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Would a faithful version of Symphony Of The Night been possible on the SNES?
- Thread starter Gusy
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Forget about the audiovisual aspect for a second here.
wIthout a SFX chip, I don't think it's possible to fit most rooms in the game's RAM.
The mechanics themselves would have to be reworked too.
At this point you're probably better served going Vampire Kiss and just do another project entirely that's based on the entire plot.
A NeoGeo version I could see being possible though.
wIthout a SFX chip, I don't think it's possible to fit most rooms in the game's RAM.
The mechanics themselves would have to be reworked too.
At this point you're probably better served going Vampire Kiss and just do another project entirely that's based on the entire plot.
A NeoGeo version I could see being possible though.
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Ok.. stop making sense and destroying my dream of a fictional faithful port of SoTN on the SNES
Sorry. It would be cool to see someone attempt a port for sure, and regardless of the limitations, it would be a cool showcase for sure.
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They couldn't even get a faithful port of Rondo of Blood onto the SNES.
There's no way it could handle the sprite size and scaling of several encounters. Granfalloon, Beelzebub, Galamoth, Scylla and Olrox would have to be completely nerfed. The cathedral with the perspective and the weapon enemy at the same time? The plant girl enemies that fire a ton of projectiles? That octopus room that slows to a crawl even on the PS1?
If you think the SNES could do Symphony, remember that the GBA is more powerful. Now compare Aria of Sorrow to Dawn of Sorrow which is approaching Symphony in detail and quality. It's literally a generation apart. Anything can get a port, they could cut it down horribly and push it into a small cart if they really wanted, but faithful in any way? No.
If you think the SNES could do Symphony, remember that the GBA is more powerful. Now compare Aria of Sorrow to Dawn of Sorrow which is approaching Symphony in detail and quality. It's literally a generation apart. Anything can get a port, they could cut it down horribly and push it into a small cart if they really wanted, but faithful in any way? No.
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I think is misguided to judge the SNES (w SFX2) hardware capabilities based on the piss poor job on the Rondo conversion. They are basically two different games.. made by two different teams. It's a bad port of a great game. nothing to do with the SNES itself
I feel as though a lot of people underestimate the sheer amount of content in this game. SotN would be a sad shell of its former self on SNES. Most of the weird, original one-off stuff that makes SotN so interesting is in the first half. Cutting the second half would be an odd choice, given the fact that you'd be reusing so many assets. The main issue is the enemies, especially the bosses. Also, given the other compromises you'd have to make to keep a lot of the other content in, I'd hate to think of the compromises you'd need for the soundtrack.
Honestly cutting the inverted castle id he fine with. I playedSOTN last year for the first time and its a magical game but i find the inverted castle a chore. I hit a wall and had to grind hard to not die for one and secondly the level design was a real pain at times traversing. Especially when you have to constantly transform into a bat. Its the classic example of how alot of games kinda fall apart in its final levels sometimes
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I respect your take. I hate when someone alters anything with my favorite soundtracks... BUT.. Have you heard how awesome the Super Castlevania 4 music sounds on the SNES? I dare say that if the original SoTN was never made and instead we only got a SNES version.. the soundtrack would've still be praised and loved.
I'm sure it could have been done with changes. Give it an SA1 and a 48Mbit cart and you'd probably not even have to cut the second castle, since it's just a literal asset flip with some minor changes. You'd lose most/all of the voice acting and the music would be SNES-styled (which actually may not be bad) but I'm sure it could be done.
I always wondered if Takara had ever asked SNK if they could try a KOF port to the SNES, given how some of their later ports like Fatal Fury Special were, and I'm certain it could have been done. But then we got those goddamned awesome GB ports from Takara (including arguably the best playing version of Toshinden >_>) and...
I always wondered if Takara had ever asked SNK if they could try a KOF port to the SNES, given how some of their later ports like Fatal Fury Special were, and I'm certain it could have been done. But then we got those goddamned awesome GB ports from Takara (including arguably the best playing version of Toshinden >_>) and...
Yeah but you
What they said. This is seriously not a litmus for how Rondo would have been on SNES, music aside. Hell, as it is there are a few tracks I actually prefer on the SNES because the arrangement is a bit better, IMO.
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Yeah, but Super Castlevania IV is a pretty short game with terrible enemy animations and bland colors. It's a given that they could spare the space for decent audio samples. I can see why some people like SCIV's music, as it's definitely different from what you hear throughout most of the rest of the series, but SotN's soundtrack absolutely blows it out of the water. Frankly, I don't see how people can stand to go back to SNES audio, as so much of it is muffled, and even listening to that sample someone posted earlier in this thread doesn't allow me to fully know how bad SotN's soundtrack would be on SNES.
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- YouTube
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Do you consider Super Mario World on the GBA a faithful port?
Deleted member 1963
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There is a universe of different between the music of Super Mario World and the music of Symphony of the Night.- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Do you consider Super Mario World on the GBA a faithful port?
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Sure.. I guess I was getting at what makes a conversion faithful or not. I get that you probably love SoTN music... me too. That doesn't mean that a version with the same awesome soundtrack albeit with lower quality samples couldn't be considered "faithful".. But maybe that's a discussion for a different thread.
I get where you're coming from though..
Not a good example as they're technically different games and i doubt it has to do with limitations. Music in dracula x still sounds pretty dope.
I have no problems with the removal of the inverted castle as it sucks ass.
As others have noted it would be a severely compromised experience. Animations, sprites, inventory limits, audio. Every single aspect of the game would need to be optimized to hell and you'd still have to make compromises on things like the inverted castle, environment backgrounds, enemy attacks, special moves (like every shield rod tech). There's just no way a faithful SNES version of Symphony happens.
I often wonder how much that particular stunt cost them. How much of the ROM do the voice samples take up? How big would the cart have been with the vocals replaced with an FFVI opera scene synth voice - could they have fit it on a 32mb (4MB) cart? Did it actually generate enough additional sales to make it worthwhile?
On topic: I recall there being some stuff visually in SotN that just wouldn't have flown, even on a SuperFX-boosted SNES. I think you could do a good if different rendition of the soundtrack and make a lot of the gameplay fit; I'm sure there are demoscene types out there who be super into the challenge. It would never, ever had made commercial sense to actually produce, and it would not have been 'faithful' without stretching the meaning of that word to the breaking point.
Don't think it would be that bad to be honest. Less animation frames, smaller map, less music (even when heavily compressed).
Check the Art of Fighting 2 SFC port. The system could barely handle it and the ports of Fatal Fury Special and Samurai Shodown 2 were very compromised. Anything above that (Kof94, SamSho2, Fatal Fury 3, Savage Reign) would've been impossible on a SNES.
They were torn down some, sure, but they were still amazing for what they were coming from and going to. The fact we got SFA2, even as it is, is a damned feat. I would have gladly taken some compromises for that.
I'm voting "compromised version" because if anyone else besides Angel Studios (they did the RE2 N64 port) did it, the port probably would've wound up bad. And even then who knows, all games are so different from each other.
it's a lot easier for SFA2 when you can trim down animation and sound to reach parity with previous SF2 releases on the same system. It also helps that all supers in SFA2 recycle animation from other attacks and that even the arcade version had sparse voice samples.
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I like the way you're framing that idea. I guess that some games have things that are crucial to the experience and simply cannot be touched without seriously compromising the original creators intent. For example, all of the Sega super-scalar arcade games (Outrun, Space Harrier, After Burner) had conversions to the SMS/Genesis that i do not consider good or faithful conversions. For me, you simply cant have the real AfterBurner experience without that smooth sprite scaling at 60 fps.. It's just one of those things that define that experience.
What motivated me to have this discussion is that I see something like Yoshis Island on the SNES and it feels to me very state of the art in gameplay and visuals for a 2d game of the 90's. It's not a straight apples to apples comparison with SoTN, I get that.... but my gut feeling tells me that you could preserve on the SNES everything that made SoTN great and memorable with the same level of craftsmanship that Yoshi's Island had in 1995... with obvious cutbacks.. but the soul intact.
The thing is, what is crucial for you within the SoTN experience might be different for me.. and that's ok.
You can get an idea of what kind of cutbacks would have to be made by comparing Mega Man 8 to Rockman & Forte. Capcom managed to reuse a lot of the sprites and keep the overall visual aesthetic intact, but they sacrificed a lot in terms of animation fluidity, special case animations, effects detail, and object density to get there, and at a lower resolution besides. And that's coming from a game that wasn't really doing much with rotations or transparencies or 3D integration in the first place, the way SotN does.
Enjoy your badly resized Alucard with only 4 frames in his walk cycle lol, also probably no bat or wolf transformation to save space.
Also play sotn, there are *a lot* of unique tilesets for every area in the castle, you would need some serious reuse of sprites, larger areas shrinked a lot, bosses with less attacks and animations or even cut...
For example take Rockman & Forte and Mega Man 8, Rock has fewer frames in his damaged animation, Tengu Man has only "two sprites" to show his nose, enemies have less attacks and frames, Green Devil has a lot of patterns on 8, on R&F he can just "stand there" throwing random blobs of themselves lol, you notice too that some areas in MM8 have a nice space but with R&F a lot of rooms are way smaller.
Also play sotn, there are *a lot* of unique tilesets for every area in the castle, you would need some serious reuse of sprites, larger areas shrinked a lot, bosses with less attacks and animations or even cut...
For example take Rockman & Forte and Mega Man 8, Rock has fewer frames in his damaged animation, Tengu Man has only "two sprites" to show his nose, enemies have less attacks and frames, Green Devil has a lot of patterns on 8, on R&F he can just "stand there" throwing random blobs of themselves lol, you notice too that some areas in MM8 have a nice space but with R&F a lot of rooms are way smaller.
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Interesting.. didnt know Rockman & Forte was a Megan Man 8 downport. Still a gorgeous looking snes game though
Oh, it's a completely different game on the whole, it just borrows the vast majority of its spritework from MM8.
That's like being unhappy that you didn't receive a burger when you ordered a pizza.
Granted they probably shouldn't have name that pizza the hamburg choice.
If Konami somehow managed to develop a built in cartdrige add-on, in the vein of many other similar efforts on the SNES, I think it would be possible, yes!
In raw SNES power, I don't think so it could. But remember, SNES could "cheat" it's own hardware with add-on chips. They did it with Super FX GSU-1 for Star Fox, Super FX GSU-2 for Yoshi's Island, CX4 for Mega Man X2 and X3, SDD1 for Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Star Ocean, etc..
Most of SOTN animations and background effects were done within SNES add-on chips, there's not really something that beyond what was already done with it.
The major drawback would probably be the RAM and music quality, they would probably be compressed in order to fit the storage space.
But yes, SOTN could have been possible if Konami was truly interested to port it.
In raw SNES power, I don't think so it could. But remember, SNES could "cheat" it's own hardware with add-on chips. They did it with Super FX GSU-1 for Star Fox, Super FX GSU-2 for Yoshi's Island, CX4 for Mega Man X2 and X3, SDD1 for Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Star Ocean, etc..
Most of SOTN animations and background effects were done within SNES add-on chips, there's not really something that beyond what was already done with it.
The major drawback would probably be the RAM and music quality, they would probably be compressed in order to fit the storage space.
But yes, SOTN could have been possible if Konami was truly interested to port it.
I don't know about faithful but you should be able to do something close to it without needing to put a PlayStation inside a cartridge.
You would need to use a lot of sprite flicker in places, the room full of Dark Octopus comes to mind.
Would anyone miss the fmvs if they were left out??
You would need to use a lot of sprite flicker in places, the room full of Dark Octopus comes to mind.
Would anyone miss the fmvs if they were left out??
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I dunno. If I ordered something named the same thing, I would be rather surprised that I got a pancake instead of beef wellington.
But doesn't surprise me that a game on a CD would need to make a lot of concessions to get crammed into a cart. I can't imagine that it would in any be easier to do that with SOTN which is an even more ambitious game technically.
to be fair Dracula X snes was (what i assume was) an intentionally abbreviated take on the real game. i was actually impressed playing it 1995 - but as a rental, if i paid msrp for it i'd be pretty pissed i'd imagine
real question is what could snes hardware actually brunt. and back then carts could basically be their own hardware. my guess is an snes SOTN would be doable but the cart would have to be $800 or something
I mean when you see how Rondo was and how they basically made a different game for the SNES.
If they tried for Synphony you would have the same result.
The game may end up good but it will have absolutely nothing to do with the base version.
And it's a better idea too as you get better results making something for SNES from go rather than try to retrofit something from a platform way more powerful.
GBA is actually significantly more powerful than SNES and it's not even close.
It's probably closer to PS1 even.
It's just that resolution is low and the sound chip is crap.