The Patreon Letter - 27th October, 2018 (Patreon)

Hi everyone! It's my birthday, so forgive me if I don't have a huge prelude or anything today. If I'm allowed to be brief, it's on today of all days. So let's get right to it.

The rerelease of Rondo and Symphony came out this past week, proving that Konami does in fact make video games (kind of) for another few months. There's some talk about SotN using the PSP translation (it's fine but I personally hate it, for the record) but it's nice to see a Castlevania game come out. It does make me reflect, as the 30th anniversary of Castlevania came and went last year, about how damn sad it is Konami doesn't take care of this franchise.

Castlevania is maybe my favorite game series? It's definitely up there. It's endured for decades now, despite being mostly neglected for the last third of its life. There's a second season of that Netflix show, inexplicably, which is great. My friends seem to have liked it quite a bit. I never finished the first one, but maybe I'll go back now that there's more and I assume season 2 feels a little less dated than season 1 did. And this two pack of rereleases has come out, bare bones but otherwise seemingly competently made.

But I'm left to wonder whether we'll ever see the kind of preservation and rerelease done that Castlevania deserves. Hell, a retranslation of 2 with a map hack like you can get off of any ROM site would be great. A rerelease of 3 that's the Famicom version (seriously, listen to this shit if you have not) is basically necessary at this point for the culture. That work could be done relatively easily and sold in a three pack for 15 bucks. Hell, add on SCV4 (which needs zero work) and sell it for $20. I don't like that game but plenty of people do. And it should still be accessible to people no matter what I think about it. 

Honestly, all of Castlevania could due with some bundling and re-releases. It breaks down pretty tidily too, with NES-SNES-GB Vania's all being in juuuust the right number to put together in a $30 package if they wanted. Maybe throw in Kid Dracula. They should put Bloodlines and Chronciles and even Dracula X in with Rondo and Symphony. They didn't, but they should. The GBA and DS Castlevanias really need some love, and it'd take some work to take out the touch screen stuff in the DS games but I think it's still do-able and worthwhile. I might own all those games but lots of people don't. Hell, the 64 and PS2 games probably deserve a bundle, or spread them among the packages people actually want. I think those PS2 games are genuinely solid. You see, the wife is in the whip. Bionic Commando had no new ideas (even if it was also pretty good). 

And this is to say nothing for Haunted Castle or Wai Wai Racers or Castlevania .... JUDGEMENT or that multiplayer thing. There are plenty of Castlevania ephemeral dangling on the knife's edge of being lost to time because of the platforms they're on or multiplayer servers or the general state of ROM sites in 2018. And this is Castlevania, one of the most storied and long-running series in the history of games. If it's this bad for Vania, how bad do smaller series' have it? 

We aren't going to get those collections, because Konami definitely doesn't care. We aren't even going to get kind of messy half-measures like Mega Man has received, because Konami won't even pretend to care. I'd take a lazy port of some of the older games with save states because I'm a mark for Dracula and we don't even get that! It's a sorry state of affairs when a series like this has its shining moment in the last five years be 'Nintendo put a character in Smash'. That's cool and I'm excited for it, but COME ON.

Castlevania is really special to me. It's a series that took horror-pastiche as far as it could go in terms of 2D action games, and then turned and brought it even further down the road of exploratory RPGs. It's the series that gave us Metroidvania by attaching stats to wandering around lost looking for a secret door. It single handedly made whips cool as a weapon you would fight with and that's a miracle because NOBODY should fight with a whip. Castlevania has given us memes and a mountain of music and at least a dozen stone cold classics. It's important!

I did a lot of LPs of Castlevania games on the youtube channel if you'd like to see them. I probably won't continue those due to how busy I am now, but they're a good look at the first third of Castlevania history for sure. First quarter if you count Lords of Shadow, which I try very hard not to. But as we settle into the last week of Halloween, I can't help but suggest you go digging in your ROMs folder or booting up your NES classic and taking a look at one of the best series to ever touch the medium, gone from this earth like a vampire in the sun. 

RIP Dracula, no longer a threat.

Until next week,

Em