Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

The solitary Castlevania entry on the PlayStation is arguably the greatest in the series. In the previous game, Dracula X, the legendary vampire hunter Richter Belmont defeated Dracula in a fierce battle of power and will, which you have the fun of being able to play. After his great triumph, Richter and his sister-in-law Maria Renard, whose rescue was an objective in Dracula X, return to live in peace, now that the scourge of Dracula is gone... or is it? Four years later, Richter mysteriously vanishes. As Maria tracks him, she suddenly sees the legendary castle of Dracula appear again in front of her... but it is only supposed to appear once every 100 years, and yet here it is again, only four years later. Symphony of the Night features, instead of a Belmont lead character as in prior games, the son of Dracula himself, Alucard. With a markedly different look than his previous appearance (Alucard was one of the three support characters in Castlevania III, and looked like a traditional movie vampire as opposed to his current lithe body and long, silver hair), Alucard awakens from the sentence of eternal sleep he levied upon himself after defeating his father in the third game, for he senses the presence of Dracula once again. Armed to the teeth with some great weapons and armor, he storms the legendary Castlevania to investigate the appearance of the castle and put his father down again if need be.

Gameplay
Harkening back to the series' roots, SotN is a beatiful 2D sidescroller, set in a gigantic castle with nearly 2000 rooms in total. The game uses RPG stats to measure health, magic, gold, etc. Alucard can equip literally hundreds of different items to aid his quest, some purchased from the egnimatic Librarian, others found in secret crevices or from defeating enemies. He can also equip two items in his hands, one in each, which makes it easier to plan for dangerous encounters. Will you keep a shield in one hand for defense, or will you equip a sword for power and a knife for speed? There are tons of combinations, and finding the perfect one is part of the fun. With regard to combat, killing enemies nets you experience points, which ultimately raise your levels and stats. There are also many hidden potions which raise your HP and your MP scattered everywhere.

Alucard will also be able to cast various spells by performing certain button combinations. You can learn them by buying the required scrolls from the librarian... though that is not necessary if you already know the sequence. I personally found the magic to be a rather useless feature, with the exception of the neat Soul Steal spell, none of them really have an effect worth all the finger-dancing.

Last, there are a varied assortment of special items you will find on your quest, which give you various abilities, such as a double-jump, super-jump, and seeing your enemies' damage done when you strike. There are three special Soul orbs that allow you to shift your form into a bat, wolf, or mist, as well as various orbs that add abilities to those forms. These are the most important, as you must find them all to proceed at one point or another. Finally, there are the Familiars, friendly monsters that will follow you and aid you in various ways. Faerie will use healing items on you when your health wanes. The little demon can hit some switches you can't reach. The Bat is a good wingman for you when you become a bat yourself. The Ghost performs Soul Steal on nearby enemies, damaging them and healing you a bit. And finally, the Sword Familiar, the most useful, attacks enemies nearby, and when it reaches a certain level, can actually be wielded as a weapon itself! My only issue with the gameplay is that the bosses are just insultingly easy, and that's pretty disappointing. Fortunately, there is still ample challenge in actually getting to them.

The true fun of the game is finding every secret passage and room, and there are plenty of them. Of course, if you are diligent in finding these secrets, you will be able to find the alternate castle... a complete (and far more difficult) inversion of the real castle, which makes for an entirely new game after you clear the first! But it takes some careful searching to find!

Graphics
As far as 2D graphics go, they don't get better than this on PlayStation. Lush, colorful and large sprites dominate the action and are beatifully animated. Some boss monsters are simply gargantuan, one being FOUR TIMES the size of the screen! The backgrounds are similarly beautiful and extremely diverse and detailed, which makes for a very pleasing experience. The single nagging issue is slowdown when the screen gets crowded, but it's infrequent and you really won't care.

Sound
A truly great aural experience is an accurate description of the soundtrack in this game. Impressive tracks ranging from stunning tocattas, to baroque, to some more modern rock guitar, to orchestral, this game has it all. Sound effects are similarly decent. Where it goes wrong is the voice acting. With Metal Gear Solid still a year away from revolutionizing voice-acting in videogames, SotN unfortunately follows the times by having some truly apalling voicing, and worse still, there s a strange echo to it that makes it even harder to understand.

Longetivity
The game has four endings, but if you're good you can really experience all four in one playthrough. The endings you get are determined by the percentage of the game you complete, though there is no real reward for getting good endings... except for one. Getting one of the good endings unlocks Richter as a playable character! Now you can use him beyond the opening sequence, and the game is totally different with him. He cannot use items but he has his awesome whip and many of Alucard's special moves right from the start. It's really just a sidequest however, for there is no story attached to Richter and he cannot go in some places.

Final Word
This game is quite rare, but a good find if you're looking for perhaps the single best 2D Platformer on the PlayStation.

Overall: 8.9 / 10

The NES game... only Mega Man game with a score. Hard... :) Will someone else win (or bother to enter)? I've won all 3 of the new challenges...

Sure its no Star Fox Adventures in the graphics department, but it still looks pretty darn good.

Kirby's Air Ride:





Pikmin 2:








Kirby's Air Ride seems to be strongly influenced by Mario Kart and F-Zero, which can only be viewed as a good thing. Pikmin 2 looks similar in style and graphics to the first game.

Since the idea of posting news in a seperate area hasn't worked well yet, I set the main page to display topics out of Tendo City instead of just the News area. There are some blank items there, because for whatever reason it won't display items that were posted before the forum was marked to be displayed. It's no big deal though, as all topics after this one will display, no problem.

So now we'll have our frontpage news without as much hassle, I hope. This is only a testing period to see how it works out.

Quote:Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma of Nintendo Co Ltd. divulged in an interview with Dutch game jouralists that an entirely new Zelda is being worked on for the Game Boy Advance. While the topic of conversation was mostly The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube, Miyamoto gave small preliminary details on the next Zelda adventure for handheld. Capcom will handle the development on the title. The company also developed the Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages and the new A Link To The Past under the supervision of Nintendo. This would be the first truly new Zelda game for GBA, and work started on the title in 2001. Miyamoto ended saying "We have many new games for you at E3!"

Quote:Matrix Semiconductor usually creates commercial 3D integrated circuits. Saying that they recognize Nintendo's "dominant" position in electronic entertainment, they state how fortunate they are to have them as investors. Nintendo has interest in Matrix's "Matrix 3-D Memory" for use in portable electronics. It helps in the programming, flexibility, and cost of games such as those for the GBA.

"The portable and mobile device markets are expanding rapidly. Matrix's cost and density advantages over existing technologies support the memory requirements of our portable video game machine, Game Boy Advance," says Yasuhiro Minagawa, Manager of Public Relations Section at Nintendo's headquarters in Japan. "We believe Matrix's technology will help us to make our exciting game titles more efficiently."

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Feb. 24, 2003--Matrix Semiconductor -- the first company to commercialize low-cost, high-density 3-D integrated circuits -- today announced that Nintendo has invested $15 million in the Company. This financing brings the total raised by Matrix to $95 million.

"Matrix has always focused on securing relationships with the world's leading consumer electronics companies. These relationships provide countless benefits to the Company in addition to dollars," says Dan Steere, Vice President of Marketing for Matrix Semiconductor. "We recognize Nintendo's dominant position in electronic entertainment and feel very fortunate to have them as an investor in Matrix."

Matrix's first product -- Matrix 3-D Memory -- is a low-cost, high-density, non-volatile memory technology specifically designed for use in portable electronics. For developers of content such as games, Matrix 3-D Memory is field programmable, enabling programming flexibility and greatly reducing inventory complexity and costs.

*Sigh*

Quote:Metroid Prime was reviewed by Japanese magazine Famitsu Weekly. Metroid was always more popular in the US then in Nintendo’s homeland, leaving worries as to how the region would take to the game. A score of 33/40 (three 8s and one 9) gave the title a gold award.

February 21, 2003 - Earlier today Nintendo producer/director Shigeru Miyamoto and director Eiji Aonuma showed off two new GameCube projects to the European press. The first, Kirby's Air Ride, a unique, colorful 3D romp which may or may not be based on the cancelled N64 game of the same name, was described as sickeningly cute. No further details were revealed.

The other, the previously revealed but little known Pikmin 2, was said to look nearly identical to the original game.

Pikmin, released last year for GameCube, is Nintendo's attempt at a strategy game of sorts. It starred players as a marooned space man who must meet and then command an army of alien creatures, the Pikmin, to do his bidding and help him escape the oxygen-filled planet.

Pikmin 2, according to reports, will at least have a new split-screen multiplayer mode in which two players can manipulate the environments, and the Pikmin, at once. Apparently the hero will now also be able to carry items from place to place.

More details for both games will likely be unveiled next week. Stay tuned.

Source: IGN Cube

Review: Metroid
Platform: NES
Rating: 9.0/10

<blockquote>Metroid is one of the defining moments of the NES, at any point in it's life. It was the huge, non-linear, and difficult quest of Samus Aran, bountyhunter extraordinaire, who hunts a not-so-nice group of guys called Space Pirates, who, like any self-respecting villains, have aspirations to dominate the galaxy. The tool they plan to use in search of this goal is the Metroid. A large creature shaped roughly like a squid, Metroids have the capacity to completely destroy almost anything, making them the perfect weapon if they can be brought under control. As Samus, you will search miles and miles of the dangerous underworld of the planet Zebes, hunt down the Space Pirates and their leader, the Mother Brain, and destroy the Metroids, all while trying your damndest to stay alive. </blockquote>

Graphics: 9.0

<blockquote>The various areas below the surface of Zebes are large, well-detailed, and diverse in looks. They range from the cavernous Brinstar to the firey Norfair to the high-tech base of Mother Brain, Tourian. Mother Brain's henchmen Ridley and Kraid also have their own domains, one an almost-pleasant area flowered with shrubs, the other an awfully strange place. Each section has it's own graphical variations as well, which makes for a pleasant visual experience. Of the early NES games, this probably makes some of the best uses of the machine's limited color palette. It manages to be colorful without ruining the dark atmosphere.

Enemies are all over the place, so you can't help but notice that they look pretty good, all things considered. Of course there's some palette-swapping going on, but there is still a rather diverse assembly of critters who want you dead. For it's time the number of enemies, and the level of animation were pretty advanced, and it shows through that design was a strength of the developing team. There are only three bosses in the game, but all are large, well-animated, and properly dominate the scene. </blockquote>

Audio: 8.0

<blockquote>The music in Metroid is excellent, and there are some catchy tunes here that have become staples of the series for good reasons. The problem lies in the simply massive areas you're exploring: You're in one area for such a protracted period of time that the music, as good as it is, will repeat and repeat until you really do start getting tired of it, and you'll wish there was a larger selection of tunes to break the monotony, even if nothing more than slight variations. That of course would be restrictive, as cart size was precious, so that can't really count much against the score. The sound effects are pretty standard.</blockquote>

Gameplay: 9.5

<blockquote>To start with, Metroid is a very difficult game. It WILL kick your ass, no matter how good you think you are. Health is a rare commodity for a good long while, your initial weaponry is weak and there are hordes of nasty things out there who like nothing more than to see your yellow self go boom. Though the game is definitely above the average skill level, it isn't insanely difficult either, it is balanced well and the curve isn't too steep. This game does require you to be adventurous, and it requires you to both take some risks and to be imaginitive. There are tons of secrets, most of them vital to your success, and the game gives you absolutely no hints as to where you can find these hidden items. Therefore, you have to take it upon yourself to explore every nook and cranny, to look in the least obvious places and discover the secrets of the planet Zebes. In addition to your exploration, you'll be firing that trusty arm cannon quite often, which can be upgraded three times to three lethal new levels, and soon enough you'll be complementing that with missiles. There are also extra items that complement other aspects of Samus Aran, and allow for higher jumping, lava-walking, and using her own body as a weapon, and more.

You have a serious lack of health at the beginning, which forces you to take a crash course in avoidance and being dodgy, because until you find a few of the precious Energy Tanks, you simply cannot take damage unnecessarily. Even small, seemingly-harmless enemies can take you down with a few hits. Fortunately, upon death they drop health tabs and other goodies to keep you rocking, but even still, often times trying to kill an enemy for five points of health can end up costing you four times as much, so know what you're getting into before shooting at anything that moves.

To add to the fact that the underworld of Zebes is gigantic, you will have to map it by memory, because the game does not do it for you. You will have to learn to memorize landmarks to aid your navigation, and it is almost certain you will get lost a few times. It's fortunate that there is little in the way of backtracking involved.

To top it all off, you have one life to live. Lose that life and you are given a long password. This is your only means of continuing, as this was in the days when battery-saving was in it's infancy. That the password is so long is incentive enough not to die, although it is a good idea when you want to break from the game for awhile. Make sure you get it down though, because you get only one chance. Metroid is a game that shows no mercy. And fans wouldn't have it any other way.</blockquote>

Final Word

<blockquote>Metroid is a classic for many good reasons, and is a blast to play if the heavy challenge doesn't daunt you. Any self-respecting NES afficionado should have this game in their collection, without doubt. And lucky you, it was a common, popular game, so if you're not a total slouch, you can easily obtain a copy of this game on the cheap. And you should. Because you definitely will not regret it. </blockquote>