The moment the game successfully loaded, Miyazaki understood one thing.
Castlevania is completely different from Gamenova's previous works.
At least in terms of artistic style, it is by no means a work that compromises performance.
The cassette tape, with its embedded audio enhancement chip, perfectly resolved the miraculous composite waveforms that shouldn't belong to the 8-bit era.
Although Miyazaki has not had any systematic musical training, he can clearly distinguish the sound of a pipe organ by his hearing.
This unique keyboard instrument, with its majestic and solemn tone, is even more wondrous than orchestral instruments.
A classical Europe religious scent tickled my feet and shot straight to the top of my head.
In just a moment, Miyazaki clearly felt goosebumps rise all over his body.
This was an experience he had never had in any video game before.
While 8-bit music certainly has its own characteristics, the electronic synthesized sounds created by simple waveform combinations have a clear rhythm, making them particularly suitable for fast-paced 8-bit games.
But compared to Castlevania, nothing else seems to matter.
The combination of Baroque polyphony and large-scale symphonic music with a peculiar electronic rock style gave Miyazaki a strange feeling, as if he were watching Bach playing an electric guitar.
Yet its sound didn't feel out of place.
Instead, it created something unique, a blend of classic and punk, electronic yet highly traditional.
Although its sound cannot be fully reproduced on NovaBo's amplifier, the resolution is not ideal.
However, the emotions that this piece of music wanted to convey entered Miyazaki's ears clearly and without any hindrance.
"A piece with a very strong religious flavor----"
He knew nothing about Bach or Vivaldi; for this teenager, his evaluation of the piece was summed up in one word.
Invincible!
This was the first time he had been captivated before even starting the game or even entering the title screen.
Without needing any additional words or images, Miyazaki had already conceived a dark and...
A repressive world.
A stripe flashed on the television screen, and a bright red sun hung high in the sky.
The shadow slowly approached from the lower right, obscuring it into a crescent shape.
A total solar eclipse is happening.
When the sun was completely obscured, the game's title finally appeared.
[CASTLEVANIA]
The small subtitle below reads the translated name in the local language: Castlevania.
This appears to be a neologism.
Miyazaki blinked twice, looking at the word that was both familiar and unfamiliar.
He enjoyed reading Western fantasy novels and analyzed the meaning of this term, which had a strong "Western fantasy" flavor, with very little Kung-Fu Master.
This combines the words "Castle" and "vania".
Castle, a frequent character in fantasy stories, obviously means castle.
This might mean that the game's map is located in a castle.
The suffix "vania," however, is somewhat elusive.
If we had to find the root of this word, it might come from the "Vanya" in "Transylvania ".
This is a place name in Romania.
"Ah, I see, the hometown of Count Dracula."
From this perspective, the theme that the name wants to convey becomes very clear.
This is a game based on Europe vampire legends!
"Aha! I knew it!"
This is exactly what Miyazaki likes.
While Fire Emblem is entertaining, its core story is completely different from the kind of Western fantasy I truly seek.
The appearance of Castlevania finally fulfilled one of his dreams.
With the game officially launched, it was finally laid out before him.
"Let me see... A button is jump, B button is attack..."
As he pressed the B button, the character swung a small dagger forward.
"The Start button opens a menu? Wow, there's so much content!"
Unlike the minimalist game UI, the menu items practically fill the entire screen, with not a single inch of space wasted.
Judging from the top attribute panel alone, this is undoubtedly an RPG.
The game features a standard role-playing template with stats like health, mana, and the common four attributes of strength, constitution, Intellect, and luck.
As for the functions below, once you're familiar with Fire Emblem, there's not much of a barrier to understanding them.
It's nothing more than the standard enemy encyclopedia, equipment slots, and item slots.
The only thing that Miyazaki paid extra attention to was perhaps the concept of "soul".
In the previous scene, the protagonist obtained a red orb of light after killing a flying skeleton.
At this moment, the orb of light is equipped in the red slot in the Soul Bar.
Besides the red ball, there are two other squares, one blue and one yellow.
According to the description, one of these is a passive ability that will remain active as long as it is equipped, while the other is an ability that needs to be actively triggered by pressing a specific button.
"Is it to kill enemies and obtain their souls?"
Miyazaki seemed to have guessed something about the system's meaning.
It seems that the brief scene just now was to teach him how to obtain souls.
"Never mind, let's explore and see what happens."
The menu contains a lot of information, but most of it seems rather vague or even mystical at the moment.
Miyazaki simply closed the menu and rushed into the castle.
"Hmm? This----"
Miyazaki sensed something was amiss as soon as he encountered the first group of enemies.
The controls are so smooth!
This enjoyment doesn't come from gameplay or elements of the game itself, such as mowing down enemies.
Rather, it is a kind of indescribable positive feedback from the inside out.
When I played Fire Emblem before, because it was a turn-based strategy game, I never had this kind of unique feeling.
It was as if he really was the protagonist of the game.
Every operation receives an instantaneous response.
If you tell him to jump, he will obey and jump instantly.
If Miyazaki releases the jump button at this moment, the character will immediately stop jumping and will no longer jump higher.
The longer you press the jump button, the higher you will jump.
In Miyazaki's memory, this design seems to have been used in Nintendo's " Super Mario ".
But the feedback he received from both was completely different.
"That's strange, why is that?"
Unconvinced, Miyazaki made his character jump around the scene twice more.
"Um----"
He watched intently as the character moved through the air and landed on the ground, then his eyes lit up with a knowing look.
"I understand! It's because of precision!"
If one had to find a single word to summarize the experience this control system provided, perhaps "precise" would be the most fitting.
Unlike in " Super Mario.", Mario's feet won't slip and slide due to strong inertia.
The controls in Castlevania are absolutely precise.
It faithfully responds to any input from the player, stopping and starting as instructed.
It's even more rigorous than fighting games.