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Power Button - Episode 328: A Love Letter To The Delisted

Castlevania Resurrection For Sega Dreamcast Resurrected

Castlevania ResurrectionSega and Konami had trouble making a partnership involving the famed Castlevania franchise work.  Despite releasing Bloodlines for the Genesis in 1994, plans to produce Castlevania titles for the 32X and Dreamcast never did come to fruition as those hardware platforms went down in flames in the market.  One of the more intriguing cancelled games is Castlevania Resurrection for the Dreamcast which focused on the then-origin of the Belmont family line, Sonia Belmont from, 1997's Castlevania Legends, as she embarked on a 3D adventure that was to be a step up from what the 3D Castlevania titles on the Nintendo 64 offered.  While a few screenshots have made it out over the years since the game was canned in 2000, it's only now that a playable demo from E3 1999 has made it into eager fans' hands.  Playable in emulators and real Dreamcast hardware, it's supposedly 25% complete and includes four playable areas that were shown to the press behind closed doors.

Castlevania Ressurection, dans sa version prototypale de l’E3 99, comporte ainsi 4 stages (et un cinquième accessible via émulateur). En sachant que le titre, selon les rumeurs, n’est pas allé au-delà des 25 % de développement, cela laisse envisager qu’il subsiste peut-être une autre version mais si c’est le cas, elle ne doit pas être beaucoup plus avancée. Les intentions étaient là, la réalisation n’a rien de spectaculaire pour une Dreamcast mais il y a tout de même de jolis effets et certains décors sortent du lot. Le titre de Konami aurait pu être un très bon jeu mais il semblerait que des dissensions entre la maison-mère japonaise et la filiale américaine (tiens, ça me rappelle un autre éditeur) aient eu raison du projet. C’est dommage car le potentiel était là.

I've never felt satisfied playing a Castlevania game in 3D and I don't know if Resurrection would have changed my opinion, but it certainly looks sharper than the games that would come after it for the Sony PlayStation 2, Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness.  We'll never know if the finished game would have lived up to expectations, but at least now fans can have a taste of what was in in development.

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