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Castlevania for NES, extracted from the Steam version of Castlevania Anniversary Collection (see entry 1570) and played in Mesen (see entry 1536).
I used this Steam version ROM extraction guide to access the ROMs: https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/wiki/Castlevania-Anniversary-Collection
Which I am going to copy down here as a back up:
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The Castlevania Anniversary Collection contains several different Castlevania titles for the Game Boy, NES, SNES and Sega Genesis, as well as various bonus content. The collection can be purchased on Steam.
All of the games that come in this collection can be extracted. (The English localization of Kid Dracula, exclusive to the compilation, requires extraction of some additional SRAM data.)
ROM Extraction Instructions
Download and install .NET Core from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download
Download MArchiveBatchTool from one of these links:
Windows - https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/releases/download/tools/MArchiveBatchTool-win-x64.zip
Linux - https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/releases/download/tools/MArchiveBatchTool-linux-x64.zip
Extract the zip file and copy alldata.bin and alldata.psb.m from your Castlevania Anniversary Collection install into the extracted directory.
Now, open up a command prompt (or shell) inside the MArchiveBatchTool folder, and run this command:
Windows:
MArchiveBatchTool.exe fullunpack --keep alldata.psb.m zlib 25G/xpvTbsb+6 64
Linux:
./MArchiveBatchTool fullunpack --keep alldata.psb.m zlib 25G/xpvTbsb+6 64
When finished, the ROMs will be located inside of the "alldata.psb.m_extracted\system\roms" folder.
Kid Dracula Save Data
In order for Kid Dracula to be playable on standard NES emulators, an additional file containing SRAM data for the game needs to be extracted.
Download the Swiss File Knife program:
Windows - http://stahlworks.com/dev/sfk/sfk.exe
Linux - http://stahlworks.com/dev/sfk/sfk-linux-64.exe
Assuming you've followed the ROM extraction steps above, navigate to the "alldata.psb.m_extracted\073\script" directory and copy the Swiss File Knife program here.
Additional step for Linux: Rename the "sfk-linux-64.exe" file to "sfk" and mark the file as executable.
Run the following command:
Windows:
sfk.exe filter title_standalone.nut -skipfirst=107 -head=363 +hextobin kid-dracula.sav
Linux:
./sfk filter title_standalone.nut -skipfirst=107 -head=363 +hextobin kid-dracula.sav
You will end up with an SRAM save file, "kid-dracula.sav", to use when playing the extracted Kid Dracula ROM.
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That (not counting the Kid Dracula save file thing) resulted in a tidy dump of the ROMs, with these file names:
boy_01_DraculaDensetsu.gb
boy_02_DraculaDensetsu2.gb
boy_us_01_Castlevaniaadv1_fake_rom.gb
boy_us_02_Castlevaniaadv2_fake_rom.gb
famicom_01_AkumajouDracula.nes
famicom_03_AkumajouDensetsu.nes
famicom_04_BokuDraculakun.nes
kid-dracula.nes
nes_01_Castlevania.nes
nes_02_Castlevania2.nes
nes_02_Castlevania3.nes
sega_jp_VampireKiller.bin
sega_us_CastlevaniaBloodlines.bin
snes_01_supercastlevania4_fake_rom.smc
sufami_01_AkumajouDracula.smc
They've been altered to remove mention of Nintendo from the opening screens. Maybe that's why some got the "fake_rom" label?
Supposedly these are like early revision ROMs or something and maybe prone to crashing semi-randomly? I dunno, hasn't crashed yet, if it does I guess I'll just load the last Mesen autosave and try to keep going. : P
I first bought the Anniversary Collection on PS4 (see entry 1569), but even though M2's logo is shown at startup and they usually do pretty solid emulation work, the available screen sizes and aspect ratios are kinda messed up (no full-height sharp display option, and I think their "pixel perfect" and "4:3" options are swapped around sometimes or something? I dunno, anyway it's not good; there's also some annoying color shimmer or something going on). And only one save slot.
Trying to sort out the screen settings from that, Googling accidentally led me to the mention of extracting the ROMs from the Steam version, so I just did that instead, woo! And I got farther faster so far, but maybe that was just me having had more practice.
When I tried this game as a kid it seemed hard, and stiff compared to I dunno probably Mario or whatever it was I was playing. As a young working adult I was buying PS1 and GBA (see entry 42, entry 43, and entry 44) Castlevanias (and eventually the PC Engine Castlevania, Rondo (see entry 581)) but not really playing them. I had too many games. : P
Well, I seem to be enjoying this game so hopefully I can get through these early ones--the ones from the Anniversary Collection--and have a good time with them. I still have Castlevania Chronicles for PS1, with its two remixes of Castlevania 1, so maybe I'll give that a shot if I still want more after the Collection. Then there's ANOTHER remix of one, Arcade Archives VS. Castlevania on PS4, so I could try that too if I'm not sick of it yet by then. ^ _^ (It's even harder, I think I read.) |
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| | | Apparently the crashing is confined to the US version of Castlevania (1) in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. According to https://tcrf.net/Bugs:Castlevania_(NES)#NMI_Crash
"Due to a simple oversight during the FDS to NES cartridge conversion, revision 0 of the game may crash in areas with lots of sprites, such as stage 15 (particularly the hallway below Death's chamber, and the battle with Death himself)."
"Revision 1 fixes this problem by swapping in bank 0 before attempting to jump to the offending routine.
The initial release of Castlevania Anniversary Collection mistakenly uses the Revision 0 ROM which has the aforementioned NMI glitch still intact."
And as far as the internet has remained mum, updates to the collection have not updated the US CV1 ROM to a later revision. And John Harris commented on my video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tAWXqad9dc&lc=Ugx_In_QFLPKHcq1tiB4AaABAg "I can vouch, the version of NES Castlevania in the Anniversary Collection has a bug where if too many items are on-screen the rom will crash. It likes to hit me during the Grim Reaper and Dracula fights. It's not present in the Japanese version."
According to https://tcrf.net/Castlevania_(NES)#Regional_and_Version_Differences , "The game was released in three different formats: the original Famicom Disk System version, a Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge version, and a Famicom cartridge version, which was based on the Revision 1 revision of the NES version."
So that would explain why the Japanese version of CV1 in this collection doesn't have the crash problem. |
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| | | OBS settings: -6 db volume, -1 px horizontal transform, 1516x1080
Mesen: 16 top & bottom overscan |
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Oh man. I liked the first half of the game and was really upbeat about this, looking forward to all these Castlevania games I suddenly had. Then...then a lot more monkeys happened. And they started crawling through/up walls. And other enemies with patterns you have to be patient for. And bosses who teleport onto you while being invulnerable, or hit you from 3-5 sides at once. Really unintuitive boss patterns I had to die a ton to start to work out. Dang it my brain. Gimme a straight-up fighting game or something, this waiting and patterning is too mean! ;_; (The final final boss is actually more my style, straight to the action that guy is, what a gem. Maybe II will be more like that... = P)
And the color palettes get gross. They were so good in the first half! So lovely!
And the stairs!!! The deadly, deadly stairs!
Pretty not real sure I wanna try those three later ports of this game now...
Anyway there's a lot of save scummery at the end because I couldn't deal. Pretty sure I never ever ever would'a got through this back in the day--well, I was smarter then and just stayed the heck away from it.
Didn't hit the too-many-sprites crash though, so heigh ho! (Note to self: play the Japanese version if you ever play this again for some insane reason, it doesn't crash. Also, it has an Easy mode. ; ))
(Oh shoot. Now I kinda want to play the easy mode. ...)
I forgot about the boss health meters right below Belmont's health meter again. ; D
Oh the [II] and [III] things aren't damage multipliers, they just let you throw the sub-weapons multiple times (more than one on-screen at a time).
I peeked ahead up to IV and in that one the stairs do seem a little less deadly.
Note to self on the bosses [SPOILERS]:
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Frankenmonkey - hit the monkey when he drops into the middle so you can hit Frank at the same time
Death - hit death when they come into the middle so you can hit them and their darn levitating scythe blades or whatever at the same time
Draccy - jump, hit in face, repeat; keep moving when he disappears
Batdrac - spam sub-weapon |
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| | | | Found 15 decent-looking level-mod rom hacks on romhacking.net compatible with this modified PRG 0 Anniversary Collection rom, so those should keep me busy for a while. ^ _^ |
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| | | The cartridge for PRG 0 has a round, black Nintendo "Seal of Quality." The cartridge for PRG 1 has an oblong, white Seal of Quality.
Most Castlevania ROM hacks use PRG 0, but hacks released in the past few years have shifted to predominately using PRG 1.
-- https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&game=739
My dump from a PRG 1 cart doesn't work with the popular "Holy Relics" ROMhack in Mesen (whereas a PRG 1 dump I tested from the internet did, so, huh), so I may need to use a different emulator for that one (NEStopia seems to work). |
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| | | | Aha! Using NES Mapper Reader's ( https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/683/ ) "Clean ROM" button got my dumped ROM working with Holy Relics in Mesen. Magic! : D |
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| | | | Castlevania's cover art (see 16_cart_prg1.jpg) bears striking similarities to the Frank Frazetta painting "The Norseman": http://frankfrazetta.net/Norseman.html |
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| | | | ^ Side-by-side 2/3rds of the way down https://www.gamesvillage.it/6879996/rip-off-metti-il-plagio-in-copertina/ |
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