Serious respect to the devs at Tiger. A bunch of LCD game creators were tasked with making an entire system library packed with ambitious ports for a $30 handheld, and they actually pulled it off.
They were doing more than LCD games when they were Hasbro's electronic game division by that time. They were producing a music player Hit Clips, Furby, Fur Real Pets, and a Video Player format Video Now. Except for the Retro LCD reissue collection he Tiger brand is retired like Kenner.
Except they very likely didn't. He's using an emulator, and it GROSSLY misrepresents what the actual system looks like when playing. I don't know how well this actually runs on original hardware, but if it runs and looks like the other stuff I've seen on it, this video is laughably mis-representational.
Unfortunately many people don't seem to know how bad that Gamecom screen can get, so I do urge people to look up what Gamecom games look like on actual hardware and what it's real problems are, like it's godawful ghosting. Emulation cleans up pretty much all its flaws. So while an action like this looks cool to play, on actual hardware, it could have been a nightmare.
@@ruekurei88 To be fair. The Brick of '89 (Gameboy) is almost as bad when it comes to it's screen too and Emulation really cleans up the games compared to the OG hardware
This port genuinely looks like it’s only a month or two away from being finished. Placeholder items seem like they’d be easy to swap out, plop a few monsters here or there, add boss drops and finish the password system. I am floored at how playable this all is. Truly a shame the people who worked on it are unknown
Exactly! This seemed like it just needed final tweaks and QA. I hate it when businesses just say “well let’s just stop spending now” rather than doing the final 10% and recouping their investment. They’ve been so short sighted for a long time.
@@crosstie417 Did they though? They sold less than 300000 units and discontinued it because of that, and only released like 10 games. I can't imagine that with all the business expenses like labor, shipping, advertising, and licensing that they made much of anything off it. I could be wrong, I wasn't able to find any sales stats beyond the "less than 300000" from a few wikis, but doesn't seem like they would've come out ahead on this one.
Gotta be honest, Castlevania on GameCom blew me away. Know about an amazing game, port, prototype, or other oddity that'd be perfect for Punching Weight? Let me know in the comments!
I found a cartridge online that seems to be a port/de-make of Mario 3 for the gameboy/gameboy color. It's definitely not official and I'm not sure if things like that interest you but it still seemed cool enough. Oh there's also the Battlefront 3 leak which you can get working on an Xbox 360 emulator and for it being a rough build it is still a very interesting thing to look at.
What about Superman on PS1? It's a version of the infamous N64 game that's actually a better game and what the devs originally wanted to make on Nintendo's 3D console instead of the train wreck we got on the N64, basically an actual game and adventure starring the Blue Boy Scout and yes it lacks those bloody rings, man those things have made many gamers have sleepless nights over...
I'm still holding onto the hope that there exists a prototype for the Hellraiser NES game. It's got to be somewhere, stranger things have been revealed.
@@bunkernuts6293 Yeah, the PS1 port of Superman isn't THAT bad, it's just generic. There are no rings, thank god, Titus deserved to go bankrupt after that and Robocop.
This is absolutely insane. I can't believe some programmers were able to pull all of this off. Like... These guys are absolute legends. INVERTED CASTLE. SUMMONS. SPELLS. HOW. WAT.
Have you seen the guy making the sega genesis port? He has videos on UA-cam showing his progress and animations and collision detection so far. I haven't seen anything lately
@@crosstie417 I commend him for that, but the programmers of this port are gods. Like it's unbelievable that a game that's over 7 hours to a 5 days in gameplay can actually be ported to a system that's the equivalent of dog poop on a hot Sunday morning.
Before this moment, I never thought it actually existed. Now I'm convinced it's out there somewhere. I'll pull it from the stone and become the true king of England!
It's kinda funny how if they finished this game it could of been basically the best game on the gamecom. This unfinished version is better than most lol.
Would have been unplayable on a real GameCom. Way too much going on on-screen for a low-refresh rate and low contrast screen. If you ever tried playing the Batman game, you know what I’m talking about. I suspect they got it up and going on an emulator, then tried it on real hardware and freaked out.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e Considering the number of games that were effectively unplayable because of the screen, it wouldn’t surprise me. There were likely two basic issues: 1) Low budget and 2) Lack of development support. The low budget would have encouraged the few people working on these to stick with the emulator for as long of development as possible. Given how unfinished all the features are in this game, I suspect it’s not as developed as it seem. The underlying engine was likely ported along with the data files. That gives a “complete” look, but it’s not really _playable_ as a game. Tiger would have still released it anyway, but the entire concept probably collapsed before they got any further.
Derek's "just one more thing to explore" attitude in this video is peak SOTN. That's a real testament to just how much these programmers were able to pull off on a port to the GameCom. Really awesome stuff!
The GameCom is really strange. The main processor is a Sharp SM8521 at 10 mhz. At first I thought that was a good thing. Then I realize that it was the thing was powering everything. The game data, the graphics and sound. So how this port exists is beyond me. Even in it's incomplete state, it is just insane.
Man, I totally remember being at my local AMES back in 1999: in one hand I had the game-com, and in the other I had the Neo Geo Pocket. I went with the Pocket.
@@NickJaime Small library, but mostly bangers. Plus, it directly led to all the Dimps 2D sonic games. It's only real weakness to me was still using 8 bit sound. Like I love 8 bit Kurikinton, but I do wish it was a bit less "beeps and boops" than it is.
@@DeformedConscience my mother used to work there back in the day, and me and my older brother always head over to the electronics area to checkout the games they got behind the counters.
Sweet Jesus Christ, this _is_ amazing. This is _absolutely_ on the Punching Weight hall of fame Top three for me at least, every new area and feature had me flabbergasted. Like, this shouldn't be possible But that's the power of the human spirit, to me this is feature complete. If not perfectly shippable Developers might just want to forget this, but I hope one day every single one gets proper credit. It's earned
Keep in mind THIS is the prototype, who knows what the final game would be like? Maybe they fixed all the issues by then Another random thought… what if the bat hit the orb despite not being visible
Probably, though given the fight he beat without the bat, I take it they didn't have the alternate bad end scenario, despite the fact the orb and glasses were programmed in. The bat I take it is just overtuned to shit for a reason, because this is a prototype. Considering the devs themselves couldn't have had any easier a time beating things in the game than Derek did, the bat was probably made that way just to one-shot bosses in order for play-testers to quickly and effortlessly test that bosses had functioning hitboxes, death-triggers and stuff like Richter and Shaft transitioning into their appropriate cutscenes afterwards worked properly.
Theres a chance the prototype ended here because the storage space ran out though. Gamecom carts are can only hold 2 megabytes. SOTN is 450 megabytes. Theres no way to make it work.
The visuals are weird, but they're weird in an oddly compelling way. Like, this feels like the grandfather of games like Hylics with those chunky sprites and low frame-rate animations. What an incredible find, I'm so happy this video exists.
I'm reasonably certain that Alucard's death scream in this version of the game is a crushed down version of Leon's death scream from RE2. They sound nearly identical - wonder if that same sound sample is present in the RE2 port on this same console? EDIT: Confirmed! ua-cam.com/video/fN5VGfjOBRg/v-deo.html
Cube of Zoe was a tutorial device to teach the player about relics. Don't forget that it was the first Castlevania that was also marketed towards women (hence the sharp, pretty boy aesthetic of artist Ayami Kojima) so they definitely put it there to teach new players what's up.
@@Gatorade69 he just sounds closer to the mic, more proximity effect, occasionally mild reverb off the screen. Which is unavoidable when you’re under a sheet with your laptop and mic on a chair lol. But it’s definitely mastered very well for what it is.
WOW! This might be one of the most ambitious ports I've seen. Also, I could be wrong, but I think the line "What do you here?" might be a mistranslation from German. In German, the question "What are you doing here?" could be spoken as "Was tun Sie hier?" which if translated literally comes out as "What do you here?"
Considering how much of Old English was German in a funny hat, before William came across and made it French and German in a funny hat, I would not be at all surprised if "What do you here?" is indeed Old English for that exact reason.
This prototype is absolutely mind-blowing, and your deep dive on it is great! It makes me want to see the MGS Game Com (not typing the proper name, because it reads as a URL) game now even more!
Man, if this proto is any indication, they probably tried to replicate all the setpieces and cutscenes in MGS. That would be absolutely _fascinating_ to see in action.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Right?! I would be all over something like that, especially seeing what they did and did not consider essential for a port like that, let alone how the stealth mechanics would actually have worked. Sure, we got the Tose-developed GBC game (covered in one of the earliest @StopSkeletonsFromFighting Punching Weight videos), but that was a new game, not a straight-up port!
Wow, when I saw the first footage of this released, I was impressed that they got all of Alucard’s walk cycle in. Little did I know they got everything in.
OK this is way past just a prototype. This is a legitimate beta of the game that was probably like 90% finish. Being able to complete a game from start to end without any progression blockers and the entire game world existing in some form is way farther than a huge majority of unreleased games. This is like one of those Sonic betas that was just just a month or two from release and had all the content done. I imagine they would've just added more music (or at least hopefully they would have if they didn't want player's ears to bleed after hearing the same song for 5+ hours straight) and swapped out the generic items and fixed up the incomplete areas, and it would've just had to go through bug testing to been ready for release. The idea that this has been sitting out there for two decades and was basically done in secret with basically nothing but preview screenshots that noone knew if they were from an actual game or just mockups is amazing. Imagine game.com having a legitimate and faithful port (well more like recreation) of one of the best Playstation games at the time would have blown minds.
My older brother got a GameCom for Christmas when it released and there's still an insert from the box around my parents house somewhere. I thought it was so cool to be able to have 2 games inserted at the same time 😂 but the only game I really remember playing is Henry
I LOVE Punching Weight!! It satisfies my interest in retro games and the amazing efforts by developers to do more with less. So when I saw Castlevania SOTN... SOTN!! on Punching Weight, well, that just made my morning. Hats off to you for these high quality videos.
This is one of the most mind-blowing portable ports I've ever seen =O What a treat! And your commentary makes it a ton of fun as always Derek - thanks for shining a spotlight on this incredible piece of history =D
This is actually impressive af. The fact it runs at all & is clearly SOTN is a marvel. It reminds me when I used to try to run new games on an old Intel atom x7 chip. Reduce the settings so low until the game ran but was still recognizable enough to play. Forcing the game through ini file tweaks and mods until it basically was knocked back a generation or 2. Like getting the Witcher 3 to run on it at all barely playable made you turn it into a PS1 looking version. But part of the fun was forcing something that clearly is not able to handle the game to handle it. But doing this as an official port/remake of a relatively much bigger game than anything meant for the system, and esp that it was originally made for completely different hardware, on a device that barely ran Tetris is amazing. Wish it was officially released, the devs deserve the recognition for this and I'd love to know just how they pulled it off.
Damn we got a rare Punching weight that feels more like a "Getting super nerdy" video. But man when this proto released I was waiting for this one. Excellent stuff!
I kept waiting for you to go "Yeah there's nothing left here" but it just kept going. I was stunned at every second. It just kept going! It was finished! That's insane!
This prototype is amazing! It's so sad that this wasn't completed! With the fact that this would have been the only portable option to play Symphony at the time, if ANYTHING could have saved the system, this would have been it! Hats off to the devs that seemed to have been about to pull off stuffing a pineapple into a pinhole O_O
@@slothmachine7564 I played a lot of one-off Tiger games when I was a kid, and they generally weren't anything like the game they were supposedly based on. What do you think? :)
Ps4 symphony is crap compared to the mobile port And that'll never make it on the ps4 since requiem is literally just an emulated reskin of Dracula x chronicles for the psp Without the rondo remake 😡
The wild thing is that if this controlled better, it would be an extremely competent port. For the time, it’s still pretty impressive they crammed so much of the game into it.
I feel like I'm having my equivalent of a Vietnam flashback watching this because I just showcased it earlier in November on my channel. GREAT deep dive into what is arguably the worst port of a masterpiece title such as this. From grabbing the music directly from the guy who found this thing, to the inverted castle...as usual Uncle Derek and Auntie Grace are the real MVPs!
I wonder if the owner of the cartridge had to pay the music composer 20% of his eBay winnings (3:56). Yes, this is still every bit as funny today as it was back then just as it's still every bit the dick move on your part.
Seeing how game developers overcome hardware limitations with clever solutions and still delivering decent experience is something really amazing, and makes me sad to see how much of that spirit is lacking now a days.
In the ps1 version, you can skip the Death encounter cutscene so Alucard won't lose his equipment, I challenge anyone to see if they can repeat that in this port!
@@PureBloodedwolf Don't know about the PSX version but on the PSP dracula X version if you spam the backdash to go in&out of the entrance, you can glitch death cutscene out of the game.
@@PureBloodedwolf I think it's only possible in luck mode. Unequipping all your armor and walking into a wolf can fling you through door and skip the cutscene.
This, along with the also unreleased Resident Evil Game Boy Color port, truly deserve Punching Weight Hall of Fame status imo. Especially considering Resident Evil being originally a 3D game. Devs were really wildin' back in the 90s
I can't believe Tiger actually almost released a port of one of the greatest Castlevania games of all time. Wow. To think that game was about to be part of the Gamecom library
Damn dude I can’t believe you went through all of this. I know it wasn’t easy, but you persevered like a champ to show us this amazing “almost” port. Thank you so much. Great work. Seriously unbelievable. 👍🏽
I am absolutely impressed with what they did here. This was well on its way and it looks like it could have been fully completed given another 3 or 4 months. Must have been upsetting for the devs to get it that far along. Now I want to see if someone can dig up that MGS prototype if it does exists.
My Wife is not only a programmer, but also a lover of older tech, and literally beat Her first playthrough of Symphony of the Night yesterday. Needless to say You have two New Subscribers! We Love this!!
something funny about the clock tower in sotn: it's nearly 1:1 a replica of rondo of bloods clock tower. albeit in ruins. the victory armors are there (they turn into ghosts), even the room where you have to save annette is there (though obvs it has an item instead) it's crazy how the top portion of the castle is reconstructed from richters memory.
They just forgot the verb, the auxiliary is there but the verb DO was forgotten problably bc it is written in the same way... Amazing video as usual, the most unnecessary and spectacular game reviewed by this channel. This shows that we could have seen a port of this game in many consoles!
Making the Gamecom produce a game and not just, you know, misery, was a radical feat in and of itself. Making it produce something recognisably Symphony of the Night? Impossible. And here we are! That was very impressive.
I really really someone can show this video to one of the programmers and let them contact you, it would be amazing to see a interview and the whole tough process behind this port.
Hey Derek, I’m just as surprised seeing how great this port of Symphony of the Night was. I didn’t realize the Game com could handle it as well as it did. Also, good luck with the mould and related renovations. I went through the same crap myself earlier this year. It was awful. All the best to you and Grace.
THANK YOU for YOUR service Derek. Really great to see how much of the game was done. And who knows how far it was from actual completion. Now thanks to you and your persistence with the game, we get to see everything it has to offer.
The password system likely just doesn't actually save anything and just reloads the current game state for testing: presumably they hadnt made a working password abstraction system yet and just wanted a way to "New Game" or "Continue" while also killing a second bird with the stone by making it also stress test the password menu.
Aria of Sorrow proves that Symphony of the Night probably could've easily gotten onto the GBA, with some reasonably minor tweaking. Since it was capable of 3D, to some degree, it might've even been able to keep some of that.
It's not even the final build with the wolves... And even so it's basicaly finished. It's incredible. Maybe someday the build with the wolves will surface.
My Patreon subscription to SSFF is expiring shortly but just for this video alone I am renewing, not only it was great to see the effort from whoever made this game but the dedication of Derek to guide us through this lost marvel of programming. Thank you Derek for so much.
While it sucks their work went unused, this would have gotten no praise back then. In a weird way, this game getting canceled and turning up now in a surprisingly impressive state is the best chance it has to achieve notoriety. Hopefully the devs get recognized for this finally.
It probably seems like a pointless addition, but in the original SotN, the Cube of Zoe was one of the games "teaching moments". You get the cube and items start dropping from candles. A very obvious change. It introduces you to the concept of relics. Someone with a basic understanding of videogames probably doesn't need this. But you know. Everyone starts somewhere.
Yes, modern critics should learn this type of things. Is like saying "the first 10 pages of the book are useless because the weren't any key dialogue". People need to develope more patient.
if I was to guess, it was probably 80% complete from a development standpoint. Hats off to the programmers that made this possible, and to the dumper that made this possible to be seen to the world at large! Great video as always
So much work for a game for this horrible console, like the devs said "I know it's gonna run at 10fps, but they are gonna be the greatest 10fps of all time"
With the overall look of this port, I have to wonder if perhaps the people working on it did all that they could, and there just wasn't anything left to bring it over the finish line. Like, it seems probable to me that what they achieved was basically the best they could do and Konami wasn't happy with it and decided not to go ahead with releasing it.
@@pafoneto1275 I know you're just being contrarian of trolling's sake, but I'm not leaving the opportunity for confusion open. It crammed almost the whole of SotN onto a handheld, largely intact. It's a good port, it just needed the rest of the soundtrack and some minor bugfixes and it would complete enough to ship, work that'd only take a month max given all the creative work was already done. Gamecom's only "good" games that actually released were a Frogger port and the Wheel of Fortune games, pretty niche entries. It desperately needed a console seller, and I'd think a portable SotN would've been it.
@@KiraSlith Watch the video again, didn't have the endings, most items, drops, and a lot things more, so no, I'm not being a contrarian, you are just lying to yourself. A good port is one that work for the console and still good, one example are the Tony Hawk games for GBA, they didn't try to make all the game in 3d, but do it the game in other engine to run well, play well, and being a good skate game, unlike this bad port. No, most of gamecom games are better than this, except for sonic jam and maybe RE.
@@pafoneto1275 Yeah, again, it wouldn't have been that hard to complete, you're not really making a point in your favor, just pointing out things that would've been completed given the time it needed. Also, Are you out of your mind? Most Gamecom games were borderline unplayable half the time, Duke Nukem was practically Faceball 2000 but the inconsistent framerate turned the whole thing into a smear. most of the gamecom library was TRASH.
@@KiraSlith No, the game wouldn't be better with more time, maybe if they did it from the begining, but a doubt that was in the plans. Yes, Duke Nukem was bad, but definitely better than this. Yes, and most of the gamecom library are better than this too.
I always wonder what it would be like if we had lived in a world where things like this or other impressive games on terrible consoles like Super Mario's Wacky Worlds had come out early in their respective platform's lifespans. Or like if Tomb Raider had been an early 3DO title instead of a Saturn and PSX one. Or if Naughty Dog's first 3DO game was Crash Bandicoot instead of Way of the Warrior... Or if Sony actually cared about the Vita. How different would the modern gaming landscape be if these complete failures had had actual console-moving games instead of just being DOA? Would they have actually been successful? Or would they at least be remembered more like the Dreamcast or Neo Geo than as complete jokes? That's why I love finding stuff like this. It's a bizarro look at what could have been had these platforms been given more respect and talent.
Who were the God tier programmers that made this. The fact that this game is this complete and this playable is nothing short of miraculous.
I can only hope this video gets out to them or someone who knows them and we can know
Yeah… like legit impressive.
We need names so we can give our props and high respect!
.
This is amazing!
.
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2 romanian devs: Vlad Tepes and Radu Frumos
@@reeyees50 of course some guy named Vlad worked on this
Serious respect to the devs at Tiger. A bunch of LCD game creators were tasked with making an entire system library packed with ambitious ports for a $30 handheld, and they actually pulled it off.
Wish we knew the credits for sotn gamecom!
They were doing more than LCD games when they were Hasbro's electronic game division by that time. They were producing a music player Hit Clips, Furby, Fur Real Pets, and a Video Player format Video Now. Except for the Retro LCD reissue collection he Tiger brand is retired like Kenner.
Except they very likely didn't. He's using an emulator, and it GROSSLY misrepresents what the actual system looks like when playing. I don't know how well this actually runs on original hardware, but if it runs and looks like the other stuff I've seen on it, this video is laughably mis-representational.
Unfortunately many people don't seem to know how bad that Gamecom screen can get, so I do urge people to look up what Gamecom games look like on actual hardware and what it's real problems are, like it's godawful ghosting. Emulation cleans up pretty much all its flaws. So while an action like this looks cool to play, on actual hardware, it could have been a nightmare.
@@ruekurei88 To be fair.
The Brick of '89 (Gameboy) is almost as bad when it comes to it's screen too and Emulation really cleans up the games compared to the OG hardware
This port genuinely looks like it’s only a month or two away from being finished.
Placeholder items seem like they’d be easy to swap out, plop a few monsters here or there, add boss drops and finish the password system.
I am floored at how playable this all is. Truly a shame the people who worked on it are unknown
Konami isn't one for giving credit.
@@warbossgegguz679 well it's a game that didn't come out. I don't know how you would've given credit for it
Either the giant dog is cut content or a later beta
@@babbygremlin I mean, could've had end credits given about 75% of the finished product is there...
Exactly! This seemed like it just needed final tweaks and QA. I hate it when businesses just say “well let’s just stop spending now” rather than doing the final 10% and recouping their investment. They’ve been so short sighted for a long time.
This game has more content than Tiger’s executives have brain cells!
🤤
I mean they made a fortune on the worst portable games ever made. That's impressive in its own right
@@crosstie417 Did they though? They sold less than 300000 units and discontinued it because of that, and only released like 10 games. I can't imagine that with all the business expenses like labor, shipping, advertising, and licensing that they made much of anything off it.
I could be wrong, I wasn't able to find any sales stats beyond the "less than 300000" from a few wikis, but doesn't seem like they would've come out ahead on this one.
@@lancepate Pretty sure they're talking about all the Tiger Electronics games, not just GameCom
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e I kinda forgot about those. Honestly all the ones I had were better than the Game and Watches I have now.
Gotta be honest, Castlevania on GameCom blew me away. Know about an amazing game, port, prototype, or other oddity that'd be perfect for Punching Weight? Let me know in the comments!
I found a cartridge online that seems to be a port/de-make of Mario 3 for the gameboy/gameboy color. It's definitely not official and I'm not sure if things like that interest you but it still seemed cool enough. Oh there's also the Battlefront 3 leak which you can get working on an Xbox 360 emulator and for it being a rough build it is still a very interesting thing to look at.
What about Superman on PS1? It's a version of the infamous N64 game that's actually a better game and what the devs originally wanted to make on Nintendo's 3D console instead of the train wreck we got on the N64, basically an actual game and adventure starring the Blue Boy Scout and yes it lacks those bloody rings, man those things have made many gamers have sleepless nights over...
@@bobafett4265 so Superman 64, but somewhat decent? Wow
I'm still holding onto the hope that there exists a prototype for the Hellraiser NES game. It's got to be somewhere, stranger things have been revealed.
@@bunkernuts6293 Yeah, the PS1 port of Superman isn't THAT bad, it's just generic. There are no rings, thank god, Titus deserved to go bankrupt after that and Robocop.
Hey Derek, it's us, the audience!!!
This is absolutely insane. I can't believe some programmers were able to pull all of this off. Like... These guys are absolute legends. INVERTED CASTLE. SUMMONS. SPELLS. HOW. WAT.
Have you seen the guy making the sega genesis port? He has videos on UA-cam showing his progress and animations and collision detection so far. I haven't seen anything lately
@@crosstie417 I commend him for that, but the programmers of this port are gods. Like it's unbelievable that a game that's over 7 hours to a 5 days in gameplay can actually be ported to a system that's the equivalent of dog poop on a hot Sunday morning.
This is peak PW. There‘s so much in this port including things you wouldn’t expect to be implemented. Hats off to the developers, whoever you are.
Now you must find the Metal Gear Solid GameDotCom version to be the TRUE king!
Before this moment, I never thought it actually existed. Now I'm convinced it's out there somewhere. I'll pull it from the stone and become the true king of England!
@@StopSkeletonsFromFighting It is probably in Kojima's sock drawer.
Beat me to it
It's kinda funny how if they finished this game it could of been basically the best game on the gamecom. This unfinished version is better than most lol.
Just finished the video and this has so much more content than I would have expected. Amazing.
Would have been unplayable on a real GameCom. Way too much going on on-screen for a low-refresh rate and low contrast screen. If you ever tried playing the Batman game, you know what I’m talking about. I suspect they got it up and going on an emulator, then tried it on real hardware and freaked out.
*Could've
@@thewiirocks so you think they NEVER tried it on a real Gamecom until the very end?
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e Considering the number of games that were effectively unplayable because of the screen, it wouldn’t surprise me. There were likely two basic issues: 1) Low budget and 2) Lack of development support. The low budget would have encouraged the few people working on these to stick with the emulator for as long of development as possible. Given how unfinished all the features are in this game, I suspect it’s not as developed as it seem. The underlying engine was likely ported along with the data files. That gives a “complete” look, but it’s not really _playable_ as a game. Tiger would have still released it anyway, but the entire concept probably collapsed before they got any further.
*I love when Derek said "It's stoppin' time!" and stopped all skeletons from fighting. Truly one of the Dereks of all time.*
It makes me laugh also the enthusiastic HEY ITS DEREK! ITS ME DEREK!
Uncle Derius
It took me way too long to remember that that’s this channel’s name lmao. I just think of the icon and thumbnail style as Derek.
I loved it when this was funny back in April!
@@BrianQuest64 was it though?
Derek's "just one more thing to explore" attitude in this video is peak SOTN. That's a real testament to just how much these programmers were able to pull off on a port to the GameCom. Really awesome stuff!
The GameCom is really strange. The main processor is a Sharp SM8521 at 10 mhz. At first I thought that was a good thing. Then I realize that it was the thing was powering everything. The game data, the graphics and sound. So how this port exists is beyond me. Even in it's incomplete state, it is just insane.
Yes, we actually did know the game was in development. I had the opportunity to play it at E3 in 1999. It was on display next to Capcom's booth.
Man, I totally remember being at my local AMES back in 1999: in one hand I had the game-com, and in the other I had the Neo Geo Pocket. I went with the Pocket.
Good call since NeoGeo had console quality fighting games. Plus other good games.
@@NickJaime Small library, but mostly bangers. Plus, it directly led to all the Dimps 2D sonic games. It's only real weakness to me was still using 8 bit sound.
Like I love 8 bit Kurikinton, but I do wish it was a bit less "beeps and boops" than it is.
Damn, Ames! That was my first job.
@@DeformedConscience my mother used to work there back in the day, and me and my older brother always head over to the electronics area to checkout the games they got behind the counters.
You should have got both, after all, Ames had bargains by the bagful.
Sweet Jesus Christ, this _is_ amazing. This is _absolutely_ on the Punching Weight hall of fame
Top three for me at least, every new area and feature had me flabbergasted. Like, this shouldn't be possible
But that's the power of the human spirit, to me this is feature complete. If not perfectly shippable
Developers might just want to forget this, but I hope one day every single one gets proper credit. It's earned
Keep in mind THIS is the prototype, who knows what the final game would be like? Maybe they fixed all the issues by then
Another random thought… what if the bat hit the orb despite not being visible
Probably, though given the fight he beat without the bat, I take it they didn't have the alternate bad end scenario, despite the fact the orb and glasses were programmed in. The bat I take it is just overtuned to shit for a reason, because this is a prototype. Considering the devs themselves couldn't have had any easier a time beating things in the game than Derek did, the bat was probably made that way just to one-shot bosses in order for play-testers to quickly and effortlessly test that bosses had functioning hitboxes, death-triggers and stuff like Richter and Shaft transitioning into their appropriate cutscenes afterwards worked properly.
Theres a chance the prototype ended here because the storage space ran out though. Gamecom carts are can only hold 2 megabytes. SOTN is 450 megabytes. Theres no way to make it work.
@@eightcoins4401 obviously, we don't know.
The visuals are weird, but they're weird in an oddly compelling way. Like, this feels like the grandfather of games like Hylics with those chunky sprites and low frame-rate animations.
What an incredible find, I'm so happy this video exists.
Still done well tho.
I'm reasonably certain that Alucard's death scream in this version of the game is a crushed down version of Leon's death scream from RE2. They sound nearly identical - wonder if that same sound sample is present in the RE2 port on this same console?
EDIT: Confirmed! ua-cam.com/video/fN5VGfjOBRg/v-deo.html
Would that then mean that it was made by the same people?!
@@JB2X-Z would not be surprised
If I've learned something from this video is that the bat is the most powerful entity in the Castlevania universe only below the Belmonts
You saw what that bat did to Richter. One shot, while everyone else was frozen in dialogue. Not even the Belmonts can stop the almighty bat.
why am i crying, oh god...of all the youtubers ive seen YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO ACTUALLY EXPLORED AND FINISHED THIS PORT!!!! oh dear, thank you
cringe
@chuyuen441 Yes you are.
Cube of Zoe was a tutorial device to teach the player about relics.
Don't forget that it was the first Castlevania that was also marketed towards women (hence the sharp, pretty boy aesthetic of artist Ayami Kojima) so they definitely put it there to teach new players what's up.
Personally, I always felt that style fit the classy ambience that the series seemed to be striving for at the time giving it a unique identity.
Here I thought it was so weirdos like me could do no Cube of Zoe runs and rely on the blood cloak and jewel sword.
Just so you know, this video sounded absolutely perfect and did not feel like it was recorded anywhere else! Great work as always!
Sounds a tiny, tiny bit off to me. Still good though. Maybe It's just placebo.
@@Gatorade69 he just sounds closer to the mic, more proximity effect, occasionally mild reverb off the screen. Which is unavoidable when you’re under a sheet with your laptop and mic on a chair lol. But it’s definitely mastered very well for what it is.
WOW! This might be one of the most ambitious ports I've seen.
Also, I could be wrong, but I think the line "What do you here?" might be a mistranslation from German. In German, the question "What are you doing here?" could be spoken as "Was tun Sie hier?" which if translated literally comes out as "What do you here?"
Considering how much of Old English was German in a funny hat, before William came across and made it French and German in a funny hat, I would not be at all surprised if "What do you here?" is indeed Old English for that exact reason.
This prototype is absolutely mind-blowing, and your deep dive on it is great!
It makes me want to see the MGS Game Com (not typing the proper name, because it reads as a URL) game now even more!
Man, if this proto is any indication, they probably tried to replicate all the setpieces and cutscenes in MGS. That would be absolutely _fascinating_ to see in action.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Right?! I would be all over something like that, especially seeing what they did and did not consider essential for a port like that, let alone how the stealth mechanics would actually have worked. Sure, we got the Tose-developed GBC game (covered in one of the earliest @StopSkeletonsFromFighting Punching Weight videos), but that was a new game, not a straight-up port!
Wow, when I saw the first footage of this released, I was impressed that they got all of Alucard’s walk cycle in. Little did I know they got everything in.
OK this is way past just a prototype. This is a legitimate beta of the game that was probably like 90% finish. Being able to complete a game from start to end without any progression blockers and the entire game world existing in some form is way farther than a huge majority of unreleased games. This is like one of those Sonic betas that was just just a month or two from release and had all the content done.
I imagine they would've just added more music (or at least hopefully they would have if they didn't want player's ears to bleed after hearing the same song for 5+ hours straight) and swapped out the generic items and fixed up the incomplete areas, and it would've just had to go through bug testing to been ready for release. The idea that this has been sitting out there for two decades and was basically done in secret with basically nothing but preview screenshots that noone knew if they were from an actual game or just mockups is amazing.
Imagine game.com having a legitimate and faithful port (well more like recreation) of one of the best Playstation games at the time would have blown minds.
It's amazing what people's in the industry could pull off back then with limited development software and hardware
My older brother got a GameCom for Christmas when it released and there's still an insert from the box around my parents house somewhere. I thought it was so cool to be able to have 2 games inserted at the same time 😂 but the only game I really remember playing is Henry
"A GameCom game got a sequel!" I laughed so hard at that.
Only if all ports were this impressive on such limited hardware.
Nah, if they were nothing would be released lol
I LOVE Punching Weight!! It satisfies my interest in retro games and the amazing efforts by developers to do more with less. So when I saw Castlevania SOTN... SOTN!! on Punching Weight, well, that just made my morning.
Hats off to you for these high quality videos.
This is one of the most mind-blowing portable ports I've ever seen =O What a treat! And your commentary makes it a ton of fun as always Derek - thanks for shining a spotlight on this incredible piece of history =D
22:49 The Skeletons have stopped fighting, I REPEAT, THE SKELETONS HAVE ACTUALLY STOPPED FIGHTING
This is actually impressive af. The fact it runs at all & is clearly SOTN is a marvel. It reminds me when I used to try to run new games on an old Intel atom x7 chip.
Reduce the settings so low until the game ran but was still recognizable enough to play. Forcing the game through ini file tweaks and mods until it basically was knocked back a generation or 2.
Like getting the Witcher 3 to run on it at all barely playable made you turn it into a PS1 looking version. But part of the fun was forcing something that clearly is not able to handle the game to handle it.
But doing this as an official port/remake of a relatively much bigger game than anything meant for the system, and esp that it was originally made for completely different hardware, on a device that barely ran Tetris is amazing.
Wish it was officially released, the devs deserve the recognition for this and I'd love to know just how they pulled it off.
Low Spec Gamer
This is the WILDEST prototype I've seen in a hot minute!
Thank you Derek and Producer Grace!
All I can say is thank god this never came out and it's my favourite Derek covering it. Never change my dude!
That reminds me I gotta go watch your insane vid on Castlevania *zooms off*
Wow. Just, wow. So much in there. Both the game and the video. Thanks! :)
Damn we got a rare Punching weight that feels more like a "Getting super nerdy" video. But man when this proto released I was waiting for this one. Excellent stuff!
This port deserves way more attention. It’s incredible.
This might be the most mind-blowing port I’ve seen on this channel, and that’s saying A LOT. So much respect for those programmers.
I kept waiting for you to go "Yeah there's nothing left here" but it just kept going. I was stunned at every second. It just kept going! It was finished! That's insane!
This prototype is amazing! It's so sad that this wasn't completed! With the fact that this would have been the only portable option to play Symphony at the time, if ANYTHING could have saved the system, this would have been it! Hats off to the devs that seemed to have been about to pull off stuffing a pineapple into a pinhole O_O
Really ? I didn't know that. How do you do it ?
There was a Tiger Symphony of the Night LCD handheld game that did come out at the time...not sure if that counts.
@@slothmachine7564 I played a lot of one-off Tiger games when I was a kid, and they generally weren't anything like the game they were supposedly based on. What do you think? :)
Soo... The thing that could save them is a game that didn't even sell well in his original release...
@@pafoneto1275 valid point!
Anyone that grew up in the 90s realizes how unbelievably spectacular this on a handheld is. I honestly can't believe it. Amazing
How serendipitous. Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood are on sale for $3.99 US right now for PS4
Ps4 symphony is crap compared to the mobile port
And that'll never make it on the ps4 since requiem is literally just an emulated reskin of Dracula x chronicles for the psp
Without the rondo remake 😡
The wild thing is that if this controlled better, it would be an extremely competent port. For the time, it’s still pretty impressive they crammed so much of the game into it.
I feel like I'm having my equivalent of a Vietnam flashback watching this because I just showcased it earlier in November on my channel. GREAT deep dive into what is arguably the worst port of a masterpiece title such as this. From grabbing the music directly from the guy who found this thing, to the inverted castle...as usual Uncle Derek and Auntie Grace are the real MVPs!
I wonder if the owner of the cartridge had to pay the music composer 20% of his eBay winnings (3:56).
Yes, this is still every bit as funny today as it was back then just as it's still every bit the dick move on your part.
Seeing how game developers overcome hardware limitations with clever solutions and still delivering decent experience is something really amazing, and makes me sad to see how much of that spirit is lacking now a days.
In the ps1 version, you can skip the Death encounter cutscene so Alucard won't lose his equipment, I challenge anyone to see if they can repeat that in this port!
How is that done?
I don't think it is possible in this version since there are no Wargs.
@@PureBloodedwolf Don't know about the PSX version but on the PSP dracula X version if you spam the backdash to go in&out of the entrance, you can glitch death cutscene out of the game.
@@PureBloodedwolf I think it's only possible in luck mode. Unequipping all your armor and walking into a wolf can fling you through door and skip the cutscene.
@@lilwyvern4 haha wait, so knock back is proportionate to the damage you take? That’s hilarious.
Eight hours of gameplay on an unfinished prototype? That's about eight and a half hours more gameplay than any other Gamecom game has!
This, along with the also unreleased Resident Evil Game Boy Color port, truly deserve Punching Weight Hall of Fame status imo. Especially considering Resident Evil being originally a 3D game. Devs were really wildin' back in the 90s
I can't believe Tiger actually almost released a port of one of the greatest Castlevania games of all time. Wow. To think that game was about to be part of the Gamecom library
Damn dude I can’t believe you went through all of this. I know it wasn’t easy, but you persevered like a champ to show us this amazing “almost” port. Thank you so much. Great work. Seriously unbelievable. 👍🏽
30:44
"Now, I'm not sure what compelled me" could ALSO be a good name for the channel, tbf
I am absolutely impressed with what they did here. This was well on its way and it looks like it could have been fully completed given another 3 or 4 months. Must have been upsetting for the devs to get it that far along. Now I want to see if someone can dig up that MGS prototype if it does exists.
God Damn that bat hit Shaft so fucking hard it killed Dracula too.
This, is actually an incredible prototype. I'm simply blown away
My Wife is not only a programmer, but also a lover of older tech, and literally beat Her first playthrough of Symphony of the Night yesterday.
Needless to say You have two New Subscribers! We Love this!!
something funny about the clock tower in sotn:
it's nearly 1:1 a replica of rondo of bloods clock tower. albeit in ruins.
the victory armors are there (they turn into ghosts), even the room where you have to save annette is there (though obvs it has an item instead)
it's crazy how the top portion of the castle is reconstructed from richters memory.
It also keeps time in real time.
They just forgot the verb, the auxiliary is there but the verb DO was forgotten problably bc it is written in the same way...
Amazing video as usual, the most unnecessary and spectacular game reviewed by this channel.
This shows that we could have seen a port of this game in many consoles!
This is probably the most insane port I have ever seen. Thank you for sharing and shoutout to the developers. Honestly, incredible.
Its hilarious, the intro, presentation, game, all feels like its 30 years ago. Good setting guy.
Real talk - recording audio in a hotel room knowing your neighbors can probably hear would terrify me, well done.
Making the Gamecom produce a game and not just, you know, misery, was a radical feat in and of itself. Making it produce something recognisably Symphony of the Night? Impossible. And here we are! That was very impressive.
I really really someone can show this video to one of the programmers and let them contact you, it would be amazing to see a interview and the whole tough process behind this port.
Kind of surprised AVGN didn't mention this in his review. He is a huge Castlevania fan
I dont think many knew about this even existing.
This has to be one of the most "But wait! There's more!" episodes of Punching Weight yet.
Really enjoyed this, great to spend so long with the game so we could see so much of it, thanks Uncle Derek and The Duce!
Derek.....you're doing God's work. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
You had enough power tool foley audio to make a Doom soundtrack and you DIDN'T
Hey Derek, I’m just as surprised seeing how great this port of Symphony of the Night was. I didn’t realize the Game com could handle it as well as it did.
Also, good luck with the mould and related renovations. I went through the same crap myself earlier this year. It was awful.
All the best to you and Grace.
The bat is like Mister Meeseeks, existence for him is pain so he insta murders everyone in his path.
THANK YOU for YOUR service Derek.
Really great to see how much of the game was done. And who knows how far it was from actual completion.
Now thanks to you and your persistence with the game, we get to see everything it has to offer.
The password system likely just doesn't actually save anything and just reloads the current game state for testing: presumably they hadnt made a working password abstraction system yet and just wanted a way to "New Game" or "Continue" while also killing a second bird with the stone by making it also stress test the password menu.
The ultimate speedrun tool: THE SOTN BAT FAMILIAR
19:06 So Dracula struck a deal with Cthulhu
Aria of Sorrow proves that Symphony of the Night probably could've easily gotten onto the GBA, with some reasonably minor tweaking. Since it was capable of 3D, to some degree, it might've even been able to keep some of that.
I dig the format of this! It's like a more streamlined or scripted Let's Play, a lot like yout Illbleed video. You should do more vids like this!
It's not even the final build with the wolves... And even so it's basicaly finished. It's incredible.
Maybe someday the build with the wolves will surface.
My Patreon subscription to SSFF is expiring shortly but just for this video alone I am renewing, not only it was great to see the effort from whoever made this game but the dedication of Derek to guide us through this lost marvel of programming. Thank you Derek for so much.
Honestly this is better than anyone could expect out of Gamecom game. Those programmers are legends.
While it sucks their work went unused, this would have gotten no praise back then. In a weird way, this game getting canceled and turning up now in a surprisingly impressive state is the best chance it has to achieve notoriety. Hopefully the devs get recognized for this finally.
It probably seems like a pointless addition, but in the original SotN, the Cube of Zoe was one of the games "teaching moments".
You get the cube and items start dropping from candles. A very obvious change. It introduces you to the concept of relics. Someone with a basic understanding of videogames probably doesn't need this. But you know. Everyone starts somewhere.
It’s like how computers in the mid-90s spent 10 minutes teaching you how a mouse works.
Yes, modern critics should learn this type of things. Is like saying "the first 10 pages of the book are useless because the weren't any key dialogue". People need to develope more patient.
I saw the run-time and I was ready to see a decent port of SOTN.
I wasn't prepared for THIS. Pardon my French, Derek, but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK
3 gallons of milk and a carton of cigarettes voice gamecom duke nukem is incredible.
if I was to guess, it was probably 80% complete from a development standpoint. Hats off to the programmers that made this possible, and to the dumper that made this possible to be seen to the world at large! Great video as always
So much work for a game for this horrible console, like the devs said "I know it's gonna run at 10fps, but they are gonna be the greatest 10fps of all time"
I love knowing I'm not the only one who felt the "what do you here ?" is under-appreciated :D
Is there anything more Punching Weight than a cancelled port, on a failed console, that is somehow *the best game on that system?*
Imagine what these developers could have done with a GBC port of SOTN. And I guess a GBA port would just have been the full PS1 game somehow.
Crazy how complete that was. Definitely could have sold it!
This is probably the best episode you ever produced, keep up the good work!
Holy shit, this is amazing! We NEED to know how all that work was done. The devs put a bit of witchcraft into it.
With the overall look of this port, I have to wonder if perhaps the people working on it did all that they could, and there just wasn't anything left to bring it over the finish line. Like, it seems probable to me that what they achieved was basically the best they could do and Konami wasn't happy with it and decided not to go ahead with releasing it.
The best game ever made for the Game Com was never released, and was a GOOD SotN port. My jaw has tunneled to the center of the earth.
This is not the best gamecom game, and what is that good port you are talking? You can't be talking about this one.
@@pafoneto1275 I know you're just being contrarian of trolling's sake, but I'm not leaving the opportunity for confusion open.
It crammed almost the whole of SotN onto a handheld, largely intact. It's a good port, it just needed the rest of the soundtrack and some minor bugfixes and it would complete enough to ship, work that'd only take a month max given all the creative work was already done.
Gamecom's only "good" games that actually released were a Frogger port and the Wheel of Fortune games, pretty niche entries. It desperately needed a console seller, and I'd think a portable SotN would've been it.
@@KiraSlith
Watch the video again, didn't have the endings, most items, drops, and a lot things more, so no, I'm not being a contrarian, you are just lying to yourself. A good port is one that work for the console and still good, one example are the Tony Hawk games for GBA, they didn't try to make all the game in 3d, but do it the game in other engine to run well, play well, and being a good skate game, unlike this bad port.
No, most of gamecom games are better than this, except for sonic jam and maybe RE.
@@pafoneto1275 Yeah, again, it wouldn't have been that hard to complete, you're not really making a point in your favor, just pointing out things that would've been completed given the time it needed.
Also, Are you out of your mind? Most Gamecom games were borderline unplayable half the time, Duke Nukem was practically Faceball 2000 but the inconsistent framerate turned the whole thing into a smear. most of the gamecom library was TRASH.
@@KiraSlith
No, the game wouldn't be better with more time, maybe if they did it from the begining, but a doubt that was in the plans.
Yes, Duke Nukem was bad, but definitely better than this.
Yes, and most of the gamecom library are better than this too.
Amazing work from the team who created that port. The game is basically complete, with most of the essentials. And thanks for showing us, Derek!
This was a trip. From beginning to end it was just a crazy how and why did they go so far for game com
Those screens with the wolves on them look like awfully compressed PS1 screenshots since the hud matches that port.
I always wonder what it would be like if we had lived in a world where things like this or other impressive games on terrible consoles like Super Mario's Wacky Worlds had come out early in their respective platform's lifespans. Or like if Tomb Raider had been an early 3DO title instead of a Saturn and PSX one. Or if Naughty Dog's first 3DO game was Crash Bandicoot instead of Way of the Warrior... Or if Sony actually cared about the Vita.
How different would the modern gaming landscape be if these complete failures had had actual console-moving games instead of just being DOA? Would they have actually been successful? Or would they at least be remembered more like the Dreamcast or Neo Geo than as complete jokes? That's why I love finding stuff like this. It's a bizarro look at what could have been had these platforms been given more respect and talent.
You ain't alone in the long wait for flood repair. My basement flooded back in August. I'm not confident it will be fixed before the New Year.