Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (XBLA)

Have you uncovered the true secret behind Dracula’s power?

NA release: 21st March 2007
EU release: 21st March 2007
JP release: 25th July 2007
Developer: Digital Exlipse
Publisher: Konami
Official Xbox Magazine Review: 9/1-
Platforms: Xbox 360
Version Played: Xbox 360

With Konami taking a while working out what to do with Castlevania on the HD consoles, they got Digital Eclipse – a company making XBLA versions of many classic games – to make a version of Symphony of the Night for the platform as an Xbox Live Arcade title.

This is a straight conversion of the Playstation (but seems to be a port rather than emulation) with only a couple of minor changes. The lovely credits song has been removed, some FMV cutscenes are gone (XBLA originally had a very strict file size limit) and an animation of Richter getting electrocuted has been added.

This version also offers “enhanced” graphics, but that’s just the really ugly pixel smoothing that looks horrible. Luckily, it’s optional. The game is on a small screen (if you’re a madman, you can stretch it), and the background doesn’t bother to cover the black borders from the game. Still, it’s a re-release of a brilliant game that doesn’t do anything wrong that impacts gameplay, and can still be played on newer consoles.

Great

Symphony of the Night set the standard for every Castlevania game to come. All have adopted its freeroaming environments and upgradeable character stats as the norm, but none have ever quite matched the majesty of this first time – in animation, in music, in style… in everything.
Xbox Official Magazine

Remake or remaster?

This game still needs a proper remaster

Official Ways to get the game

This version of Symphony of the Night is available on the Xbox store.