KMCA-104~5: CASTLEVANIA CHRONICLE AKUMAJO DRACULA Original Soundtrack

[Kaleb.G]

The notes say "Sota Fujimoto", but this is linked to Sota Fujimori. What's the story?

[CHz]

That was most certainly a typo (that has since been fixed). Notice that this scan and this one say Fujimori.

[Kaleb.G]

Thanks for clearing this up. =}

[Carl]

I'm still greatly amused that they spelled it CastleBania (with a B) multiple times on every page of printed material

[Cypher]

^
Typical Engrish...
There's no "v" in Japanese so they use "bi" instead.

[lgb]

...which was probably intentional because they use a regular 'v' on the other half of material

[The Gambler]

Do all those scans come from the same set? Couldn't it be that there's a first press which has Castlebania everywhere and a second one which corrected the typo?

(I'll check mine later)

[Judge Ito]

Nice catch, Gambler.

There must have been a reprint. I supplied the front, back, obi and tray images, and my copy has every instance of "Castlevania" spelled correctly. All of Myrkul's booklet scans (and disc images) have "Castlebania".

I can supply booklet scans if necessary.

EDIT: Just remembered I didn't originally supply new booklet images with my original upload because I had a hard time getting some of the blacks (there's a lot of semi-glossy black on matte black) to show up. I'll see what I can do and provide alternate images sometime soon.

[The Gambler]

If Myrkul scans are from Mr. P. Castlevania's Realm (http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/2/soundtrack-chron.htm), then that's my copy. ^^

[kar3dge]

I think Devi Kobayashi, Shin Chan, Jigokuguruma Nakamura must be credited here as arrangers of Roland SC-55 ver. tracks because these tracks are same as in KICA-7615. In this album they only louder.

[strugglepoo]

The X68000 version contains a file with some dev notes from the sound team. Anyone willing to translate?

【サウンド編】

Originally Posted by Shin Chan

はじめまして、三十路若年プログラマ－のＳｈｉｎＣｈａｎです。
サウンド担当３人衆、その名も『ＢａｃｋＶｅｒｇｉｎｓ♀』の筆頭を勤めさせてい
ただきます。今回はＸ６８０３０対応に泣かされました。やっとこ動くようになった
けど、キャッシュとスピ－ドには本当にまいったなぁもう。あと１日であきらめると
ころだったあるよ、全く。
アクメ嬢じゃなく悪魔城ドラキュラでは従来の内蔵版、ＭＴ版、ＳＣ版の正式サポ
－トにくわえて　さ　ら　に　「ＸＦ１＋Ｇ」でＧＭ音源にも裏対応してみました。
奥さんここだけの話ざますけど、ＧＭは機種間の音色や音量バランスがちがうのでな
かなか製品としての対応ができないんざますの。それではまた

Originally Posted by Keizo Nakamura

６８ユ－ザ－のみなさま！　　はじめまして！
私が、”地獄車　中村”です。この「悪魔城ドラキュラ」では、小林でびさんと共に作曲・編曲
を担当いたしました。そしてこれが、私のデビュー作ということで、今回は私の名前について説
明したいと思います。

地獄車（じごくぐるま）・・・　それは、日本柔道における究極の技である。そしてその破壊
力は、牛をも殺す事のできる凄まじいものなのである。柔道が発祥してから現在までに、この技
を自由に使いこなせたのは、私（”地獄車　中村”）、一条直也、直也の師匠、風祭右京の四人
のみである。

しかし、究極の技であった”地獄車”は、そのあまりにも凄まじい破壊力のため、１９８９年の
日本柔道連盟理事会に於いて、”非常に危険な技”ということで使用禁止となってしまった。現
在でも、横浜市鶴見区の総持寺境内に、”直也の師匠”が現れ、近くの高校生に地獄車の極意
を教えているそうである。

Originally Posted by Hiroshi Kobayashi

ハードコア・ゲーマーの皆様、はじめまして。わたくし、小林でび！と申します。
今回、作曲・調整のだいたい半分とギ音を担当しました。ペーペーです。
いやー、コナミに新入社員として入った頃「ドラキュラも一度くらいは担当してみたいなぁ」
とか思っていたんですが、まさか初めて終了させる作品がドラキュラになろうとは････。
しかし、やっぱりＸ６８のゲームは面白いケド...イジワルで難しいーッ！！！！！
私なんか開発用の無敵モードが無かったら、いまだに最終ボスの顔なんか拝めていないところ
なんでしょうねぇ。でも、こういうゲームを軽がるとクリアーしてしまう方々もこの世に存在
しているのだろうなぁと思うと、うーむ。ツルツルのまず、よくカメカメ。

[Dag]

Shin-Chan=programmer
Nakamura=in charge of composition/arrangement together with Kobayashi
Kobayashi=in charge of guitar sounds and about half of composition/tuning

[Jotamide]

This one is pretty hard to find in the database. Why is it listed under Castlevania (NES)? Why not make a separate entry for Castlevania Chronicles?

[LuxKiller65]

Originally Posted by The Gambler

Do all those scans come from the same set? Couldn't it be that there's a first press which has Castlebania everywhere and a second one which corrected the typo?

(I'll check mine later)

Is there any way to confirm the "2nd pressing" with V instead of B came out between 2001/23/05 and the 2003/05/22?

I understand it must be, since there is no other difference, code, date etc.
But I am wondering, it could be a late reprint even if it doesn't mention this anywhere. I suppose it would be illegal to do so (e.g. reprint this album in 2005 without changing the necessary information), but the fact that this album can still be purchased brand new from a couple of places makes me wonder if it was reprinted much later than 2003/05.

Another explanation could be that it was printed in much larger quantities after the B/V error was fixed, unlike albums like CotM/HoD and AoS/DoS which were definitely small prints (thank you konamistyle as usual).

Any information or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I do appreciate this OST very much, even though it's partly a reprint, and partly the same tracks with different MIDI sounds + a remixed OST.

[LuxKiller65]

The bottom of this page says:

The Block-4 music track, "Bloody Tears" in Arrange mode is slightly different in the International and later Japanese PSN releases.

How exactly is it 'slightly different'? Is it a loop thing or is the music actually different in tempo/instruments/whatever?

[Borbelli]

Originally Posted by LuxKiller65

How exactly is it 'slightly different'? Is it a loop thing or is the music actually different in tempo/instruments/whatever?

The pitch is actually a little higher in all versions except the original JP release:

ORIGINAL JP: https://youtu.be/W5F1INMlwfc?t=1233

ALL OTHER RELEASES: https://youtu.be/DvLpnBPboTo?t=368

You probably already figured it out since it has been 3 years...

[LuxKiller65]

Thanks and no, I had not figured it out.

Did this album not include a registration card?

[BlazingAbyss]

I wonder if they meant to say "Thrashed in the Cave" instead of "Thrashard. The only other example I could find for "Thrashard" was a track on the albulm, "Thrash Zone" by D.R.I. Perhaps it's supposed to be a portmanteau of "thrash" & "hard?"

[zierts]

Originally Posted by BlazingAbyss

I wonder if they meant to say "Thrashed in the Cave" instead of "Thrashard. The only other example I could find for "Thrashard" was a track on the albulm, "Thrash Zone" by D.R.I. Perhaps it's supposed to be a portmanteau of "thrash" & "hard?"

The track titles were created for KICA-7615 in 1993, probably by Keizo Nakamura and Hiroshi Kobayashi. And that's what we have to go back to to understand what the title means. The original X68000 version of the piece is clearly inspired by thrash metal. So it really is a portmanteau of "thrash" and "hard", possibly taken from the D.R.I. song. The connection became less clear with Sota Fujimori's genre change for his PlayStation arrangement.

Originally Posted by Cypher

^
Typical Engrish...
There's no "v" in Japanese so they use "bi" instead.

I think this may have factored into the title being misspelled as CASTLEBANIA here. This game began Koji Igarashi's attempt at pushing the Western name on Japanese players. But it wasn't until Harmony of Dissonance that the title got the katakana spelling キャッスルヴァニア, making it clear even to the Japanese that it's "va". Then again, they still confuse ヴァ for "ba" sometimes, so it's not like it helped a lot.

Then there's also the fact that they wrote the Japanese logo of Castlevania Chronicles in German fracture font as ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔩𝔢𝔳𝔞𝔫𝔦𝔞, but their "v" is so extravagant it could easily be mistaken for a "b". Moreso if you're Japanese. I think both of these led to the CASTLEBANIA mistake.

Originally Posted by LuxKiller65

Is there any way to confirm the "2nd pressing" with V instead of B came out between 2001/23/05 and the 2003/05/22?

I understand it must be, since there is no other difference, code, date etc.
But I am wondering, it could be a late reprint even if it doesn't mention this anywhere. I suppose it would be illegal to do so (e.g. reprint this album in 2005 without changing the necessary information), but the fact that this album can still be purchased brand new from a couple of places makes me wonder if it was reprinted much later than 2003/05.

Another explanation could be that it was printed in much larger quantities after the B/V error was fixed, unlike albums like CotM/HoD and AoS/DoS which were definitely small prints (thank you konamistyle as usual).

Any information or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I do appreciate this OST very much, even though it's partly a reprint, and partly the same tracks with different MIDI sounds + a remixed OST.

The earliest photographic evidence (I could find) of the reprint with the CASTLEVANIA fix is Judge Ito's scans submitted to VGMdb in mid-2009. The spelling fix must've affected the CD prints as well per the descriptions, so it wasn't a simple paper print swap. Even though some elements such as the barcode are placed differently on the reprint obi, the text is the same, so that won't help either. Discogs lists some codes from the CDs but it's unclear if it's the CASTLEBANIA or the CASTLEVANIA print, or if comparisons would help at all.

Luckily, we have dedicated fans such as Kurt Kalata: His soundtrack page on Castlevania Dungeon detailed the spelling fix as early as August 13, 2002. Judging by the archived pages, it seems he noticed this after April 15, 2002 and most likely in June or August 2002. While this doesn't solve the mystery completely, this should confirm that the CASTLEBANIA version went out of print by mid-2002 at the latest.

Should we have separate album entries for both prints even if they use the same catalog number?

[Aifread]

Originally Posted by zierts

The track titles were created for KICA-7615 in 1993, probably by Keizo Nakamura and Hiroshi Kobayashi.

Slight correction here: the track titles weren't made for that album. Like many X68000 games there was an in-game sound test and all those track titles existed from the beginning.

[zierts]

Originally Posted by Aifread

Slight correction here: the track titles weren't made for that album. Like many X68000 games there was an in-game sound test and all those track titles existed from the beginning.

Ah, indeed. Thanks! Here's the X68000 sound test transcribed. Looks like they slightly changed the track titles for the albums and they caught the missing plural in 06, but not the typo in 05:

01 Black Mass
02 Something Loopy
03 Vampire Killer
04 Thrashard In The Cave
05 Wiched Child
06 Bloody Tear
07 The Tower Of Gears
08 MOON-FIGHT
09 The Tower Of Dolls
10 Etude For The Killer
11 Theme Of Simon Belmondo
12 Creatures In The Depth
13 You Goddamned Bathead!
14 LOAD BGM
15 GAME OVER

"The Bathead", "Stage Clear BGM", "最終Stage Clear BGM" and "Mother Earth" are missing from the sound test, it seems.

[LuxKiller65]

thanks, that's a good guess for the reprint timeline
i'm not sure this is an isolated case or if title corrections/mistakes have been made into separate entries before. technically there's no reason to have a separate entry, as nothing in the system can tell them apart, except for scans.

[zierts]

Okay, I added a note and the other first-print scans, and the scans now say which print they are. What's missing is second-print scans of the booklet (everything except for Booklet Front which we already have) and of the two CDs.

Something strange I noticed: Hiroshi Iizuka is also credited for "Music & Arrangement" in the game. I suppose he'd already left CUBE and gone freelance by that point as the game is not in CUBE's old works list. Either way, he's not credited on the album.

Even stranger, JASRAC has an entry for 悪魔城年代記悪魔城ドラキュラＧＡＭＥ　ＭＵＳＩＣ which lists Ｘ６８０００ＰＳ移植アレンジバージョン and Ｘ６８０００ＰＳ移植内音源バージョン tracks. Konami Kukeiha Club is given as composer and Yajuh-Ohkoku as performing artist.

Yajuh-Ohkoku did some work on Konami albums later and they performed "Thrashard in the Cave" on KOLA-004 in 2002. But other than that, I don't know what their connection to Castlevania Chronicles is. I guess it could be an erroneous database entry.