In 1997, when most PlayStation games were racing into 3D, Konami released a Castlevania that looked, to some British reviewers, like a Mega Drive game. Symphony of the Night was a 2D platformer, but it was not built like any Castlevania before it. Instead of a string of stages, Dracula’s castle was one enormous map, explored room by room, with doors that stayed shut until the hero found the power to open them. The hero was not a whip-carrying Belmont but Dracula’s son, Alucard, and he gained experience and levels like the hero of a role-playing game. It sold well in Japan and America, flopped in Europe, and became the second half of a genre’s name.
Fast facts
- Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, published by Konami.
- Japanese title: Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku (“Demon Castle Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight”).
- Released: PlayStation, Japan March 1997, North America October 1997, Europe November 1997.
- Director: Toru Hagihara, who had directed Dracula X: Rondo of Blood (PC Engine, 1993).
- Assistant director: Koji Igarashi, who also wrote some of the scenario and some of the program.
- Music: Michiru Yamane. Art: Ayami Kojima.
- Saturn version: Japan only, 1998, converted by Konami’s Nagoya studio.
Who made it
Many people remember Symphony of the Night as Igarashi’s game, and Retro Gamer set out the credits in 2007. “Contrary to popular belief, IGA was not employed as primary director on the project — that honour fell to Toru Hagihara.” Igarashi was assistant director, and also worked on the scenario and the programming, “so it could be argued that he had the most telling influence over proceedings.” He went on to produce the whole series.
The game was made in Tokyo, while the main Castlevania games came from Konami’s headquarters in Kobe, so it counted as a spin-off. “Because of that we were allowed free rein to do pretty much whatever we wanted,” Igarashi told Eurogamer. The Japanese title marked the point: “I used ‘X’ to show that it would be apart from the main stream of the series, but surprisingly, it has now become the mainstream.”
One castle
“Action games could be cleared in a short time, but I wished to create a game that could be enjoyed for a much longer period,” Igarashi told Retro Gamer. The team took Super Metroid as its model and dropped the stage-by-stage structure for “a totally open, free-roaming castle”. Alucard starts with most of it out of reach. Iron grilles block his way until he finds a relic that turns him into mist and lets him drift through; a tunnel lined with spikes can be crossed only as a bat. Game Informer listed the three shapes he can take, wolf, bat and mist, and warned American players that the game “doesn’t really like to take your hand and lead you to the next objective.”
Igarashi also wanted to change “the impression that Castlevania was this difficult-to-access action game”. His answer came from role-playing games: “we agreed that users should receive something good when beating enemies. So I thought of adding Experience Points to the game.” Alucard levels up, and collects swords, shields, armour, spells, healing potions and food. A librarian runs a shop. Some fans later complained that the change made the game too easy.
The castle had a second half. Igarashi had seen shorter Castlevania games piling up second-hand in bargain bins, and one of his team suggested a way to double the game’s length: “If we flip the castle upside down during the game then we’d have twice as much content.” Players who met the right conditions could reach an inverted copy of the castle, and only by beating it could they see the proper ending, one of several.
Alucard himself worried Igarashi. Dracula’s son had first appeared as a helper in Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, Igarashi’s favourite game in the series, and this was the first time the series had a hero who did not use a whip. “I presumed that those who had been fans for a long time would be angry,” he said. For the traditionalists he added Richter Belmont as a hidden, unlockable character.
Sound and pictures
Michiru Yamane’s music mixed rock, jazz and classical styles. Igarashi told Retro Gamer that she always composed “from the image of the stages”, and that “the music direction has never led the creation of the game.” Edge found the mix jarring, unable to see why the team “chose to implement jerking segues from impressive, haunting classical compositions into cheesy lift muzak and screeching rawk”. Rika Muranaka’s song “I Am the Wind”, sung by Cynthia Harrell, plays over the end credits.
Ayami Kojima’s painted character art, used on the Japanese and European boxes, gave the series a new look. “The world of the vampire that I have in my mind is beautiful and fleeting with blood and darkness,” Igarashi explained. The American box used different art, which Retro Gamer later called “abysmal”.
The English version is remembered for its voice acting, above all Dracula’s opening speech: “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.” The line is the French writer André Malraux’s, from his Antimémoires (1967).
What the magazines said
Edge reviewed the PAL release in November 1997, at £45. It found the first hour “a curiously dowdy 16bit-style platformer”, some sprites crude and some of the character design “simply laughable”, with “breakdancing lizards and Ninja Turtle lookalikes”. But it thought the later game revealed “surprisingly deep RPG-based play mechanics”, and it found the true comparison in Super Metroid, “to which this latest saga pays almost religious homage”. “On the surface it looks archaic,” it concluded, “but tucked just beneath is a game that throws the majority of PlayStation eye candy into sharp relief.”
American reviewers were warmer. Game Informer called it “one of the most compelling and intriguing releases of the year” despite “an archaic 2D appearance which most developers have abandoned after the 16-bit era”, and one of its reviewers called it “a must for Metroid fans!” Computer and Video Games summed it up for British readers in December 1997: “It might look like a 16-bit platformer, but there’s so much going on only a 32-bit console could handle it. An understated essential PlayStation game!”
Sales
The game was reprinted several times in Japan and America, Retro Gamer reported, and became a best-seller in both. Europe was different. Reports put the first PAL print run at around 15,000 copies, many of them sold off cheaply by disappointed shops, and Konami made no more. Retro Gamer suggested lukewarm British reviews, “several magazines dismissed it as a 16-bit game on 32-bit hardware”, were partly to blame. That scarcity later made the PAL edition a collector’s item.
The Saturn version
Konami’s Nagoya studio, not the original team, converted the game for the Sega Saturn, and it came out in Japan in 1998. It added Maria Renard as a third playable character, alongside Alucard and Richter, and two new areas, the Underground Garden and the Cursed Prison. Retro Gamer called it a disappointment: the PlayStation’s transparency and lighting effects became cross-hatched textures, and the game slowed down when the screen got busy. “I was not involved in the actual conversion,” Igarashi said, “but I think it was hard since I gave so many tough requests to the conversion team.”
Sega Saturn Magazine liked it more. Reviewing it as an import in August 1998, Matt Yeo admitted the game “does look decidedly 16-bit”, but thought its music “the finest videogame musical score EVER created!” He was sorry that “this little gem will never be released in the UK”. It never was.
Later history
The game gave its name to half a genre. Fans later joined Metroid and Castlevania into “Metroidvania” for games built on one connected map that opens up as the player gains abilities. Igarashi did not coin the word. He told Eurogamer in 2014 that he had first heard it the year before, and said at the Game Developers Conference that March that he had been “surprised by the name”.
Igarashi produced the series’ 2D games that followed Symphony’s structure on Nintendo’s handhelds, from Harmony of Dissonance (2002) on the Game Boy Advance to Order of Ecclesia (2008) on the DS. After he left Konami in 2014 he made Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2019) in the same mould.
Symphony itself kept coming back. It was released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2007, its tenth anniversary, and included that year as an unlockable extra in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP, a remake of Rondo of Blood. In October 2018 Konami released it with Rondo of Blood on the PlayStation 4 as Castlevania Requiem.
Sources
- Damien McFerran, “The making of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night”, Retro Gamer issue 36, 2007, pp. 48–52: Hagihara as director and his Rondo of Blood; Igarashi as assistant director, scenario writer and programmer; the aims, Super Metroid and the open castle; the mist and bat puzzles; experience points and the difficulty; the inverted castle and the endings; Alucard, Dracula’s Curse and the whip; Richter as an unlockable character; “Akumajo Dracula X”; Yamane’s music, Muranaka, Harrell and “I Am the Wind”; Ayami Kojima; the American cover; sales in Japan and the US and the PAL print run of about 15,000; the Saturn conversion by Konami’s Nagoya studio; the Xbox Live Arcade release and The Dracula X Chronicles.
- Simon Parkin, “Unfinished symphony: Castlevania’s keeper speaks”, Eurogamer, 9 April 2014 (web, secondary; interview with Igarashi): Kobe and Tokyo; “free rein”; the bargain bins and the upside-down castle; first hearing “Metroidvania”. https://www.eurogamer.net/unfinished-symphony-castlevanias-keeper-speaks
- Edge issue 51, November 1997, p. 86: PAL review (KCET; £45; the Japanese release in March; the first hour, the art and the music; the Super Metroid comparison).
- Game Informer issue 54, October 1997: US review (KCET; the wolf, bat and mist; “one of the most compelling and intriguing releases of the year”; “a must for Metroid fans!”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 191, October 1997: preview (the librarian’s shop). Issue 193, December 1997: capsule review (£44.99; “An understated essential PlayStation game!”).
- Matt Yeo, Castlevania X import review, Sega Saturn Magazine issue 34, August 1998, pp. 64–65: the Saturn version (Maria and Richter; the Underground Garden and Cursed Prison; the music; no UK release).
- Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010, Castlevania series history: Igarashi as producer of the series; Symphony’s platinum status in America; the handheld games.
- “Igarashi was surprised by the term ‘Metroidvania’”, Nintendo Everything, 18 March 2014, reporting USgamer’s coverage of his GDC 2014 talk (web, secondary). http://nintendoeverything.com/igarashi-surprised-term-metroidvania-wanted-make-zelda-style-game/
- Wikiquote, “André Malraux” (web, secondary): “What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets”, from the preface to Antimémoires (1967). https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Malraux
- “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood Haunt PS4 October 26”, PlayStation Blog, 26 September 2018. https://blog.playstation.com/2018/09/26/castlevania-symphony-of-the-night-rondo-of-blood-haunt-ps4-october-26/
- The Koji Igarashi entry gives sources for his later career and Bloodstained.