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Fun Club The unreleased game.com port of Castlevania Symphony of The Night has finally resurfaced.

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Krvavi Abadas

Krvavi Abadas

Mr. Archivist
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the game.com, for those unaware. was Tiger Electronic's attempt at making a proper handheld system.
while it had some unique features for the time. such as a touch-screen, multiple game cart slots, and wired internet connectivity. it became particularly infamous for it's weak hardware, leading to the majority of it's library being extremely slow & clunky "ports" of big console games.

unsurprisingly, it sold extremely poorly. leading to a good chunk of it's planned titles to get canned. Castlevania being one of them.
the prototype cartridge was apparently found back in 2019, but took a bit of repair work to get running again. not too sure if it was dumped or not, but it certainly doesn't seem to be publicly available.
this also isn't even the only wild Konami port planned for the system that was canned, TIger was also working on bringing Metal Gear Solid over. really.
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hopefully it will also get rediscovered at some point.
 
Yep, that's definitely a game.com game. Interesting history though, glad they managed to preserve it.
 
Honestly? That’s mad impressive for the platform.

Of course it goes without saying that this should never have been attempted, but still!
 
It will never cease to amuse me how impressive this thing's lineup was on paper: some of the games released included Duke Nukem 3D, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Sonic Jam... and the list of announced but unreleased games apparently featured SotN (of course), Metal Gear, Madden and Turok, among others. Of course, they were all heavily compromised, barely functional versions of the original games, but still, some eye-catching names there.

Fercho said:
It looks horrible :cry:
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That's how you know it's a true Game.com™ experience.
 
The game.com did look impressive on paper, but only because A) PDAs were on the rise in 1997 and B) the original GB/GB Pocket was the only handheld competition. Tiger's system was pretty much a beefed up 1989 OG GameBoy, with the same awful screen blurring, and PDA functions on top. 1998's GameBoy Color was so much better, and even original GB had a solid library of games that were actually designed with the system's constraints in mind.
 
We really need SOTN and ROB on Switch/Steam. Konami needs to get M2 on that asap (also X6800/Chronicles and The Adventure ReBirth for missing classicvania).
 
fiendcode said:
We really need SOTN and ROB on Switch/Steam. Konami needs to get M2 on that asap (also X6800/Chronicles and The Adventure ReBirth for missing classicvania).
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If they release SotN on Steam that will be like...the 6th or 7th time I buy the game LOL
 
Who do I have to bribe to get sotn on switch or at least steam

you can even buy it on phones but not switch for cryin out loud
 
Sailor Moon said:
Who do I have to bribe to get sotn on switch or at least steam

you can even buy it on phones but not switch for cryin out loud
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Sony ? But i still dont know why there's an Android version. Unless Sony paid, again to Konami ,since the pack in of both sotn and rondo for Sony ps4 and exclude other consoles.
 
Quoted by: em
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Maxrunner said:
Sony ? But i still dont know why there's an Android version. Unless Sony paid, again to Konami ,since the pack in of both sotn and rondo for Sony ps4 and exclude other consoles.
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The SotN/Rondo double pack on PS4 is a quick port/emulation of the PSP game (with the Dracula X remake removed), which Sony likely provided the tools for. It's possible there was also a time stipulation on re-releasing Rondo and SotN on other consoles, I suppose, but Konami might just not care.
 
em said:
The SotN/Rondo double pack on PS4 is a quick port/emulation of the PSP game (with the Dracula X remake removed), which Sony likely provided the tools for.
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yeah, the rumour was that it uses the same internal PSP emulator as those 4k "remasters" they released back in 2017. and likely was further enhanced for the PS Plus Premium titles.

however, i don't think anyone has ever checked the files to confirm if that's the case.
 
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dumped cartridge has been officially released by Hidden Palace.
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    • there it is.
    if you're curious on how this can be emulated, there's an official one made by Tiger for their developers. though it takes a bit of work to get running.
    1. after downloading the emulator, place the "CastleVania - Symphony of the Night (Prototype).bin" file in the "frogger" folder included with the emulator. it has some system files that the emulator needs to run.
    2. open the emulator, select "file" on the "disassemble window", and select "load bin file".
    3. select the Castlevania .bin, when it asks for an address just stick with the default "0" option.
    4. select "file" from the disassemble window again, then select Load Kernel > Full Kernel.
    5. click the run button on the disassemble window, this will take you to the game.com's bios.
    6. click on "cartridge", it should automatically boot the game if you've set everything up correctly.
    these are the controls, as noted by the readme. you'll have to use an app like joy2key if you want to get a gamepad working.
    Keys
    ====
    • Cursor keys - up, down, left and right.
    • ABCD is emulated using ASZX (which is roughly the same shape as the
    position of the buttons on the Game.Com.
    • F1 - Pause.
    • F2 - Menu.
    • F3 - Mute.
    • F4 - On/Off.
    Click to expand...
     
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    • The past few years have been absolute treasure trove a for unreleased games. Can't wait for what else is out there! 🥰
     
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    It’s now being sold on eBay. Bidding is up to $545. I was pretty close to bidding until I realized it had been dumped, that’s lame.
     
    ebay auction (in case you want the physical cart)
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    • Ray00101 said:
    It’s now being sold on eBay. Bidding is up to $545. I was pretty close to bidding until I realized it had been dumped, that’s lame.
    Click to expand...
    the auction in question.

    honestly i think it's mostly alright? my main concern is that the money should ideally go back into performing for further game preservation work. it's seemingly being sold by Diskman (the person who originally uploaded the gameplay footage) so i assume he's probably is planning to do that?
     
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    • Stop Skeletons From Fighting's deep dive into the prototype.
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    • This is a fairly good and through look into the build, if you don't want to go through the trouble of setting up the emulator yourself.

    and yes, the auction really did end at over 7,600 dollars. (+ 12 dollars shipping)
     
    Last edited:
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    • Krvavi Abadas said:


    This is a fairly good and through look into the build, if you don't want to go through the trouble of setting up the emulator yourself.

    and yes, the auction really did end at over 76 thousand dollars.
    Click to expand...

    I watched this yesterday, and it does a good job of illustrating how comprehensive the Game.com version is. The game is very obviously unfinished, bit with save states it's feasible to make it all the way through the game, including the inverted castle.
     
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