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Re: The Best Version Of Castlevania II Is Being Ported To The SNES

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:41:51 GMT

I think Bisqwit passed away a few years ago.

By turboxray

Re: The Best Version Of Castlevania II Is Being Ported To The SNES

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:41:04 GMT

@Sketcz Yeah, and even if you never played it but wanted to for the first time.. it's pretty common knowledge about the original towns people - so you'd ignore their advance anyway. Which makes the point of them lying.. moot.

By turboxray

Re: The Best Version Of Castlevania II Is Being Ported To The SNES

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 10:30:22 GMT

@Xerox1919
Exactly this. I know some players prefer the cryptic nature of the original, but after playing Redaction, I thought to myself: it should have always been like this. I realise it's not "realistic" to have some peasant villagers know detailed arcane knowledge, but it made searching for them, and talking to them worthwhile, and it meant you could play and finish the entire mystery solely by using the game itself, rather than looking up a FAQ or opening Nintendo Power and having it win the game for you.

I'm not a kid any more, and none of my friends are going to play this, so the old style of sharing playground knowledge is gone. If the game itself doesn't explain stuff, I'm just going to visit GameFAQs on my phone and cheat my way through, which neuters the experience.

In the year 2025, I think we should be allowed to just have the game explain itself to us.

By Sketcz

Re: The Best Version Of Castlevania II Is Being Ported To The SNES

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 02:10:38 GMT

Yeah, an absolutely shocking amount of people don't realize that there was never really any huge translation problems in this game. A lot of the "clues" people gave you in the game were just plain false. The game even told you this! The book flat-out told you that people will lie to you.

I felt like this was the entire point. It's just a bunch of gossipy villagers. Why exactly do you expect them to know about magic objects and dungeons on the other side of the world? MAYBE there might be an ounce of truth somewhere in their statement, like they were 50-people deep in a telephone game, but for the most part they don't know anything about what they're saying.

And then they all miss the ACTUAL clues, the hidden books. And then have the gall to say "But if only this false villager BS was put into high prose, then I would've been able to finish it!" Nah, it's 100% a problem of you giving up easily. Old games weren't there to hold your hand. Either spend 5 hours wandering around before you solve it, or go buy a hintbook.

By Xerox1919

Re: The Best Version Of Castlevania II Is Being Ported To The SNES

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 19:04:05 GMT

I'd really like to see other fan hack improvements added.

The NES version has hacks which remove invisible holes, and increase hearts collected. Since it gets very grindy.

I also dislike Bisqwit's retranslation. It keeps all the nonsense from the JP original.

Simon's Redaction by The Almight Guru is much, MUCH better. He took the time to rewrite all the clues so each of them was a real clue, and made real sense.

People complain about the original localisation, but the JP original's script was also garbage, with lying NPCs, false clues, and just gibberish. A retranslation fixes nothing. You need a full rewrite, as done by TAG and his Redaction patch.

This is the best retranslation, since dialogue is now actually no longer useless *****:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/868/

By Sketcz

Re: The Best Version Of Castlevania II Is Being Ported To The SNES

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:06:59 GMT

This is wicked neat!

By KuromiBunny