1394: Castlevania Chronicles PS1 \\ Options, secrets, 1st playthrough & unlocks! (Arrange - Easy)
1Checking out the options, modes, and some secret codes for Castlevania Chronicles for PS1--played on a PS2--and then playing through Arrange Mode on the easiest possible settings--which nonetheless unlocks stuff. : D
A few times during the playthrough I say that stuff was ripped from Rondo of Blood; that is wrong--Rondo came out 4 months AFTER the X68000 Castlevania, the base game here. Possibly they were in development together for a month or two but still; I kept getting the time-frame muddled and thinking of this as a PS1 game, rather than as a port from the X68000--which is what it is!
0:00 - SESSION 1 - intros
4:10 - Original Mode
11:15 - Extra Option secret menu
13:28 - Option
14:04 - Special Option - Kojima & IGA
18:40 - Arrange differences
21:17 - Sound Module secret menu
23:52 - Arrange, FM Synth
25:13 - Arrange Mode, AST
39:25 - SESSION 2
45:42 - bohn drago
51:15 - ice squishied
1:07:39 - glass stained
1:20:26 - stage 15 = P
2:06:19 - bridge
2:09:23 - dolls
2:12:48 - mirrors
2:15:15 - SESSION 3
2:15:53 - Roland GS sound module
2:29:08 - mirrored
2:31:55 - boneterpillar
2:34:47 - jump bone
2:38:12 - FRank
2:46:51 - pain-tings
2:48:39 - deth
2:55:25 - the very long flail
2:56:23 - fire ; P
2:58:56 - tidy ninjas & panthers
3:01:26 - bawss
3:02:39 - SESSION 4
3:13:52 - OH HEY
3:32:35 - OH
3:33:42 - ending & credits
3:36:53 - Time Attack unlocked
3:46:45 - Gallery pieces unlocked
3:51:09 - wrap!
Notes:
SESSION 2
90 minutes to get through the first half, 45 of that stuck in stage 15, a long tower climb before a boss, filled with gears that fall out of the background onto your head and rolling around the platforms, looking exactly like the background, and tilting platforms and fireball turrets.
(Before that last checkpoint was more tower climb including a stained glass enemy distinctly--from Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)?--"the first fully computer-generated photorealistic animated character" - Wikipedia -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MnRH4oNz1k )
That boss tripped me up for a while until I realized it was the real first scripted boss sequence and that maybe I just had to try to dodge those until they ran out--and indeed, after that they resort to wielding a hand of the clock--but it's shorter than the whip, so...
I was finally through and on to a collapsing bridge section, mirrored in Rondo of Blood (NOT swiped from it as I said at least once ]_[), and another tower climb--vs princess and clown dolls? Draccy is rolling in his coffin. Then a hall of mirrors where smaller mirrors fall out of the BG and onto your head. ; | Ending in a doppelganger fight (hello again CV3) except the AI is maybe smarter this time and has mastered for instance this game's downward whip move.
I gotta switch to the original X68000 Roland GS soundtrack (R1+L1 when selecting mode)--the Arrange soundtrack was somehow remixed into carnival music in stg 15. ; P
SESSION 3
Cheesed that boss on the next try by hiding behind/under a platform.
Some nice-looking set-pieces but increasingly cheap gameplay relying on ambushes that you're just not going to avoid getting hit by until you memorize the level.
Was just trying to kill myself off to get to the save screen so I could quit for the night but trundled all the way to getting killed at the final boss area.
Jeepers I'm an idiot, I hadn't realized Ayami Kojima is female. Well, that rules. Here she is in a ridiculously over-the-top drawing session in Monte Carlo a few months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwMXG66Hktg
Back to the game itself, on the plus side there are only two elements that jumped out at me as really breaking the original Castlevania's Gothic romance theme: the princess/clown dolls, and the ninja maids. As thematic breaks they're worse but much less frequent than the stuff in Castlevania III, which seemed not to be aware that there had been a theme at all, really.
SESSION 4
Reloads right before the final boss, whoa!
Final boss fight took me longer than it should have to realize how to slice his cheese. ^ _^ And I kept falling off the last staircase. ]_] Good SFX. The Ayami Kojima-style redrawn Dracula sprite in the Arrange mode is all right; the other, X68000 one looks a lot less cool than the similar fight in Rondo. (BUT Rondo came out 4 months AFTER the X68K version of which this is a port, so it wasn't a rip off as I wrongly said at least once.)
A Time Attack mode unlocks but didn't really call to me.
The playthrough unlocked all the Ayami Kojima gallery art, nothing I hadn't seen on the web though I don't think.
5/2/23
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