Castlevania - Dark Version

If you've played "Castlevania", you've probably noticed how bright the graphics are. They don't really represent the horror setting too well, despite the fact, that they look good. Now, the NES's color palette is bright and colorful, so trying to create darker, gloomier imagery is pretty hard. (Even Capcom's "Sweet Home", which is very creepy in terms of story and creature design, has still somewhat bright graphics) But after examining "Faxanadu" and some other games, I saw, that a more eerie color palette is possible on the NES with the right color combinations. "Castlevania II: Simon's Quest" had the right idea, but I think there was too much contrast in the backgrounds and the colors they picked didn't work too well. So I decided to make a hack of the original "Castlevania" and give it a more dark, creepy feel.
Most of the color palettes are changed. Backgrounds are now dark and musty-looking. Sprites are now brighter, so that they stick out more.









Whether or not this looks good, is up to you. This is an an experimental hack with some unusual color choices, but I tried to make it both gloomy and nice to look at.

I submitted the patch to Romhacking.net and, as of now, am awaiting approval of it, so that it could be added to their database. Until then, you can download it here. The hack is posted in the form of an IPS patch. In order to apply one, just download a program like Floating IPS (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1040/). Here's info on the ROM I used and the different checksums(Romhacking.net requires you to enter this information, when submitting a hack, so it can become important), though I think the hack will work fine with any unaltered US version of the game.

Country: USA
CRC32: 5C7F34F6
MD5: 95ED9C387D46008DFF0800EC55AE285C
SHA-1: 1375BAAA21FEFB8A39259F70096199F94EF811CE
SHA-256: 0428A63F3CFAB0A5DE5E68FE96B0FD613FED90B1B928E637F3476425E5ADE640

Castlevania(USA).nes

What do you think? Is this hack good? Should I make ones for the second and third games, as well? Please, let me know.

Thanks!

The green windows on level 1 looks a little odd, but level 7 looks great.

If you enjoy doing these, I say go for it with the rest of the games.

Some of the games I've seen that are dark use a lot of black blended (dithered) with other colors. You might want to consider editing the graphics slightly, as well, to blend black in.

Like Ninja Gaiden, level 5-1

i think they look pretty good.

I completely agree with you. Which is why I tested the waters with editing castlevania 3 and got these results before I lost interest due to the sheer amount of sprites in the game. But I can totally get behind hacking the series to get that subtle darker tone.



a different palette I just did now:

I just noticed this and I have to say, it looks pretty good. As a matter of fact, I think I have made a darker version of Castlevania III myself, although I think I never finished it... I don't remember. I didn't have as much experience with colors back then, anyway, so it wouldn't look that good.

The makers of Castlevania 3 / akumajou densetsu already kinds of did this...

For what Castlevania 3 lacked in sound expansion, it certainly made up for it in the palette changes they made.

Nothing can go back and make the previous games have a better look without re-doing the tiles to look more like Castlevania 3, however there is a thread on Pixelation that tries this very angle! http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19899.0 which should sufficiently float your boat.