Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Cancelled Game.Com version
A port of the game 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.
CD music
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 remix of Dracula's Castle, the musical piece that plays in the entrance 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.)
Endings
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).
Fan translation
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.
Map
To map all of the two castles (the maximum is 200.6%), you need to use the library recall card when facing Dracula, allowing you to add his room to your map.
Medusa
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.
References
- 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.
- 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.
Rune Sword
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.
Second castle
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.
Title translation
"Symphony of the Night" is not the translation of the Japanese "Gekka no Yasoukyoku", which actually means "Nocturne Under the Moon".
Xbox Live
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.
Version differences
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).
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.
Awards
- Electronic Gaming Monthly
- November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #12 (Best 100 Games of All Time) (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Game of the Year Runner-Up (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - PlayStation Game of the Year
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Action Game of the Year Runner-Up (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Side-Scrolling Game of the Year (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Best Music Runner-Up (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - PlayStation Game of the Year Runner-Up (Readers' Choice)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Action Game of the Year Runner-Up (Readers' Choice) (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Side-Scrolling Game of the Year (Readers' Choice) (PlayStation version)
- March 1998 (Issue 104) - Best Music Runner-Up (Readers' Choice) (PlayStation version)
- 1998 Buyer's Guide - Best Middle (ie midway through through the game)
- 1998 Buyer's Guide - Best Sequel (PlayStation version)
- 1999 Buyer's Guide - Ranked 4 (Top 10 PlayStation Games)
- January 2002 - Worst Game Line Ever (for "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!")
- Game Informer
- August 2001 (Issue #100) - #18 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
- GameSpy
- 2001 – #20 Top Game of All Time
- PSExtreme
- 1997 (Vol. 3, Iss. 3) - Best Game Music of the Year Award
- Retro Gamer
- Issue #37 - #14 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll
Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Ben K, Big John WV, CaptainCanuck, Fafnir, PCGamer77, Satoshi Kunsai, Tiago Jacques, Unicorn Lynx and Zovni
Trivia contributed by Satoshi Kunsai, Alaka, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.