All I want to do is play Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. That’s all I want to play right now. But, leave it to Konami to not ever bundle it in any of the Castlevania bundles they’ve released so far. And leave it to Konami to exclusively lock it to a small bundle that is exclusive to a previous gen console such as the PS4 with NO plans of ever reaching PC.
So what are my options now? Emulate of course, so I opted to pirate a copy of Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP after I read that you can play Rondo of Blood. But leave it to Konami to not make it that simple, because you have to complete a certain task in a certain stage at a certain part just to simply UNLOCK the fucking version!
My other option is to emulate the PC-Engine and go through yet another obstacle course just to get one fucking game to run.
This is what brings my blood to a boil, is when there had been perfect opportunities and chances for game devs to do the obvious. If there is a high demand for a game that you know people would want to fucking play, you fucking bundle it and fucking release it.
You do not have a damn argument to stand by against piracy, game devs, when you have to make it such a pain in the ass for people to spend time and effort just to play a game YOU didn’t want to simply release!
How do you fuck up this badly, Konami? Technically speaking, Rondo of Blood is a 16-bit game, so there was no excuses to have not included it in the initial Castlevania Anniversary Collection. But of course, just nostalgia bait everyone with all of the other games they could’ve emulated several times as easier than it is just to get the ONE game you didn’t want to bundle.
So fuck you.
If they don’t make it easily accessible, you are within your rights to pirate. Fuck them.
Piracy is a service issue.
Imagine somebody dangling a cookie in front of your face, but refuses to give it to you unless you complete a set of certain unrelated and difficult tasks, despite you offering to just pay to take the cookie. Yet the cookie is still being dangled in your face.
This is that problem.
So I put on a mask to hide my identity and take the cookie if I want it, but without believing that I am entitled to it.
Which is completely fair honestly. I don’t expect everyone to feel the same or look at the issue the same way, even in the piracy community.
I still feel that if there is no easy way to play it legally, Konami or whichever company is relevant can go fuck themselves and I’ll pirate the game instead.
Yes, it should have been in the collection instead of the snes remake.
It’s too late for you… But anyone else wanting to play it, just start with the pc engine version. It’s easy to find a CHD with the translation patch already applied. PC Engine will easily emulate on any device.
It seems there is a way to unlock the classic games using PPSSPP’s cheat feature: https://old.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/ozz4mu/looking_for_castlevania_the_dracula_x_chronicles/h838yfm/
Thanks for posting this.
I long gave up though on the PSP version beforehand, though am keeping it around because there are some games that I never got the chance to play on the PSP. So I pirated them and kept everything PSP for future use.
The remake on the PSP, feels so damn stiff! Like you make an action, you’re committed to it and you have almost no way to change course or immediately pounce out of a situation. That was what was pissing me off so much and I failed so many times trying to get to Stage 4 and figure out where I needed to go in it to unlock the game. The guides are vague and no videos that I watched really showed where you had to go.
So I returned to trying to pirate the Turbo Grafix, the Turbo CD (acquiring all BIOs) and downloaded at least 3 files of Rondo of Blood. After much tinkering, trying and error, I finally have a working copy. And in that game, the flow of the game felt much smoother than the remake, reinforcing my feelings earlier about the remake on the PSP.
Again - fuck Konami.
Konami is no longer a video games company any more. They lost that title when they kicked Kojima out and decided to fully embrace pachinko games.
