Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we are in our second discussion of Super Castlevania IV. We discuss the ways the game mixes up its mechanics in the late game as well as its music and a few other topics before we turn to your feedback. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
Finished....? the game?
Issues covered: monsters and bosses, Universal monsters movies, the difficulty of these final levels, imagining someone playing at the time, linearity and difficulty spikes, arcade legacy, the modernization of playtesting, clunkiness of the platforming, level design in comparison with Nintendo, learning through failure, positive vs negative reinforcement in design, having fun even when it's hard, inconsistency of frame rate, emulation and slowdown, the hilarity of the enemy health bar, the terror of the bone bird, consistency of tone, the feeling of immersion in a location, reading the boss, the stages of Dracula, giving you help after you complete the challenge, do you need to complete the challenge, retracing your steps vs seeing everything "once," gaining capabilities over a game vs not, was the game made for fans of the series, mixing mode 7 throughout vs set pieces, bumping your head/feeling less heroic, Brett digresses into French history, having to practice, platforming on the stairs, jumping to blocks that would appear in time, learning what the design rules lead to, a screen scrolling down, the leading camera, interactions with the stair rules, questions of taste, steering the course of the industry, modifying rules when conflicts happen, iterating with the next game, shorter development times, Nintendo shipping its prototypes, investing so heavily in stairs, music in the names of the games, Gothic music, melodrama and space, SNES audio hardware, memorable and iconic music from the era, Tim can't find the melody, emulation and effects on play, display sizes, CRTs, controllers, some technical concerns in emulation, vinyl vs digital, emulating more modern series, remastering from film vs video.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Universal, Pokemon, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Super Mario World, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory (obliquely), Nintendo, Metroid (series), Dungeons & Dragons, Legend of Zelda (series), GameBoy Advance, Konami (obligatory: FK), Contra (series), Dark Souls, Metal Gear (series), Charles I/VIII, Academie française, SWAT IV, Guacamelee, LoZ: Link Between Worlds, Breath of the Wild, LoZ: Skyward Sword, Masanori Adachi, Taro Kudo, Star Wars, X-COM, Ha-Drew-ken!, DLC podcast, Ken Levine, Jeff Cannata, Christian Spicer, Drew from Scotland, Purple Rain, Prince, Logan Brown, Star Trek, Mario 64, Andrew Kirmse, Chris Kirmse, MAME, Batman '66, The Wire, Dragon's Dogma, MYST IV.
Next time:
Some of Castlevania: SotN
https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub
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