Trivia
On September 5, 2009, the freelance translators Devil Hackers released a translation patch that fully translates the Japanese version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night into English. The reason for this release is the notoriously low quality of the official translation. Also, since this patch is for the Japanese version, the players can also be spared the poor voice acting of the US release.
The link to the patch can be found under the Links/Searches section.
"Symphony of the Night" is not the translation of the Japanese "Gekka no Yasoukyoku", which actually means "Nocturne Under the Moon".
The game received the Best Game Music of the Year Award in PSExtreme Magazine's 1997 Extreme Awards (Vol. 3, Iss. 3).
A port of SotN was planned for Tiger's short-lived Game.Com handheld console. The game made it apparently to beta state, and several screenshots can be found of it on the net.
Contributed by
Zovni (9138) on Aug 14, 2007.
Symphony of the Night was voted #14 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll in Retro Gamer Magazine (Issue 37).
Contributed by
PCGamer77 
(3025) on Jul 18, 2007.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the first Xbox Live arcade game to break the Xbox 360's 50MB data limit enforced by Microsoft. This rule was originally set up to make all games transferable to the 64MB memory unit. For those interested, the game weighs in at 95.32MB.
Contributed by
Ben K (19346) on Mar 21, 2007.
The line "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!" was named the third worst game line ever in the January 2002 issue of "Electronic Gaming Monthly."
Adrian Tepes's last name "Tepes" is Romanian for "impaler", a name attached to Count Vlad Dracul, aka Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), who was Bram Stoker's inspiration for Count Dracula.
If you have the Rune Sword familiar, then you'll notice that a word appears whenever you throw the sword. That word is "verboten" and it means "forbidden" in German.
Contributed by
Elix (935) on Oct 01, 2004.
The yellow Medusa heads will normally turn you to stone. However, on seemingly random intervals, Alucard will turn into a gargoyle statue. There seems to be no advantage to this, and no actual point to it, other than looking cool.
Contributed by
Elix (935) on Oct 01, 2004.
There are 5 possible endings for the game, they are triggered by: killing Richter with the Holy Glasses; Killing Richter without the Holy Glasses; Killing Dracula with less than 200%; killing him with over 200%; and of course, the "Castlevania Classic" Richter ending.
What few people know is that a sixth ending was planned but eventually scrapped from the final game, this ending is a variation of the "vs Richter" ones, and has Maria coming in to his rescue, then transforming into some sort of demon and fighting Alucard. No part of this ending was coded so don't bother looking for it, but the voice files are in the game cd, you can extract it using any PSX-extracting utility and listen to the entire recorded audio (including Alucard mourning Maria and Richter upon victory).
Contributed by
Zovni (9138) on Oct 08, 2002.
One of the rather funny items Alucard can find is the Moon Rod, which has a little crescent moon on the end! If you look at it carefully, it almost resembles the Mood Rod carried by Moon in the anime series "Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon"!
Moon Crystal Power, Alucard? :-P
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was voted #18 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll published by Game Informer Magazine (Issue 100, August 2001).
Contributed by
PCGamer77 (3025) on Jul 28, 2001.
When you have the Shield Rod equipped, press Back, Foward+Attack. Alucard will toss out a little swirling ball, which is actually the Shield from the Gradius series! It even protects you from small projectile attacks!
The Sega Saturn version of Nocturne (which only saw a Japanese release) had a small difference in the storyline. When you go to meet Maria in the Marble Gallery, she gives you the Holy Glasses in the PSX version. But in the Saturn version, she won't just hand them to you. She tests you by fighting you first. Believe me when I say she's VERY hard to beat!
You can play the entire game as Richter Belmont by entering 'RICHTER' as your name (you may need to finish the game first). Richter starts off resonably powerful and has many special moves but he doesn't advance in power as you progress through the game. Also, to get to all areas you have to use some tricky combinations of his super jumps and dashes.
Contributed by
Fafnir (72) on May 07, 2001.
To map all of the two castles (I think you can get 200.6%) you need to use the library recall card when facing Dracula, allowing you to add his room to your map.
Contributed by
Fafnir (72) on May 07, 2001.
There is a second castle in the game which is a vertically mirrored copy of the first. To access it you must meet with Maria inside the main clock where whe will tell you the truth behind Richter. The monsters and items in the second castle are much harder than the first and some of the bosses from the first appear as regular monsters.
Contributed by
Fafnir (72) on May 07, 2001.
In the Japanese release of this game there were two extra familiars. They were a second fairy and a second demon which basically had no difference from the two that remained (and explains why they were removed).
Contributed by
Fafnir (72) on Apr 30, 2001.
Some interesting tidbits about Symphony and its cast:
Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel to a PC Engine Duo (TurboGrafx Duo in the U.S.) game called Dracula: Rondo of Blood, which never saw a U.S. release. In fact, the very first battle of Symphony (Richter and Drac) is lifted straight out of the PC Engine game!
Place the CD into any CD player and play Track 2. You'll get a clip of Alucard saying that this is a PSX black disc, and not to play Track 1. Then comes a cool remix of "Dracula's Castle", the musicial piece that plays in the Enterance Hall of the castle! (WARNING: Do NOT, under any circumstances, play Track 1 of the PSX CD on your CD player, unless you like the sounds of horrible white noise destroying your speakers and your ears.)
