Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (PC-Engine) Vs. Castlevania: Dracula X (SNES)

[gex]

I only died a handful of times.  First time I died was fighting the dragon on the bridge.  Just trying to get a feel for the game and getting down the right spot to be in when it does its wrapping itself around the bridge attack.  First fight with Shaft was interesting.  Having to fight 4 mini-bosses before fighting him gave me a little bit of trouble.  Especially the Mummy.  But for the most, I either took out a boss on the first or second try.  Some were just down right too easy with the right Weapon Crash.  As for levels, Ghost Ship and Clock Tower were the biggest pains.  Clock Tower for the simple fact of the collapsing bridge with the damn bats coming at you from both ways.  Wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't take two hits from the whip to kill.

Sera was the last one I found as well.  The rest were pretty easy to find.  But the stairway for Sera blended into the background so well, I over looked it the first time I checked out that area.

I enjoyed the game.  I was just bummed at how easy Drac was.  I would say the Rondo battle is second easiest to fighting Drac in Simon's Quest

Crazy that was your first dying, on the bridge. Dracula is stupid easy, even more so with maria; She just makes it embarrassingly easy. Actually, the whole game she makes embarassingly easy. I found those harlequin winged things in the clock tower stage are really difficult to pass without taking damage. And the Mummy, i still haven't found a way to defeat him without taking damage, not that i've experimented on it or anything. I'm sure there's a sub weapon/special attack that works well on him, like how the holy water special just obliterates the werewolf boss.

All the little shortcuts (not alternative routes) are very neat/well hidden, Like in the level Sera is on. If you cut one of those spiked balls in the upper half to the stage, it drops down below and opens up either a shortcut to the boss, or takes you directly to the next lvl (I forget which one).
Or on the third level if you take the alternative path defeating that water dragon. Falling through the first gap on the bridge right after the sky colour changes takes you to an alternative level ending.

[schadenfreude]

From internet research, I always thought the SFC Dracula X was simply a watered-down port of Rondo, but I played through it recently and felt like it was a brand-new game that recycled art, music, and sound assets from Rondo. It's like a budget remix of Rondo (made by game design college interns, I think). Does anyone have the story on why this game was made? Was it originally intended to be a straight port of Rondo, but then they decided to change it significantly to try to convince fans of the original to buy it too? I haven't found any information like interviews with the developers to confirm this.

[gilbert]

Just my wild guess, though this is quite probably (one of) the main reason, that due to the failure of the TG16 in the overseas market there was no hope in exporting the game, so Konami just made a quick version of the game on a system marketable to other regions by reusing assets (just like how they ported Snatcher to Sega CD in foreign market instead of releasing the original game).

Super Valis is another similar example.

[VmprHntrD]

Dracula XX is the SNES game, Dracula X is the PCE CD game.  They're not meant to be the same, but two sides of the same coin, as XX is a side story style title.  They mostly share the name, the general characters too, but outside of maybe some redrawn assets and redone audio they're two distinct games so they could peddle a solid Castlevania game on 2 popular formats.  It's all unicorn farts when people attack the SNES title as just a watered down sad port as it's not.

[touko]

This ones pretty good.   It's also awful with headphones because Paula is a moron.

This is really a bad exemple of what an amiga can do.
A little exemple with shamber of shaolin, with his softsynth sound (not in real time) :

hybris :

ninja warrior :

Lotus 3:

double dragon 2 :

Or the first amiga module ever :

With games and demos,there is a ton of impressive musics .

[Sarge]

I like the SNES game, actually.  It's certainly not perfect, but then again, neither is Rondo.  I put them both in the 8.0-8.5 range; great games, but not my favorite of the series.  Of the classic games, I think I lean toward the NES original and Super Castlevania IV, even if the latter feels like a bit of a one-off.

[lukester 3.0]

I'm just not a huge fan of Dracula X on the snes! For me, the level design is rather off-putting.

That said, as special as Rondo is, it is one of those true cinematic-quality platformers like Yoshi's Island, that I can only replay once every few years. I am much more likely to revisit Bloodlines or X68000!

[Winniez]

Its a decent game in its own right but as Luke said the level design feels bit off. Inferior version of a better game, if you can even consider them related. Still a 16-bit Castlevania game is nothing to sneeze at.

[Trevpwnsnoobs]

Level design never felt like much of a problem for me, but i found the jumping rediculously clunky compared to rondo.. It feels weirdly scaled.

[Black Tiger]

Drac XX didn't quite nail the controls/gameplay perfectly, but it's close enough that the stage design is what kills the overall experience. The layouts didn't take the actual gameplay into account and it seems like it was never play tested.

Stage designs and enemy/platform layouts were just arbitrarily sprinkled throughout and it leads to encounters ranging from awkward and uninspiring to getting clipped by an enemy and being juggled from full HP to death.

Add in inconsistent background art and random coloring overall which are very un-Dracula X/Castlevania.

It's weird when you look at the quality of something like the pixelart of Dracula's final form and how poorly other bosses turned out. It gives the impression that the project began as a game with a targeted standard but got switched early on to a rush jub to cash in before everyone had moved on to 32-bit games.

[nicksama]

chi no rondo all the way mates at least for me . Better music and the gameplay on the console is gorgeous !!

[turboxray]

I always felt like Dracula XX was a re-imagined version of Rondo, rather than a port. You know, that whole thing Battlestar Galactica did with its reboot. Dracula XX was just ahead of its time on the trend haha. Port, re-imagined, whatever you want to call it.. it's still weak, even more so given its release date. I'm sure people still find charm/value in it, but yes.. there's enough in common that you can still compare them hahah. I mean they have much more in common than Popful Mail on the PCECD vs SegaCD, imo.