevania IV, and Rondo of Blood(TG16) get done by the A-team, and the crappy titles are handed off to the B-Team.

I don't know about Dracula X, but the composer for Bloodlines has stated it was a rush job.

[TVC 15]

CIV is your favourite band having another crack in proggy experimental territory, its long and laborious in parts, challenges you to continue on and has some excellent moments lesser bands rarely reach, but overall ends up feeling too ponderous for its own good and a little hit and miss.

Bloodlines is a bunch of punky upstarts debut album, its rough, ready, raw but incomplete and only features 7-8 songs, it hints of great things but is too rushed and unpolished.

Rondo is a great bands first all time classic, you know they've got another 2 or 3 before the bands exhausted, washed out and ends up asking an enigmatic or weirdo producer (Brian Eno usually) to step in as mixer and producer (Lord of Shadows - Kojima?).

[Armoured Priest]

I'm starting to think that all developers have an A-team and a B-team. Games like Castlevania IV, and Rondo of Blood(TG16) get done by the A-team, and the crappy titles are handed off to the B-Team.

I'd heard somewhere (though I can't verify this, so take with a grain of salt), that Treasure had had a hand in the development of CV IV.

Yeah, though a number of the larger developer/publishers even at that time had A, B, and even C teams...

I recall hearing that the SNES Dracula X wasn't rushed so much as it was a secondary project, and so didn't get all of the resources it could have used...it could have been a much better game then it was (even just more memory on the cart could have helped). If memory serves, the game data for Rondo (ignoring the uncompressed audio, or course) is still way larger then the < 1MB for Dracula X.

[Armoured Priest]

CIV is your favourite band having another crack in proggy experimental territory, its long and laborious in parts, challenges you to continue on and has some excellent moments lesser bands rarely reach, but overall ends up feeling too ponderous for its own good and a little hit and miss.

Bloodlines is a bunch of punky upstarts debut album, its rough, ready, raw but incomplete and only features 7-8 songs, it hints of great things but is too rushed and unpolished.

Rondo is a great bands first all time classic, you know they've got another 2 or 3 before the bands exhausted, washed out and ends up asking an enigmatic or weirdo producer (Brian Eno usually) to step in as mixer and producer (Lord of Shadows - Kojima?).

Nice analogy

I am going suggest to play Bloodlines on harder difficulties, though. You'll get more out of the game...in other words, the punky upstarts got some money and decided to do a decent remaster to clean up the worst of the artifacts, but still retain the raw energy and dynamics of the first go.