Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 137: How Symphony of the Night (almost) killed Metroidvania

Episode Date: February 5, 2018

Jeremy, Benj, and Chris explore the mid-’90s doldrums of the metroidvania genre, with a lengthy sidebar on the era's lone high point amidst industry-wide disinterest: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

This week in Retronauts, what is a man? Well, guys, what is it? Well, guys, what is it? A miserable little pile of secrets. Talk have at you. All right. Yes. Hi, everyone.

What? That's at the end when you kill. Okay. Okay. So, hi, everyone. Welcome to another Metroidvania,vania,vania episode of Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And as usual, I have brought them here together to pay me tribute.

It's... Oh, you still live. That was going to be my interview. Sorry, sorry about that, Chris. Go ahead. I'm Chris Sims. What? What?

And I am here to talk about the second best Metroidvania ever made after Super Mario World. Oh, you just had to bring that in. And also here to be very specific about semantics. It's Ben Jadritch. That's it. That's all I got to see. That's all you got. No like trouble my mother's soul no more.

Anything like that. You horrible monster. Mankind, ill need such a thing as you. I don't remember what I says. What are we going to talk about this episode, guys? We're going to talk about... I've got some great cookie recipes. I found one on the back of some chocolate chips, like on the bag.

It's so good. You guys should try it. Also, we're going to talk about something called Symphony the Night. But, okay, so we have actually done a Retronauts on Rondo of Blood and Symphony the Night about three or four years ago. So that's kind of fresh. I don't want to belabor that point too much. But on the other hand, I know you guys really love that game. So we're going to talk about it some in a larger context.

This actually, okay, so this is our, what is it now, fifth episode, the evolution of Metroidvania-style games. Is that better binge? Yeah. Metrovania style. Metroidvania-esque. Yes, there you go. Exploration-based action RPG platformers.

Exactly. We should just call them Parrishvania's at this point. They don't actually die. Well, actually, that's what we're going to talk about this episode. is that for a while, around the time of Symphony the Night, this style of game pretty much vanished. Like, between the debut of Symphony and the Night and Metroid Fusion, five and a half years later,

you could count the number of these games, the style of game that were released into the market. On like one hand, it's crazy. You know, you went from, as we talked about in the NES era, like there were years where you would have half a dozen of these games, and then to go five years and not even see half a dozen, of them like wow what happened we're going to talk about that but first we are going to kind of catch up with stuff we meant to talk about last episode but ended up getting carried away

with chris's uh virgin experience with super metroid uh maiden experience has that your maiden voyage okay it's getting a little less sketchy uh yes uh but this time i'm sure we all have long deep-seated love for something the night so we don't need to worry about fresh experiences instead we can talk about old experiences i don't another time. Last time we were going to talk about some 16-bit Metroidvania-style games that kind of came before Super Metroid and after Super Metroid, and everything got kind of crowded out by Super Metroid.

So we should catch up on those. We don't have to go into super detail in these. But it is interesting to see sort of how this genre continued to evolve after Super Metroid kind of perfected everything. Like, after Super Metroid, what more do you do? Where do you go from there? This is a problem that even Nintendo has faced, which is why none of the games to come after Super Metroid

have been quite as good. But what can you do? You can be Konami and create Symphony of the Night. You can. And that's what happened. Spoiler. Spoiler alert. So there are, what, like, I guess four games here

worth kind of touching on in this first segment before we get to Symphony. And two of them are actually, on Sega systems, and it's kind of an underrepresented sort of platform for the style of game. But in the 16-bit era, they kind of were like, hey, Nintendo's slack and it's time for us to catch up and give the people what they need, because Sega does what Nintendo don't, even with the style of game. So the first one is Popful Mail. No, actually, I guess Monster World Four. Sorry I went out of order. Monster World Four. We've done a full

episode on the Monster World Series. It's very confusing. This is the one that's not like any of the other Monster World games. It's not a total Metroidvania-style open-world platformer like Wonder Boy 3, but it's also not just strictly linear like the original Wonder Boy. It's kind of in between. And also, it's not Wonder Boy because it doesn't star a boy. It stars a girl. Stars a girl named Aisha, I think.

And this game is very similar in a lot of ways to Chante, although, as you may have heard in the episode we just posted last week, On Chante, where I spoke to its creator, Matt Bozahn, he said, no, actually, I'd never played Monster World for before we created Chanty. So it's like a crazy coincidence. But she is a girl who runs around. She has a sword, but she also hits things with her hair. There's exploration and kind of like a sort of medieval, not medieval, middle Eastern art vibe. And also the game Iconoclasts, which just came out this past week. that also is heavily influenced by Monster World Four. So it's a game that kind of connects to a lot of other games and in interesting ways, but maybe unintentional ways. I don't know. Now, is she also a digital avatar for Colonel Scott O'Connor?

She is not. There's nothing to do with Kabuki Quantum Fighter here. Okay. That's a good reference, though. Yeah. It's hair-based combat games. There aren't a lot of those. HBC.

You can, yeah, I'm worried that my house's HBC is going to. know, we're out and they'll be expensive to replace. Didn't it freeze last week? It did. It's terrible. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't have too much to say about Monster World 4 because it is kind of an edge case.

It's semi non-linear, but it's really pretty linear. It's actually 1994. Yeah, at this time in America, did this even come out in America? Not until like 2009. Okay, so yeah, that's why I never heard of it until like this year or last year. And at that, you know, obviously Sonic games, sort of overwhelmed everything on the Genesis, at least in the American market.

So even Monster World 3, did that come out in America? Yeah, I had no idea about it. This was the first entry in the series that did not make it to the U.S. Okay. And for a long time, it was kind of like the Sega Genesis' hidden gym alongside Alien Soldier,

the one by Treasure. There's like Alien Storm and Alien Syndrome and Alien Soldier. That's the one that's like all boss battles. And it's crazy hard. So this, yeah, this was one of like two, two crazy hidden gems on the Sega Genesis, or sorry, Mega Drive that importers knew about. And it's still hidden.

It's not. Because Sega actually localized it for last gen platforms. It showed up on Wiiware and Xbox 360 and PS3 as part of the Monster World collection. And it's actually playable on Xbox One and WiiU through backward compatibility. So on Wii U, you'll have to buy it immediately if you want to play it through Wii backward compatibility. They're about to close the store. Yes, they're about to close the digital storefront there. Actually, the storefront's going to be open for like another year, but you have like until the end of the month, which actually maybe too late by the time you hear this to put Wii points in to buy stuff.

But the Xbox One backward compatibility seems to be ongoing and it is supported. So if you want to check out Monster World 4, it's possible to do that on a current gen system without, you know, bending over backward to do it. So I highly recommend it. It's a really cool game. But, yeah, it is very much in sort of the cave story vein where it kind of seems open-ended, but it's actually not. Like, you know, you pretty much have, you go from point A to point B. And there's some hidden stuff and a chance to kind of wander around and go back and forth. But really, you're just kind of going through the linear plot. Chris, you've been very quiet.

he disappeared you have nothing to say on this game saving it up i'm saving it up jeremy staring up his energy you should see him sitting here squatting just just gunking his fists yeah fireballs coming around So, Ben, you mentioned Sonic, and it's interesting you should mention Sonic because the next game we're going to talk about supposedly almost became a Sonic game. And that is Falcom's Popful Mail, which originally debuted on, I want to say, PC-9801 in Japan. but then it was ported to definitely Sega CD

that's the person that came to the US and that was localized by working designs and I think it also showed up on Super Famicom and all three of these games were completely different from not completely but very different from another they had like the same sort of general vibe and gameplay but they all had different structures it's kind of weird and as it happens

a listener named Brady Hartel wrote in with some very extensive notes Oh, yeah, here it is. He says, I have a physical copy of every version of the game except for the PC-88 version and the cell phone port. This is what I know that exists of. PC-88 debuted in 1991. It's as far as I know the first version.

It's very simplistic sounding. It has a 640 by 200 resolution at 8 colors, but he says he's never been able to get that version to run. The PC-98 version from 92 is the PC-88 version with better graphics. It is five floppy disks long and runs at a better resolution, 640 by 400, it's 16 colors. It's a simple scrolling platformer, which scrolls well enough for a PC-98 game, but it has that low-frame rate jerkiness PC-98 games tend to have. The gameplay area is also pretty tiny and surrounded by HUD elements.

I think they did this because they probably couldn't make the game full-screen on PC-98. The biggest thing which doesn't translate through videos about the gameplay is that there's really only one action button other than the directional keys, and that's to jump. To attack enemies, you sort of bump into them and mail auto attacks. So it's very much like the East Games, but as a platformer. Then the Sega CD, Mega CD version launched in April 94. This is the version that Sega Falcom completely remade from the ground up that most people know. And supposedly this version was going to be released in the U.S.

under the name Sister Sonic, and it was going to somehow be tied to the Sonic series. Yeah, I remember hearing about this. This may be apocryphal. Brady says that he can't actually find firm information about that, but that it was mentioned apparently in an interview in a German magazine in the 90s. So who knows? Anyway, the level layout is expanded from the PC98 version. Everything is bigger. All of it's redrawn.

But the actual level layouts are pretty much the same. Let's see. Attacks are given their own buttons. and there are a bunch of weapons and armor with different effects. So that's the Metrodvania aspect of it is the sort of RPG component to it. Also of note in the Japanese version

is the introduction of Megumi Hayashi Barra as male. Male is really similar to Linna Inverse from Slayers as a character, so it feels kind of obvious why they cast her for that role. She's also the voice of male in many, many drama CDs.

So should we mention who Megumi Hayashi Barra is here? Surely you know, Chris. I am unfamiliar. What? How could you be unfamiliar, Mr. Sailor Moon podcast guy? Surely, surely she was in Sailor Moon.

She's got to have been. Megumi Hayashi Barra was, she was like the voice of hot-headed women in anime in the 90s. She probably still is. I don't know. I kind of stopped following anime. But she was Fay Valentine and Cowboy Bebop. She was female Ronma in Ronma one-half.

She was, let's see, Lena Inverse, she was, I want to say she was Oskah in Evangelion. Oskah the Grouch. No, stop. You're terrible. Anyway, so, yeah. I can't believe you don't know. Does not look like she was in a sailor moon. She was, she was Tira and Sorcerer Hunters, which was a manga and anime that I had a weird affection for in the midnight.

90s. But yeah, it does not look like she was a Sailor Moon actress. Okay, well, I stand corrected then. She was in basically everything else. Yeah, like she was... She was Bulbosaur. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Are you Megumi Hayashibara? Yes. Okay. All right. I have no idea. Who knew this would be the day where we find out that just hidden talent for voice acting in series? All right. So Pop-O-Mil also showed up on Super Famicom.

94, yet another version built from the ground up, and the level layouts diverge much more from the source than the Sega CD. But this time it was done in-house by Falcom. There are a lot of differences. For instance, you run into the character Tot, who's like a little dragon in the very first town, and I believe there are added characters like Muttinhead has a granddaughter that only appears in this and the radio dramas. It's somewhat similar to the Sega CD version and that it has a separate attack button in bigger full-screen graphics, but the spray and animations are very weak, and I think it's not as fun as the Sega CD one or PC Engine Super CD one. I think the reason there's never been a fan translation of this is because there's some heavy encryption

on the sprites. That's interesting. And then finally, we're not going to talk about the cell phone version. Yeah, right? Never heard of that. That's, some of those, yeah, some of those Super NES games had some weird encryption on them. Like Star Ocean, Star Ocean took forever to localize because there was like all this compression and encryption on stuff. Wow. I know Donkey Kong country was encrypted or something like that. One of those, I think it was hard to pirate or something. Yeah. I mean, there were, there was some interesting attempts to break piracy in the Super Famicom era. You know, discreet copiers were pretty common, especially in kind of like the periphery of Japan. I had a friend in college from, I want to say, Singapore, and he borrowed Krono Trigger from me one time.

It was like, oh, yeah, sure, it's a cool game. And he brought it back the next day. I was like, you don't like it. You finished it. He was like, no, I copied it. I was like, you asked, I spent $90 on that game, you piece of garbage. So anyway, that was my introduction. It's like a year's salary. Yeah, seriously. I'm a college student. That was a lot of pennies for me.

It's ironic because I played through Chrono Trigger on a super wildcard DX4. That was the first time I ever played it because I bought one for like 400 bucks back in the like around 2000 or something. Import it from Japan. And I wanted to play it on an original system because it was hard to get the cartridge, you know. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, okay, sure, just copiers. I just felt kind of ill used in that case. like, I spent a lot of money on that game. Yeah, I would have been pissed off too.

Oh, yeah, by the way, I just pirated it. Thanks. People have done that to me with CDs. I lend them a CD and they copy it. It's like, what are you doing? I don't know. It just bugs you. It's like, I thought you were going to listen to it. Yeah, like, I mean, if he had said, hey, can I copy this? I'd have been like, oh, sure, but I don't know.

It just felt kind of weird. Anyway, that's a side. I've got an update for you. Megumi Hayashibara. Yes. Was in the Sailor Moon S movie. There you go. Which we have not covered on sailor business yet.

But she was also Rana in Ramma half. Yeah, she was female Rana. Yeah. So specifically. Basically everything else, other than Sailor Man. She was the voice of hot-headed women in anime in the 90s. Well, Sailor Mar's already had a voice actress, I'm afraid. She was, wasn't that the voice actress who did Mega Man's voice?

Oh, no, that was in the American version. Oh, no, I think. Damn it. I'm all mixed up. In one of the Mega Man Legends games, his voice was provided by one of the Sailor Senshi, but I think that might have been in the U.S. version. I don't know.

No, it was the Japanese version, I think. Damn it, I don't know. I'm all mixed up now. What have you done? We are eventually going to talk about Castlebite, yeah? Yeah, sure. That's what I was promised when I signed up for this. Yeah, so.

We've been through four and a half episodes waiting to get to this point. Oh, is that why you guys keep coming here? I see. Yeah, anyway, so there. There's just a lot of information about Popful Mail. It's because it was a working designs published game for Sega CD, it is very expensive now. You will never play this game legitimately. Ask a friend if you can borrow it and copy it on your diskette copier.

It's fine. I have a small story about that, which is there is a used game store where I bought all my NES games back in the 90s and used NES games. And in this glass counter, there were these special Sega CD games. Like Popful Mail was one of them. when I was, it was like a hundred bucks or something. And the guy behind the counter had a beard and he'd stroke it and say, yeah, man, that's like the greatest game of all time. But you can't have it because it's a hundred bucks.

Okay. So I punched him. I got arrested. I feel like the story is not true. A life of crime. But the, no, the, it was like, the premium. So you're saying this is a game for neckbeards? Is that what you're saying?

It was a premium, premium item somehow considered that way back then. Yeah. No, it's, um, I feel like all of the, the Sega CD stuff that, working designs localized, probably had really small print runs. They also had a tendency to put a lot of love and care into their packaging, you know, like glossy hollow foil type stuff. So, yeah, this benefited from that. But they, you know, they went the full mile and they gave this like a total rewrite to

play up the comedy element of it, which of course makes some people angry. But I think actually works really well in this specific game. So, yeah, if you ever have the chance to play Popful Mail, I recommend it. but it is kind of hard to come by in any form at this point. So it's the lost Metroidvania. I wish I still have my copy. So, two more games, and then you guys can stop sulking there. God, you guys are killing me.

This is still charging up. He is. It's like a full episode. No, this is going to be, you know, 50 minutes. This is like DBZ style right here. Everyone lend me your power. Man, you're going to blow the moon out of its orbit. So something that I do expect you guys to talk about.

a little bit is the Gargoyles Quest series. I think we mentioned the original Gargoyles Quest in a previous episode. The NES game? No, the Game Boy Game. Game Boy game. The sequel Gargoyles Quest 2 was on NES and on Game Boy, but only in Japan. And then there was a super NES sequel in 1995 called Demons Crest, which plays a little bit differently than the others.

It's not as, it's not as platformy. It's more, I don't know, kind of hard for me to characterize it. I haven't played all the way through it because it kind of, confuses me a little bit. I don't know. They all feel sort of like Mega Man and Castlevania mixed together or something. Sort of. I mean, they're based on Ghost and Goblins.

Yeah, and Ghost and Goblins are just like pure arcade shooting, and it's designed to be unfair. It's designed to make you hate life. Gargoyle's Quest adds an RPG system. It puts you in the role of the horrible red demon that kills you at the beginning of Ghost and Goblins every time you play. And you gain power as you go through the game. So by the end of the game, it's actually pretty easy because you've upgraded your attack, you've upgraded your health, you have the ability to fly further, but it is very sort of like action RPG. Can't you grip on the things with your feet, like the side of pillars and stuff? Yeah, you have the ability to, from the beginning, you can grab onto things.

And that's actually how you sort of navigate. You will like jump onto walls and fly and then you have to like kind of position yourself to travel from one pillar to another and that sort of thing. Yeah, I remember the pillars. Now, here's my question, because I am only passingly familiar with these games, and honestly am mostly familiar with them from GameCenter CX in terms of the first one. Are they prequels to Ghost and Goblins to explain why the Red Arreemar is such an annoyance in those games? I don't know that this is actually meant to be in continuity with Ghost and Goblins. I think it's just like tales from the demon world. I really don't know.

I guess you could sort of take it as a sort of prequel if you wanted to, because it does take place like thousands of years ago and you like fight Satan and stuff. I don't really know. I don't think you're supposed to think too hard about where it falls in the continuity. It's all pretty slippery. Well, the reason I ask is because I think that's a really interesting way to take a game that is essentially made for the arcade format of being like punishingly hard

and infamously having that ending where your reward for playing the game is to play through it again harder but then turning it into a more enjoyable home gaming console experience by not continuing with that character

but spinning off something else from that franchise and obviously you're not going to play as like Astoroff but a minor villain who you're already familiar with his movement patterns and strengths is like it would be like if Mega Man 2

was about Gutsman, you know? Like it's a very interesting way to go about it. It's secretly about Gutsman. All games are about Guts Man until proven otherwise. Gargoyle games. I was so excited when I first learned about them because I didn't know when they came out. I think I bought Gargwold's Quest 2 on the NES used

somewhere and I was like, oh man, it's going to be awesome. I love these kind of games. But it's just too hard or something. They start out pretty tough. Like the same with the demons crests. I played it later, probably on emulator. I don't think I have the cartridge for it. But it's beautiful.

It's like richly illustrated, but I just couldn't get into it. And I don't remember why. I think it was either hard to control or just difficult. It's not that hard to control, but it is, yeah, that's the one that I haven't really played that much of. Like, I keep sliding off of it. I do own it on cartridge and I have it on virtual console, which is definitely the way to get it because the cartridge is now like $1002 or something.

It's stupid. But the virtual console version, you know, it's like $8. So definitely that's the way to play it. But yeah, I just, I haven't gotten that far into it. But I do like the first two games, especially the Game Boy game. I have a lot of really fond memories for it. I've covered down on Game Boy Works. It's really interesting because it does put you in the role of this character that you encounter in Ghost and Goblins.

Everyone who's ever played that series knows, you know, the Red Aramer. It's in the introduction. Yeah. Yeah. No, the introduction is a different character. It's a different demon. But it's the one that, you know, like you get past the opening stage and then there's that guy like a little red demon sitting on the ground and you come near it and he stands up, swoops into the air, swoops down and hits you. Oh, and you're dead. Just like that. And he takes like six hits to attack and he'll chase after you. Like if you try to sneak past him. Like you can scroll the screen forward, but he's going to follow you and keep attacking you all through the stage. So he's this like crazy. persistent bad guy. It's a great idea. It puts you in his role. And you start out and you're like, oh, I'm actually really weak.

I can only take two hits just like Arthur. But he does have the ability to jump and to glide for a few seconds or like two seconds. And he has a projectile. At the beginning, you can only shoot like halfway across the screen. We're talking the Game Boy screen, which is not a big screen to begin with. Yeah. And your jump is very low. Your hovering ability is very low.

You're very weak, but you gain powers as you go. and eventually you gain different kinds of attacks. Like you have the ability to fire something. It's not very strong, but it's like a glob that sticks to spikes. And it allows you to use spiked walls as surfaces that you can jump off of. So there's like kind of this exploratory element to it. There's sort of a random RPG encounter element to it. There's a story element to it.

It's a pretty ambitious game. I mean, it was one of the first Game Boy games that came along and you were like, wow, there's, this is something I haven't really experienced on a console. It's pretty interesting. And then, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the S sequel just builds on that and is, has, you know, color. You know, color. Uh, you have more to maneuver because it's, you know, bigger pixel resolution. Uh, and then the super NES version is, um, it changes things up a lot. Like, you have the ability to fly infinitely, like hover infinitely from the beginning. And you, instead of, um, instead of, you know, upgrading your powers so much, what

you do is you gain the ability to transform into other elementals. So you can like become a stone gargoyle that, uh, I think, you know, has like strong physical power, but can't fly very high. Um, and I can't remember what other kinds of gargoyles there are, but you have different elemental forms that you can change into. So maneuvering through the world kind of becomes a puzzle, like to figure out which element should I be using here, like which form should I be using. And, you know, figuring out which, um, which powers are best. in a certain situation against a given boss and so on and so forth. Now, is he a Gargoyle in the American version because of Nintendo's notorious not being down with the devil?

Yeah, although they could have just called it by its Japanese title, which was Red Armour. But instead, they called it Gargoyle's Quest. I mean, Gargoyle's Quest is a better name because no one knows where the box art from red to green. So like, so like the most, I guess, iconic element of the character, the bad. that he is the Red Devil who torments you and Ghost and Goblins is lost on the box art, but, you know, once you start playing, even if you have even a passing familiarity

with Ghost and Goblins, you'll be like, wait a minute, I know this guy. He's not green. And, you know, in the subsequent games, I can't remember if he's green on the NES game cover art. I think he is. No, actually, I think they changed him back to red. And then for the Super NES game, at that point,

you know, Mortal Kombat was out. They were like, whatever. It's demons crest. He's a, he's a pawn of Satan, you're evil, it's fine, whatever. How things changed. It's as long as there are no crucifixes in the game. Exactly. I do like the idea of video game sequels, just having titles that rhyme with their previous incarnations.

Oh, yeah. Like if you were, like, Super Mario Brothers 2 was like Super Mario Mothers. It's just, it makes it easier for Rappers to drop in a song. Super Mario Others? Because there are other characters? That could be a good one. Othering More. Are you?

All right, so one last game, and it's actually not a full game, is a portion of a game. And that is the Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Superstar. Do you guys know this? Yeah, I've played it. I'm familiar with Kirby Superstar, but I never recognized this as a Metroidvania. Yeah, me neither. It's kind of Metroidvania-ish. It is an open-ended platformer in which you are basically traveling around trying to acquire treasure,

and there's a puzzle element to it because, different treasures are placed in a way that you have to use certain powers that you, of course, copy from enemies to, like, prevent them from being lost forever. So, like, a perfect playthrough of the game requires you to know the layout really well and know which powers you can acquire from where. It's, it's definitely an edge case. It is not a full, like, you know, start to finish Metroidvania game, but it has a large map to explore lots of things that have to be cleared with specific powers. It has the ability to save your progress and so on and so forth.

So it's an interesting take on this kind of style of game. And the Kirby games would actually go all in on exploratory platforming with Kirby and the Amazing Mirror for Game Boy Advance. I don't know if you ever played that. Yeah. That one was really interesting. It was a... Somehow I didn't feel like that was this kind of game.

Are you kidding? I played through the whole thing. Totally open-ended. Yeah, well, I guess there are doors everywhere. Doors and backtracking? Like everything is all interconnected. Do you power up over time? Well, it's Kirby.

So there is that limitation. Like you power up based on what you acquire from enemies. But a lot of things, you have to acquire a power up in one place and then go to another place and use it to access that area. And it's also a multiplayer game. Like, it's four people can play Kirby together with link cables, which I have never done. I would love to do. You know, it does involve the link. cable thing, which sucks. But I would love

to see this game revisited on Switch maybe. That would be great. With multiplayer through wireless or even over the internet. Because it's an interesting game with a little more refinement and a little less link cable, it would be, I think, pretty great. Yeah, just about anything on Switch.

Switch is like what's been, we've been waiting for that our whole lives, eventual evolution of consoles. Wow. I don't think you're wrong. That's really saying a lot. Excuse me. Sorry. That's really saying a lot. I don't disagree, though.

Nintendo paid me to say that. It's really hard for me to play any other system at this point. Like, I have to sit in front of a TV all the time to play PS4 games. Yeah, I have not touched my PS4 in six months. Yeah, I just reviewed Lost Sphere, and they only sent out PS4 codes, even though the game is also on Switch. And it killed me. Because I had to capture footage for it for IGN, but I didn't have to capture footage for the whole game. And when I wasn't capturing footage, I was like, I just want to go, like, sit next to my wife on the couch while she's watching

TV and work on this game, but instead I have to go down to my office and sit by myself while, you know, like, yeah, it's boring, it's lame. To do that obligatory spousal, physical nearness kind of thing, play a game at the same time. It's not even obligatory for some of us. It's obligatory for me. But that's why Switch is so great. Plus, if you have kids and they're using the TV to watch, you know, Sesame Street or something. Right.

And you want to play something violent and gory. My opiate is Switch games. Yeah. That's great. Anyway, that's kind of a side tangent. Yeah, it is. But yeah, Super Star on a, whoa. He's charging up again.

So I'm just rolling my hands. Superstar is just a side show compared to the main event. Mm-hmm. By the way, watch us get there and we'll be like, I have nothing to say. Salina because we talked about it so much. We have talked about this so much that I think before we get into this, it's time to do the letters. You're sending letters in the mail. We're going to read them to you now.

It sounds good. You were such a grown-up about that. Get it all out of the way. All right. So, Nancy Pelosi, stop emailing me. Let's see. So there are actually two parts to this mailbag. The first is Symphony of the Night.

And the second is the discussion for the back end of this podcast, which is what happened to the Metroidvania genre in the late 90s. So we'll read, we'll read those first. Why not? So the question is, what did happen? Like I said, you know, between 97 and 2002, there were like five of these games that came out anywhere in the world. It was ridiculous.

I mean, most of them were actually the Metroidvania games, the Castlevania games. Yeah. And then there was like also Tomba and Chante. That was like it. Yeah. It was a dark time. life sucked.

I have a theory on this that I think probably a lot of people share. First person shooters happened, which they've been around for a while, but I think console first person shooters became a much bigger thing post-Metroredvania, post-Playstation era. People were like, Tenka. Yeah, hell yeah. I don't need no Metroid. I got Tenka. No one wanted sprites anymore.

I got Power Slav. Everybody wanted polygonal 3D graphics. And you see it even in fighting games, like, you know, Virtua Fighter, which looks like trash compared to those beautiful sprites of Street Fighter. Oh, Virtual Fighter holds up pretty well. Yes, but in terms of look, like that was where things were going, like things were going towards Dead or Alive, towards the 3D fighter. Sprites fell out of fashion.

No one wanted to work with them because they looked old. Yeah, I don't think it was the FPS doing that. I think that was just a larger trend. Well, the first-person shooter, the 3D action game, I've mentioned this before on the show. Like, I literally can't play them. Like, I can't play for... Overwatch is the first first-person shooter I've ever been able to sit there and play, because I get sick. I have motion sickness.

Sprites? Fine. I am super good besides scrolling platformers. But they looked old-fashioned because they looked like what essentially games had looked like since the early 80s. But they weren't old enough to have nostalgia yet. So when you start seeing more and more Metroidvania's, you start seeing the term Metroidvania and the explosion of new Metroidvania, stuff like Guacamile or Zio Drifter

or Blaster Master Zero, which just came out, it's, they are often done as nostalgia projects. In Blaster Master Zero's case, like very literally, they come back in a way that they were just what Castlevania games were at the time. And even Castlevania tried to move away from it, but couldn't. because those games were also trash. Yeah, this genre really sort of lost steam in the 90s. I mean, trying to get you guys to talk about 90s Metroid-Metrovania games that aren't Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night has been like pulling teeth.

Like, you guys don't care. No one does. No one cares. These are good games we're talking about, but you're like, eh. Well, I think it's because you have quite literally the two best versions of this kind of game in a relatively short amount of time. Yeah, that was just three years apart. I've given you a couple answers to this.

We've talked about this before on one of the last five or ten episodes we've done about Metrovanians. One of the things we talked about was the rise of 3D platformers like Mario 64 and Zelda, Ocreen of Time, taking the lion's share of the technical,

you know, pushing the limits of graphics and all that stuff. And that 2D games were passe. And PlayStation, I think the Sony actually didn't want companies developing 2D games for their console for a little while or something. They actively downplayed it. And the other thing I always say, which is semantically, that, you know,

Metroidvanias weren't invented until Symphony of the Night. So how can you be, you know, how could you even be missing? This style of game, like, if you don't want to be pedantic about it, like. Action Platforming, action RPGs. The action platformer. Yeah, action platform are RPG elements. I swear, there has to be some kind of leveling up aspect to it, to me. It's the only thing that keeps Mario World out of there.

Yeah, well, you know, Mario World, it's not nonlinear, it's not... It kind of is. Anyway, but I know, you know, what Jeremy's saying, which is... You affect permanent changes with the Switch Palaces. I see where Chris is coming from. I don't agree, but I see it. In some way, every game is like a Metroidvania, then, like, no, it's super strong. Go on, tell me about Tetris, and it's Metrovania.

Well, Tetris... Permanent change in the environment. Your skill is built up in your own head, so it's like an... external Metroidvania instead of kept track of in the game. In a way, aren't we all the president of the United States? I mean, we're all on Twitter. Tetris is a reverse Metroidvania where you're the bad guy and the game is leveling up as it continues and keeps attacking you. All right, you win.

But I think Jeremy's premise about the rise of the 3D game, which I think we've mentioned before, is the reason why there weren't so many of these 2D action platformers during that period of time. I didn't realize that I'd actually said that in a previous episode. That's been in my head for a long time, but I forget what actually is in my brain and what actually comes out of my mouth. You do a thousand episodes of retronauts a month. So I can't imagine you remembering which thing you said on which podcast. But it's not time for cheers. It's time for vengeance.

Oh, I was talking out loud again. I think that's why you saw the Metroidvania thriving on the Game Boy Advance, on the DS, on the 3DS even, because the portable systems, you could get a way with a game that looked, that had sprites. Whereas no one wanted to sit down and play a sprite-based game on the PlayStation 2. I did. Oh, I did too. Believe me. The game I looked forward to most at the PlayStation 2 launch was Gratius 3 and 4.

It turned out not to be that good, but it was what excited was. You were the exception in the American audience. I think about, I love the Game Boy Advance when it came out because I was so excited that there would be more Super Nintendo style games for that and that there. Or like Super Nintendo, but better. Stuff like Wario Land advanced. New F0 games are really cool on there. I love that.

And, you know, yeah, like Super NES games with more colors and better sound, you know. But the selling point of a console, the selling point of hardware, whether it's PC, whether it's console, has always been graphics. And the way that you show off graphics post-1997. I think that's a big part of why we all love the Switch so much because it's not about the graphics. And it's become this natural home for indie games that often have. a very sort of dated look to them, but there's still a lot of fun. And for some reason, having it on that little screen, like, it's just as natural as when those games showed up

on Vita. But this is also a console you can play on your TV, and all of a sudden, everything all kind of comes together. That's a huge part of the system's appeal for me. Also, I think people were very willing because Symphony of the Night was so good to let that be the tombstone on the genre. The tombstone actually like jumps and attacks you. The tombstone, which in Japan is across. I will say Symphony Night was not extremely popular when it first came out in America because among my friends, I was the only one who bought it when it was released. And then several years later, when the Igavanias were popular on the Game Boy,

I had a friend who was really into him. And he was surprised that I had the original symphony. And he's like, whoa, you have the original copy. Like, it was some kind of crazy, rare thing. It was a greatest hits game. Yeah, I got it with that ugly. I don't know if it was rare, but it was just highly coveted. It was overshadowed by so many other games at the time,

especially if you're on Nintendo platforms or something, you know. Yeah, there was no, you were not going to get a sprite-based action platformer on the 64. Yeah. You know, you were going to get. I mean, there was mischief makers. I wish there were. I don't know what that is. What?

Shake, shake, shake. Okay, you missed out. No idea. It's a treasure game. By the same people who made popular? Don't you have some Don't you have some mail speaking of Huffle Mel? But first, let me, let me, before we go to the mailbag, I want to put out my theory on the death of the Metroidvania, which is kind of related to what you guys said, you know, because of the rise of polygons. But I don't think it's necessarily so much that, you know, sprites became unfashionable. I mean, there is that element, but people were still making 2D games. The thing is, though, that the, the Metroidvania exploratory platformer, side scrolling, you know, 2D platformer always existed kind of as a companion.

to the top-down Zelda-style action RPG. Like, those two games are cut from the same cloth. I mean, Ike Arashi has even said that Symphony the Night, like he drew just as much from Zelda as from Metroid for that. So you have these two basically different perspectives on the same game. Now you put everything in polygons, and all of a sudden, those things become one of the same. There no longer needs to be a barrier between the side view and the top-down view.

You look at Ocarina of Time, and the game that it's most heavily influenced by is clearly a link to the past, but there's almost as much Zelda 2 in that game with the sword combat and the minimalistic platforming as there is linked to the past. So you have games like, if you want to say Tomb Raider, sure, or Soul Reaver, or Fade to Black. All of a sudden, these games are kind of top down, kind of behind the soldier, kind of side scrolling. like they managed to encompass all those views depending on basically how you put the camera. So I feel like people were really excited by the prospect of no longer being constrained by technology to just one viewpoint, to have the ability to shift the camera around and to, you know, give you a different scenario and a different setup at a different angle, depending on what was best for the current situation.

I mean, you look at Aquarina Time. There are some parts where you need to kind of play it in first person mode. But there are other parts that you kind of have to approach as a platformer in some parts that you approach more as traditional Zelda. So it all changes up sort of dynamically depending on what the game needs to be. And you know, you see this in the first person shooter with games like tribes and Halo where you can be like a guy running around the ground or all of a sudden you can jump into a vehicle and it becomes a third person vehicular shooter. So it's just that that opportunity that suddenly technology afforded everyone. I really don't think it was necessarily people were like, oh, sprites are stupid and bad, so much as like, wow, look what you can do with polygons. Like, our games can be more robust.

They can be more dynamic. They can be more varied. And we can really express all these ideas that we've had and have had to sort of winnow out into one form or another. Like, these can all exist together in the same space. That's great. And if you look at the one last game that I wanted to include in this, kind of as a corollary, that is, is a PlayStation game pretty obscure called The Divide

Enemies Within. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard of this game. Nope. It was launched at the beginning of 1996, so just kind of slid right past everyone. It was very shortly after the PlayStation launch in the U.S. And

it's kind of a Blastermaster-ish game. It's kind of a 3D platformer but it also has kind of like a pulled back top-down arena view. So it's like a shooter a platformer. It's exploratory. You're powering up your little robot guy. It's like a whole lot of things all at once, somewhere between Jumping Flash and Tomb Raider and Metroid and Blastermaster. And you look at this game and it's really clunky and rough. It has those shaky graphics in the way

that PS1 games do. And it's, you know, before the dual analog controls. So everything is, you know, digital controls. And it's very clumsy to move around in 3D space. But you look at it and you're like, they were on to something here. And they saw. saw where this genre could go beyond just a side-scrolling platformer or a top-down adventure or shooter or whatever. And they were trying to do that. And I don't think they quite did it, but they were trying. And that's where our video games were about to go. Yeah. So, sorry, I've been talking a long time. It's okay. We're still charging up. I guess I'm a passionate, huh? All right. How did you learn about that game, by the way? I never

It was on Hardcore Gaming 101 a long time ago And so I checked it out I was like, huh This is kind of rough, but I like it All right, so yes, we do have letters We give letters And written letters in the mail We're going to read them to you now

So letters about The Death of Metroidvania Uh-oh, Benj is already falling asleep No whiskey for you, just coffee I'm going to pour it down your throat From Matt Bolinbach. Why no Metrovania in a word 3D? Everyone was enamored with fancy pants polygons.

Blocky 3D was the new hotness, whereas gorgeous pixel art was old and busted. No company wanted to devote resources to a game that was 2D, a game which could even if correctly, incorrectly be viewed as stuck in the past. It took the GBA to breathe life into the genre, as I would assume development costs were less and expectations were lower. Oh, it looks pretty good for a handheld. Can you imagine a Metroidvania on the... in 64? Oh, what could have been? Maybe devs were convinced that somebody the night was the

pinnacle of the genre as well, although I think that holds less water as in video games, the masterpieces are imitated soon and often after their release. Wow, he's like, this is like a summary of everything we've just talked about. Got it done a lot faster than I did, too. Good job on that. But there's more from Zach Stewart. Let's see. I think the reason we saw a drop in Metravenia was the greater focus on 3D platform. even though Symphony of the Night was released after Mario 64, it showed that the industry was pushing full steam into 3D, developers clamor to make and master 3D platforming games,

and some 2D Castlevania games seemed archaic. With that said, we ended up getting some great 3D platformers like Banjo Cazooey and DK64, oh, DK64, showing the genre was working, even though Bubsy 3D tried to bring the genre down. Personally, these 3D collectathons ended up filling the hole left by no Metroidvanias. I don't know if I agree with all of these controversial opinions but okay

what do you guys think did DK64 make you think you know I don't need another Metroidvania game nothing has ever made me think that that game was too much collecting it no look there's red bananas and green bananas and blue bananas

like what more do you need in life to be fulfilled purple bananas oh damn it from Ian Dirk and thinking about your question regarding the lack of Metroidvania is between 97 and 2002, I'd say the emergence of the first-person shooter as a dominant form of 3D games.

Moves to 3D games had been going on before 70 of the night, and plenty of early games were exploration-based. However, PC gaming built on a lot of shooters during this time period. Games like CounterStrike, Quakerina, and Unreal Tournament came out during this time. Games that were more upgrade-based, like System Shock 2 and DeusX, X, captured parts of the Metroidvania experience with shooter mechanics in place of platforming. It's also worth noting that the new player coming to the console market, Microsoft, counted on the growth of console shooters.

3D is part of the issue and the challenges of 3D platforming were always going to prevent good exploration games in the early days of polygons. With shooters as an easy and profitable alternative, I'd guess that shooters crowded the market. I fully agree with that. And again, as previously said, and I think it's telling that we didn't get a 3D game that genuinely had the Metroidvania feel until Arkham Asylum. Like, Arch of Asylum is kind of the best application of the game that's, because, you know, the Metroids are based entirely on movement in a way that I find very appealing.

And that's much more difficult to pull off in a 3D environment than it is in a 2D environment. Even if you're making steps to make the 2D environment make sense, like something the night does. I would argue that Soul Reaver did a, it came pretty close to getting all of those things. No? Okay. Yeah, there's another game, uh, what was that, that PSWR? one game like Tomb Raider

Grim something What was it Grim Fandango It's a guy with a skullhead It's a simple word Skull monkeys No No that was a platformer

That was a 2D platformer But that wasn't exploratory It was claymation I just I can't I don't remember what it's called But there's a neat 3D action Skull Skullhead

Just pause it while I look at it There's no pausing in this life But Well to talk about the legacy of Cain, Soul Reaver. I feel like... You're reving? I feel like that...

What's that? You're reading Souls? Yeah, Soul Reaver. Soul Reaver, the legacy of Kane? With a K? Yes. That's called Medi-Eval. Oh, Medi-Eval with the skull guy, yeah.

I don't know. Action Adventure, heck and slash. I feel like Soul Reaver falls much more into the Tomb Raider mold of being more puzzle-based in a lot of ways, especially in terms of, like, Soul Reaper. Yeah, it is, but there's also an upgrade element to it, a pretty significant upgrade element to it that increases your mobility in the way that Tomb Raider never had. That's true. It does have that.

Tomb Raider never had that until Rise of the Tomb Raider, at which point you have these open-world hubs where everything becomes kind of Metroidvania-ish in 3D. I don't know. But Rise of the Tomb Raider is also post-Arcum Asylum. True. That's true. Everything is different now. They were also isometric action RPGs like Diablo became really popular. And they just weren't platformers, but they were action-oriented RPGs. That's sort of a sister genre to the Metroidvania in a way.

Although in a different sense, because Diablo uses so much random generation, it's not iterative, or not instance gaming design. So a different kind of spirit there. But yeah, I see what you're saying. Like there is this drive to constantly upgrade your power and take on bigger threats. and dive deeper into the dungeon. And shuffle equipment and you're leveling up. Yep. Yep.

From Matthew Groves, the late 90s to early 2000s was a huge shift from 2D gaming to 3D gaming, however often misguided. Let's start with an assertion that is that 3D games were an easier sell during that period and 2D was being seen as dated. So let's rephrase the question you're asking is, why weren't there more 3D Metroidvania games during this period? Is it possible that a 3D Metroidvania is too cost prohibitive? A huge interconnected map can take a lot of effort to design and implement in 3D,

especially in the somewhat primitive 3D game environments that were possible at the turn of the millennium. And that's why I love Mega Man Legends, because by the end of that game, Catalox Island is just one huge interconnected place where you can go anywhere from any entrance point into the underground. I don't know if you guys have played that recently, but it's so good.

Nope. Grand Theft Auto 3, for instance, came out during this period. It seemed incredibly huge and immersive, but I think that's more a trick of design than it is of actual complexity in the world. Furthermore, perhaps the memory requirements of such a world were just too much for game systems at the time. A Metroid-style game with severe memory constraints is a game experience that's 50% loading screens. That's true.

And I distinctly remember it being such a big deal when, what was it? San Andreas didn't have loading screens, like Vice City still did. But there were, you know, in GTA3, there were all the loading screens between islands. And San Andreas was like, no load screens. You can drive from Las Vegas to San Francisco and never have to load. Yeah. To get that yay. From John Afta, I feel there wasn't really much of a life with the Metroidvania games.

Yes, there were some games like Blastermaster and Wonderboy, but overall, there wasn't really that much. As you guys were having multiple discussions on the timeline of Metroidvanes, you were mostly throwing in games that have elements of them, but hardly any were full Metroidvania-like games. Oh, Ben, you got this. He's a friend of mine. What's his name again? Who was that? All right. see Edward Benjamin's.

Whoa, here's a huge one. I can't winnow this down. Sorry, Shane Killian. Thank you for writing so much, but that was too much. All right. I'll read one more of these, and then we'll take a break. From Ronin Chaos. Wow, that's a hardcore name. I think there are two specific reasons these games disappeared.

The first is, I have to imagine, designing one of these isn't exactly straightforward. I imagine it takes a lot of pre-planning in regards to level design and how you actually path the player through these things. I also think there's a language to this kind of game that relies on different visual and oral cues, which were replaced with tutorials in 3D gaming. Due to this, it's not a stretch to think that most developers would rather put their resources into designing a 3D game and 3D space that would net them more money. New technology always makes people go a little crazy. And getting back to something Chris has said. The second reason is that no Metroidvania has ever made traversal look as fun to look at, has ever made traversal as fun to look at as Symphony

the Night. The animation is stellar for everything Alicard does. Play the game and tell me that a two-d game out there has a more fun set of animations than dropping off of a cliff as Alicard and watching his shadows trail behind him. Same with making his cape flare around when you just turn from left to right or right to left. Symphony of the Night made Traversal look interesting and it was really nice to watch. And if you don't believe me, just try it. Jump off a high cliff with Alicard and land four screens down where you below, down below where you just jumped or shuffle around from side to side.

It's way more fun than you think. So it's all about the blue shadows. I've spent hours doing that, just jumping around. He does have a neat animation where he lands and he recovers from it. Yeah, there's some solidity to it. You kind of feel gravity on those old vampire bones. He does the superhero landing and then he stands up

and throws his cape back. It's the coolest thing in the world. Yeah, like it's just the ground cracking. away from being ghosts in the shell. Yeah. All right. So anyway, those are some thoughts on the death of the Metroidvania genre. And when we come back from this break, we're going to talk about the game that killed the

genre with its awesomeness because you guys have to be. My God, Chris is like, he's actually doing like Vegeta here. He is about to release like the craziest Kamihameha. And wow, his hair just spiked up. It's turning yellow. I don't know what's happening. I think we need to get out of here. Yeah.

You know, I'm going to be able to be. If you're looking to buy a car, you're probably familiar with terms like MSRP. You might even know what it stands for. But what does it actually mean? The same goes for invoice, list price, dealer price. It's enough to confuse anybody. All you're really looking for is a price that actually means something. Introducing True Price from True Car.

Now you can know exactly what you'll pay for the car you want, including fees and accessories, before you even get to the dealership. True Car dealers will show you the true price on cars like the one you want, all from the comfort of home. And how do you know if your true price is a great price? Because True Car shows you what other people paid for that same car you want. And your certified dealers know this, so they set their true price competitively, so they can win your business. So when you're ready to buy a new or used car,

visit True Car to enjoy a more confident car buying experience. Some features not available in all states. Hey, it's Rob Riggle. And Sarah Tiana. And you are listening to Riggles Pits. Yeah, and a ham horn. And we have a new podcast. You can find our show exclusively on the Podcast One app on Podcast.com.

And don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. on Apple Podcast. Every Thursday, we're going to sit around and we're going to talk about the things that really excite us like life, comedy, sports, a lot of sports. Ourself. A lot of Sarah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Kim Jong-un. Yeah. Whatever. It's going to be a lot of fun. I hope you join us. Hi, it's Jamie. Progressive number one, number two employee. Leave a message at the...

Hey, Jamie. It's me, Jamie. This is your daily pep talk. I know it's been rough going. since people found out about your a cappella group, Matt Harmony, but you will bounce back. I mean, you're the guy always helping people find coverage options with the name your price tool. It should be you giving me the pep talk. Now get out there, hit that high note, and take Mad Harmony all the way to nationals this year.

Sorry, it's pitchy. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, Price and Coverage Match, limited by state law. I'm going to be able to be able to be. I'm interested in this. And here we are. Finally, at long last, talking about the only game these two men care about, Castlevania Something Night. It's pretty true.

I'm just going to sit back and let you guys talk. So Castlevania Sunday Night, 1997 debuted like May-ish or so. Never played it. It's a very good improvement. It's the hell out. launched here I think in October of 87

great movie I'm all mixed up now great game great game Fear has a new address Is it 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue I just remember that was the text I have a scan of that on my blog

The first The first symphony that I add Vintage Computing.com if you want to see it Yes you should check it out everyone But yes The follow up to

Castlevania Rondo of which at that point had not actually shipped in the U.S., which is why the prologue says bloodlines, the Sega Genesis game that has nothing whatsoever to do with Symphony the Night. But they were like, well, two games that have blood in the name. Okay, sure enough. But this one basically threw out all the rules

and said, let's just do Castlevania the way we want. There's no whip. I'm a dude with a sword. I'm also a vampire. You're not a Belmont. You get to play as a Belmont for like two minutes. David Bowie would make a good aloo card. He would.

He would have, yes. Castlevania Symphony Night is arguably the single best video game of all time. And I don't think that's news. I agree with that. Yeah, but I do. It is, if not the best game of all time, certainly the best of its generation and certainly the best side-scrolling platformer of all time. There are definitely people who get really angry when you say things like that.

They can get angry, and I'll just be over here being right. Castlevania 7 of the Night is really bad, and here's why. I wrote a piece for, actually, a multi-part series for U.S. Gamer last year. I remember that. It's a good series. Thank you. Talking about all the great things that somebody that I did. And some dude got on NeoGaff and was like, Jeremy Parrish always says stupid crap like this.

He's so dumb. This game is garbage. People who like it are trash. Everyone is trash. Nothing about this game is good. I hate you all. That was me, by the way. I knew it.

When that child turns 17. Perhaps they can... I'd like to say a point about that, which is that when someone says this game is the greatest game of all time, we're actually just saying this is what I think is the greatest game of all time. There's a subtext there. No, what? Seriously? Yeah. Oh, my God.

It's an opinion. It's an opinion. What? But regardless of my hyper-release, Symphony the Night is a masterpiece on every level. It's beautiful. It's beautiful in a way that it's still beautiful 21 years later. It plays...

It can drive. Yeah. It can vote. It can vote. It can vote. It can drink. It'll be able to get car insurance. It, the controls are still incredible.

They're tight. They're intuitive. Having the reconfigurable too. Yeah. And the reconfigurable. I love that. The default left hand right hand mechanic is brilliant. That's so unique.

Yeah. Like no other game does that. And it really like you don't even kind of think about it that much because most of the time. I think most people like put a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. But you don't have. have to do that. And in fact, that's how you use a lot of consumables. You put them in like your offhand. You equip them. You can toss peanuts into the air and try to catch them. Yeah. Which is like, it's such a brilliant and honestly immersive idea to if you want to use

a consumable, you have to essentially reach into your pocket and pull it out, right? Like, you have to go into your inventory and equip it to your hand. Where did I put that custard pie? Oh, yes. My back pocket. Oh, yes. The bosses. The bosses are incredible. Like, to the last one are incredible and amazing designs. Like from Sloggera and Guybon. They're just from Castlevania Four. Yeah. But like on up to there's a great Dracula fight in that that a lot of like a lot of

Castlevania games and even the Igavany games kind of stumble on having like a really great Dracula fight. The succubus is great. I don't know. The Dracula fight is kind of underwhelming because by that point you're so powerful. And he's like sitting back there on his weird throne with him. hands. And it's weird how he like sometimes generates succubi and stuff and then squishes them. I'm like, what are you, what are you doing, Dracula?

I love that. I love that. Because he's feeding on their blood. It's so cool. Okay. He gets health back from that. Everything in that game makes sense. I killed so fast. I didn't realize that. Well, yeah, because I'm sure you got that. Did you use the shield rod, Jeremy? Absolutely. But the question is, what do you use the shield rod with? The shield? Which shield, though? Every shield is you a little shield. Is it the elucous? Is it the Aleutkart shield that does the thing? The Alokart shield does jack squat because it's a fake.

But the Alokard shield, what does that do? Alucard shield. It does a ton of damage and heals you when it does damage. Yeah, you're essentially invincible. You charge it up and you hit people for 256 and stop and you can walk through them. And hits almost as fast as the Chrysigrim. Like it's very much the Chrysigrim? The Chrysagrum?

What do you call it? I call it Chrisigrim, but yeah, close enough. I don't know how you pronounce that thing, so good enough. Yeah. But that's the crazy sword that is the rare drop from the thing in the long library. You could finish that game and never know about. It's completely unnecessary. What does it look like?

It is a, it's just like a sword, but you don't actually see the blade. When you attack with it, you get like these three swipes really fast and that all hit for full damage. And it doesn't look like it, like it doesn't, when you equip it in the inventory screen, it doesn't look like it's a good sword because it does like. like 30 points of damage less than everything else you've got at that point, but it also hits five times. Right. Yeah. With every hit. Yes. And on top of that, there's no like recovery downtime

from it. And you can do it in motion. Yeah. You don't have to stop. It's not like a broad sword where you have to like stop and go hurt. Yeah. Which is like the ultimate expression of what you've been working towards in that game, which is mobility. Unstoppable fast movement. Attack

while maintaining momentum. Yeah. It's brilliant. And I think one of the most brilliant things about it, a couple things that I want to get through, because I've been waiting so long. Maybe first we should talk about what this game is. Like, how does it fit into this discussion we've been having of Metroidvania? Like, it's the Metroidvania. Sure, probably people know what it is, but I feel like, you know, for the sake of completeness, we should give some context. Non-linear platforming, Castlevania, action RPG. It is, and it even gives an incontinuity reason.

For the castle to be as big as it is, as complex as it is, and to require you to double back, which is the castle itself is a creature of chaos. But yeah, you are Alicard. You have risen from your... Alicard is... Adrian Ferenheit Teppish. Who is... The son of Dracula. Right.

There you go. The half-human son of... He's a dompier. Who is his mother? I don't remember. Well, his mother is a witchburn to the stake. Yeah, okay. You...

Which is a great narrative moment in that. game, but I think, like, you can hear how excited I'm getting talking about it. You are. Yeah. So, so you play as Alicard, who could previously have been a companion in Castlevania 3. And he was actually the crappiest companion. He fired fireballs. He threw fireballs. And he could turn into a bat. But the only reason you really needed to be Alicard is if you took the route where you have to, like, climb this, uh, the shaft of falling blocks. Like, the blocks can kill you if you stand under them and they're random. and you don't know where they're going to fall,

but you have to use them as a staircase. It's not very fun. And so you can turn into a bat and just fly past all that. But otherwise, he kind of sucked in that game. But in this game, he took a nap for 500 years, and holy cow, it did wonders for him. What a great beauty sleep. He is, I think, narratively,

if you look at all the characters in Castlevania up to that point, the Belmonts are very interesting. But you have the son of Dracula in there, and there's no easy. plot to make great than the good guy goes bad and the son of the original bad guy has to come back to stop him. It's a perfect narrative for this game because the trick of Castlevania, Simple of the Night, is that the final boss, allegedly, is Richter Belmont. So who was the hero of Rhondo of Blood? The hero of Rondo of Blood. Who you play as in the prologue

to this game. Yes. So it turns the established order of the game around in that you're essentially a Dracula going through a castle to fight a Belmont instead of the other way around. And he's got the whip, he's got the Holy Powers, you've got all the Dracula stuff. Like, from the start of the game, you can do the teleport fireball

if you have your magic boosted high enough. Like, you can do... If you know how to do it, you can do that, you can do the blood, the soul steel, you can do the... Soul steel! Yep. Darkment oforphuses! That's the one, Darkman of Morphuses. Yeah. I love that stuff.

So there's all these controller combinations that you have to discover, like you can buy them from the shop, or from the, yeah, the shopkeeper. But if you know them at the beginning, you don't have to buy them. You can just use them. Yeah. And a lot of times you can't do them often or well because your magic stat at the start of the game. You don't have the MP. But you do the Dracula stuff throughout the game. And it is a game built around doing Dracula stuff. Right. Like your primary. the ability to go places, to unlock new areas, mostly revolves not around equipment, but around unlocking Alicard's vampiric potential

to turn into mist, to turn into a bat. You can turn into a wolf just to kind of get the, you know, the Brom Stoker trilogy in there, but that's not really important. But you also have to overcome your vampiric limitations. You can't go into water without taking damage, like Dracula in the novel, you can't cross running water

until you acquire a holy symbol that protects you from the power of the water, from the damage of the water. So on one hand, you're like trying to become the best vampire ever, but on the other, you're like trying to overcome the fact that, oh, yes, I'm a vampire, so that I have these weaknesses and imitations.

It's so smart and it fits with the game that's the game that does the best job of the best job of of blending Brom Stoker Dracula mythology with Castlevania Dracula mythology, which is a very vastly different thing. Yes, it is. Because if you'll remember from 14 episodes ago, the original premise of Castlevania isn't necessarily that you're fighting Dracula. It's that you're fighting all the movie monsters. Right.

It was basically they did Universal's Dark Universe, you know, 30 years before Universal. Plus Medusa because she was in Clash of the Titans. True, true. So the idea of blending what Starry started there with a textual justification for Dracula to be the boss of all these guys, which is that he's Satan. They give you then the good Dracula who has to balance out all these weaknesses and limitations in a way that's really compelling in terms of gameplay and also really compelling

narratively, which is a super difficult thing for those games to balance. And none of them, and I say this is someone who loves every Egovania game, none of them have done it as well. especially when they've gone back to more Bram Stoker stuff, like the Morris and Harker stuff. Where they do it really well is when they went further into Castlevania mythology with Soma reembodying Dracula by taking mastery of all the monsters, which is, again, a very brilliant narrative and gameplay overlap. Yeah, and in terms of play mechanics, in terms of like how the game. game expresses all of this, one, it takes the sort of interlinked multi-path design of Rondo of Blood where you could, you know, find secret routes and, and battle alternate demons

and things like that. There were, you know, characters to unlock and to rescue. And you could play as Maria if you managed to find her. It takes that and says, okay, but what if we had all these branching paths? And then at the end of a stage, you weren't forced to go to the next stage, but it could go back. And basically just, it basically says, what if we turn this castle into, you know, a series of stages, but there's no forced forward progression. And at times, you have to go back and you have to find these routes. And it also expresses Alicard being different than Belmont by giving him an inventory, by giving him magic points, by, you know, he still has the ability to use subweapons and collect hearts for those to augment his special

attacks, but he doesn't use a whip. He uses short swords, rapiers, zvi-handers. He uses, like, he has cestus knuckles. He has, like, blunt clubs and staves and just, like, everything that's not a whip is available to Alacard. So it really differentiates him. And all these different play styles emerge from the different mechanics and properties these weapons have, like a two-handed sword or a Claymore or something is going to make you stop and wind up and take a huge swing and it's going to have like a huge range and you're going to hit really hard, but you know, you have downtime when you do that. But on the other hand, you could equip brass knuckles or something and they're going to allow you to like walk and punch and run and punch and not slow down.

But, you know, mitigating that momentum is the fact that you may not kill everything in one hit. So if you're not careful, you'll punch and then walk right into it and take damage. you have to think about, like, how do I load out alo card? You have shields, but you don't have to use those. It's good against things that fire projectiles, but maybe, you know, you just would rather evade. You'd rather use your backstep, or you'd rather use a double jump to get over things. So instead of using a shield, you put a different kind of weapon on your second hand. So you can alternate, like, you know, do quick punches and then finish something off with a sword or something along those lines. So there's just a ton of variety in terms of how you can play. And it really

makes a different game experience than classic Castlevania. The way I always played was I would assign the shield hand to one of the trigger buttons at the top or the shoulder buttons on the PS1 controller and you can just hold that down the whole time and hit your other hand and it will alternate automatically you can hit and then your shield

will come right back up. It's so awesome and it's just you don't even have to push it again you know so I just run around hold that down and then you can you know block fireballs block attacks and then hit and so there is that strategy that's a lot like Zelda, too, in a way, ancestrally. It also has an RPG element to it that you saw in Castlevania 2 to a limited degree, like you gained experience and that would boost your health points.

But here, it's kind of transparency. You don't really see it, except that sometimes you'll kill an enemy and suddenly Alacard will get a level up. But then you start to acquire items throughout the castle, and suddenly you gain the ability to see how many points of damage you're inflicting on enemies, and suddenly you can like acquire things from candles and it becomes more like oh there's some substance here you start realizing that the money that you're collecting is not for points it's actually something you can use at the shop run by a shopkeeper the library who will sell you potions and weapons and

armors and maps and crystals and jewels and all kinds of things i thought that was so awesome the first time i ever played it just going into the library doesn't he say like welcome how can i help you or something like that. Master Alucard. Yeah. What brings you here? Something along those lines. Yeah, but you don't really necessarily realize how much depth there is to this game,

but it just kind of slowly unfolds and you start to realize, oh, wow, there's a lot going on here that I did not, did not expect. This is not just my father's Castlevania. And the way that it teaches you this stuff is brilliant. You know, you talked about the prologue bloodlines with Richter, but there's basically a second prologue to that game, which is, you know, Alicard running through the woods, jumping into the castle, the castle closing behind you. So, you know, immediately you are taught there's only one way forward. You've already seen the place that you're going because you see Dracula's little top of the stairs tower. You are given the opening hallways of Castlevania, which like they usually do are full of zombies.

There's an infinite number of zombies. They will just spawn over and over until you leave the area. I mean, they'll continue spawning when you come back. But you can very easily level up once passing through that area. So it teaches you that immediately. You are given not the best set of equipment in the game, but some of the best equipment in the game at the stars. So if you stop and check out the inventory, you will see the names of all these weapons and items. those are then taken away from you.

So you have the experience not just of knowing the theme of collecting these items back, gearing yourself up to go fight Dracula, but you are immediately shown the difference between the different kinds of attacks because at the start of the game you're armed with the Alicard sword. That's how you fight those zombies and level up a couple times. After you meet death, and death in a very continuity, canon conscious way, isn't going to kill you, but he's also going to,

to make it very difficult for you to progress through the castle, he takes away your weapons, and from that point until you get the drop from the bloody zombie on the, like, next, like, third or fourth screen after that, you're punching. You're doing a different attack that has a different animation. Your cape is different because you're no longer wearing the cloak that you're wearing in your inventory. You're now back to this dull brown interior of the cape, which is a visual signifier that I don't know if that could have been done on an earlier generation. I don't know if that's something that could have been done to the extent that it's done in something that I would have involved like sprite layering and stuff.

Yeah, but you're given immediate visual and interactive cues to the way the inventory system works in a way that's incredibly brilliant. And also, one of the first secret rooms, not secret, but like you can't access it just. yet is above the area where you meet death. So if you're bothered to look at your map, you see an empty space that should connect right there. Oh, you mean the one in the gap? Yeah. In the bridge, you can actually get to that right away. Can you get to that? I didn't think you could land. I did it last

time I played. Like if you if you jump just right, you'll land on that ledge and there's like a heart container. Yeah. But then you know, you get a little further in and once you have your weapon, you go to like a bigger room and there is a ledge above you. It has a shaft. Yeah. Straight down to the point.

Right. And you can see there's like a wall that can only be broken from the other side and there's like a weapon or something on the other side of that. And you're like, hmm, how can I get there? And you can't access it from that side, but you can loop back around later and break through the wall so it gives you a shortcut. So it's doing the Dark Souls thing way before Dark Souls. There is no game that I have ever played in my life that is better at putting things

just out of reach. Everything is so close that you think you can make it, but not close enough that you can and not so far away that you're like, well, screw this game. I don't want to play it. It's very tantalizing in the way that presents things. And then there are areas, like occasionally you'll come across things that you can get to if you figure out how right away. So in that very first area, the alchemy lab, once you get your weapon, there's a switch that will cause this spike. platform to descend and you can't trigger that and make it up and jump on the platform,

the little elevator thing in time to reach the area it reaches to, that it leads to. But what you can do is you can kill a red bones skeleton on top of the switch and it will hold down the switch while it's defeated. And then you can run up and stand underneath the little elevator thing. And when the red bones revives and walks off the switch, its weight will cause, like, its weight leaving the switch will cause the platform to descend. And if you time it just right, you can jump and then jump immediately and get up to this little area that you wouldn't normally be able to get to until later in the game. And there's a weapon in there that's, um, I think it's like a knife. I think it's a basilar. Yeah. So it's like, uh, about as strong

as your weapon that you already have, but it's faster and has a different range. So you can, you know, like if you're more into the speedy weapons, then you have another attack option to use against the first boss, which is in a few screens away. And it's, It's laid out so that when you come in, you see the bloody skeleton walk across that switch. There's so many good visual cues. There's the first time you get to the outer wall, there's a, there's a mist could pass, great. And it's, I think the first time you encounter one, you just won't go to this thing. You get the message, mist could pass, which you don't at that point know that you will eventually be turning into mist.

I feel like that's the least elegant element of the game. It is. To say, hey, you need this power up. Everywhere else in the game is just like, figure it. out. But there, I guess that's so subtle that they're like, yeah, you can do this later. Well, but there's also a part. And I only know this because a friend of mine showed it to me the first time I played this game. Because I don't think there's any indication of it. But if you go to the room above that and go into the corner and just stand there for a few minutes, there's

an elevator that drops you down and you get the jewel knuckles, which at that point in the game are a pretty good item. And so you are taught, you're taught missed good pass. But you're also taught, hey, you're going to want to go through these missed grates. Eventually, there's going to be stuff you need behind here. And also, if you have a friend who shows you that, it's like, hey, there's going to be stuff that's just going to happen in this game. And that is a, like, that's a thing that you're going to have to be aware of. There are going to be things that aren't what they seem. It's all taught to you in a way that is as elegant as a Mario Brothers, like a game that is, as you have written about Jeremy. like famously good at teaching you things screen by screen. Yeah, when people talk about how this is a badly designed game, I just have to stop and like say what is your idea of a well, like what do you think good game design is? Do you not think that it's dangling information in front of you

and giving you interesting, subtle hints and nudging you very gently to figure things out in a way that's, you know, that's intuitive and not vexing and never makes you feel like I'm stupid or this game is broken and there's nowhere to go. Like this game is the definition of good game design. Yeah, there's some parts of it that could be better. Like, okay, maybe combat's too easy. Yeah, maybe the RPG leveling system is way unbalanced and it's easy to exploit. But that's not really the point of the game. It's about like finding your way through the castle and discovering this beautiful labyrinth and, you know, reaching the end and figuring out what the secret ending is about.

And it's not even, it's not just small rooms either. There's an entire section of the long library, which is already a pretty good sized chunk of real estate. But there's an, like, it doubles in size when you get the double jump. And there's a whole other sprite set and, and a whole new backgrounds behind it, which is a really good indication of how that game is going to go from there forward. Because, hey, surprise, not only is it, super well design, super cohesive. There's a second game. There's an entirely other game in there that also they don't tell you about until it happens.

One of my One of my One of my One of my favorite little set pieces from this game is that in the chapel, where you can sit down on a chat piece from this game is that in the chapel, where you can sit down on a chair and a ghost comes out. Oh, and the confessional? Yeah.

The priest comes out. And different times, one time he gives you something and then another time he'll shoot spikes at you. If it's a black-robed priest, he'll try to, he'll, like, chuckle and then he'll stab you. With, like, not just a knife, but, like, a ton of weapons, like, come out of the confessional booth. If it's a green priest, I think he'll just be, like, yeah, no, he'll do his rosary. He sits and listens. I think the blue priest will actually give you, like, you. like the Eucharist.

Yeah, he'll get grapes or something. Grapes, yeah. Because it's, it's a comedian one. That is brilliant. And also that, just in the context of that game, even though it's just a 2D cartoony game by any other standard, it seems, it's really creepy. And it, and kind of terrifying that one of them will try to kill you with this, you know, and then they disappear.

I love those details. There's so many details back into it. Well, because I think it's, there's a whole other vampire living in Dracula's castle, O'Rox, who's a reference to Nospheratu. Yeah, Count Orlock. Yeah, the black and white ancient vampire movie from the 20s, the 1920s. And he's waiting for you to banquet table. And if you run up and attack him, he'll start fighting.

But he's just, like, sitting there and there's a chair at the other side. You can sit in any chair in this game that you find. So you can actually just, like, go to the boss's lair and sit at the table opposite him. And it's, you're not actually doing anything, but it's like, you know, having a, a genteel moment with your adversary before you enter mortal combat and he turns into a giant slobbering demon. And the bit in the confessional is, I believe, I'm not sure about this. It might be random and it might just be how it played out for me last time I played it

when I was really paying attention. I believe you get the priest who does the item drop first. Yeah, I think so. And you can also the... So you think you can keep doing it to get good stuff. If you get greedy, you get attacked. And you can also sit as the priest and confessors will come in. And there's one who tries to kill you.

It's, and again, you wrote a really good piece about, Jeremy, about how there's so much unnecessary stuff in that game. Like, you don't have to be, like, that game would be great and brilliant without being able to sit in chairs. But you can. And there are dozens of items that don't really do much other than add to the universe of the game. Like, remember those shoes that add one pixel to your height? That's always one of my favorites. Brilliant. And yeah, I remember that because the first time I played this, this was, this was the first game I ever imported and had my PlayStation modded to play this game.

And I did not read much Japanese at the time. So I was kind of bubbling my way through. But I had a friend who is an exchange student. And she came over and was watching me play. And I was like, so can you help me figure out what these things do? And so I brought up the shoes and she read the inventory description. And she started giggling, and she was like, oh, these just make you look taller. I was like, are you, are you sure about that?

And she was like, yeah, that's what it says. So, yes. And then it came to English and it just said, you know, secret shoes, discreetly increased his height. And I think when you get those, because those are behind the waterfall, if memory serves. I believe so, yeah. I don't know if you've got the double jump at that point yet in the game. So I remember personally being like, is this what's going to get me to that ledge? Yeah, I don't know.

No, it is absolutely. to have the holy symbol to be able to get past the waterfall. Otherwise, you'll take damage and be flung away because it's water. There's all these mushrooms you can collect. Isn't there some kind of glasses or something? There's sunglasses that they look cool, and they give you like a point of defense, but they lower your intelligence. Yeah, that's neat.

There's all these like little subtle things built into the descriptions and the stats and all kinds of weird stuff you can do. Yeah, the familiars. There's a cape. Before we forget, before we stop talking about the items, there's a cape you can get that you can change the color of an RGB. It's Joseph's cloak. Joseph, yeah, Joseph's.

This game would be brilliant without familiars at all, but that there are familiars and they do things. The bat gets a heart over his head when you turn into a bat. The sword becomes an item, which again, it just goes away at one point when you're leveling it up, it's like level 90 though you have to really go for it you do I think it's level 50 oh 50 but you can continue the longer you level it up the more powerful it gets both as a familiar and as an item you can equip I didn't know that

oh yeah there's still stuff I'm discovering about this game so many and when you when you do the special attack with it it leaves behind the word verboten really that's a different sword oh is it that's the um it's the verboten sword I guess what's the name it's not the heaven sword but it's the other one yeah yeah the if you pause it on it's If you pause it on its swing, verboten is written in the... So friggin' good. Yeah, there are probably a lot of inside jokes tucked away in there. I wonder how long this took to develop.

It must have taken a long time. I don't know. It's interesting because the lead designer on it, Toru Hagiwara, was like a long-time veteran developer at Konami. He had worked on a bunch of other Castlevania games. And I guess he was boosted to management heaven midway through. And so that's when Koji Igarashi took over. So despite the fact that this game had sort of like a change in leadership midway through, apparently, it still came out really cohesive and really imaginative.

And it's got that those Amano portraits for all the characters. No, it's not Ayami Kojima. Yeah, that's right. Amano did Final Fantasy. Yeah, right? But they're so, they're so gothically stylistic. It, everything about it is beautiful. Like, the aesthetic is beautiful.

The gameplay is beautiful. At heart, the Metroidvania layout, like, you can depict it with sticks. It's just various floating sticks. But Symphony of the Night presents all of those floating platforms in a way where, much like the original Castlevania, they connect to the background in a way that makes sense. Yeah, there's like spiral staircases. There's spiral staircases. There's broken stairs that explain why you can't just walk into the background.

Yeah, the whole, um, the outer key. where the platforms crumble as you make your way across so you can't actually get through until you have the double jump. Everything there kind of makes physical sense like, oh, I see why this broke, I see why this fell.

Yeah. It's a wonderfully made game. It's hard to top something, a game with so much packed into it like that. Just so much depth and level to it. And then we didn't really mention the inverted castle. You may have alluded to it.

But the fact that, you know, once you beat it with a certain, was it a certain item? You have to, because the dark pre-shaft. The dark pre-shaft, okay. First of all, you have to go fight the dark pre-shaft. And also, that middle clock room where things happen in the in-game clock every minute or every hour or when you use the item that stops time, that's brilliant. then getting the items that, you know, wear clock in tower on the rings. You have to do that to go fight shaft.

Then you get the glasses. Then you go fight Richter. And if you put the glasses on, which they have no, like, defense benefit whatsoever, I don't think, you can see the orb that's controlling him. And you have to kill that without killing him. Which is ridiculously good design.

And would you do that? There's like three or four different endings. If you defeat Richter without knowing about the orb, it's like, oh, this seems sad and it's a shame this happened. But if you know about the orb and can see it and still kill Richter, then it's like, man, that was bad. That shouldn't have happened at all. Yeah. I think I first beat the game and just killed Richter, and that was it. And I didn't play it again for a few years.

And then I read that you could do the inverted castle thing. And I went back and it was like, holy crap. It's another game. Because with most, with most games that have that kind of set up, you just get the good ending, right? Castlevania gives you literally 100% more game. Like you get the, yeah, the entire cancel. 100.3, I think, actually. 200 points.

You get the entire castle flipped over with new villains with a different, like, a sprite set. Yeah, some of the coolest stuff is in there, like Gallimoth, which is a reference to the final boss of Kid Dracula of all damn. things is like this crazy hard boss unless you have the right equipment in which case he becomes trivial like he fires lightning at you constantly so you have the thing that absorbs lightning. Oh, the barrel circlet? Yeah. Then you

basically can't be hurt by him. But I didn't know that playing in Japanese. So I did this painstaking playthrough where I kept turning into mist anytime he cast lightning and then would turn back and attack while I could and then I would turn back into mist again and then I have to recharge my magic points

because it sucks so much magic. But I painstakingly beat him the hard way it's possible and there's like beelzebub the lord of flies which is like a rotting corpse hanging on a bunch of meat hooks and enormous flies are coming out of the screen and attacking you while he drops maggots that turn into more flies it's super gross legitimately one of the best and most thrilling boss uh bosses in the entire franchise and in games in general yeah they're the boss fights are great in that game yeah i'll make One last point about this game for me is that I mentioned this on the first Metroidvania episode is that this was the first game where an action platformer where I could spend the time to level up my character so it would actually be easier for me to play through the game and not so punishing and I really, really love that. So I could sort of do some grinding on some lower level monsters to raise my attack and defense and that would just made the game easier.

And I love that the flexibility that you could do that. You can do anything you want it. You can configure it any way you want it. You put your equipment any way you want it. You can play it any way you want it. And it's just so much flexibility. It's incredible. It's great game.

All right. Well, I know you guys... You can beat Gallimoth without the right equipment. You can. It's not advisable. Don't do it. Anyway, I know you guys need to get going because rush hour and life and stuff like that. So I think it's time to wrap and call today.

But this has been a fun and interesting discussion. I'm glad you guys finally got to talk about Cassivity the night. I hope you will still come back for future episodes. Well, our next episode is going to be a continuation of this, right? It's the inverted discussion. There is one more Metroidvania episode in the bag, and that is the indie resurgence of the

past decade or so. And we'll get to that in a few months. But in the meantime, this has been Metrodvania Part 5. We're going to finish this off someday. I swear to God. I've been Jeremy Parrish for Retronauts. You can find Retronauts at iTunes, Retronauts.com.

and podcast one. You can find me on Twitter as GameSpite. You can support Retronauts by listening to this show, of course. It's free. Or you can go to Patreon and subscribe for $3 a month, in which case you will get access to every episode without commercials at a higher bit rate a week in advance of the public broadcast or distribution of the episodes, which I think is a pretty cool deal.

So check that out. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Chris. You can find everything that I do by going to T-H-E-S-B-B-com. That's the Invincible Superblog,

my website. That's got links to the comic books that I write, as well as the columns that I write around the web, and the podcast that I do that are very fun to listen to. My final thought

is put it on the switch, you cowards. That goes for not just this game, but every game, right? Every game ever made. But especially somebody in the night. I would pay $60 to place to me that I'd have on the switch. They'll take you up on it.

They'll add microtransactions. Only if it's 16 by 9 ratio. I'm not paying for me. Yeah. They could just easily expand it. It wasn't designed for that. So they can redesign. Just give me a little border with like that cool portrait of valor card.

Yes. Or the succubimus. The top of succubus. Yeah. Okay. Actually, you know, it would be really cool as if the, if they did reissue it and they included a translated version of the manga that Ayami Kojima created for the, for the special edition of the Japanese release.

There's like a 16, no, the PlayStation one, came with a soundtrack CD that had like the best cuts in Castlevania's history and also a book that had lots of art and then like a 16-page manga in which Alicard awakens and is like, whoa, what's up, Dad? It's pretty cool. I'd love to see that translated and put into an official product. Hint, Hint, Konami. Benj.

And Benj, Edwards. You can listen to my new. podcast, The Culture of Tech at The Culture of Tech.com. I have guests like Steve Wozniak and Richard Gerriott. And I really appreciate your support. All right. And that wraps it up for this episode.

Please join us again next week for another episode. And of course, on an upcoming Friday, probably next Friday, I don't know, for another micro episode. That's what we do. Anyway, I'm wiped out. It's been a long

afternoon. Good night, everyone. Good night. Thank you. Get ready for hard work. For hard work. For high expectations. For high fives. For you've got this. For I did it. For you've got this. For I did it. For you. You're hired. You've got it in you. Now let us bring it out of you. If you're as serious about your success as we are, bring it. Visit rmU.edu today, Robert Morris University. Get ready. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town.

I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the attention. Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others.

The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.