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.
Edit: replied to wrong comment
How DARE you reply to the wrong comment?
/s
I agree with your second statement, but not your first
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.
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.
Bingo. But imagine they keep dangling that cookie in front of your face, taunting and teasing you even in the privacy of your own home, but will not let you purchase it on its own. In fact, in order to obtain said cookie, you must complete a bunch of unrelated tasks/purchase a bundle/subscription along with it. And then you only get the one cookie. This is how the video media world works.
The music industry figured it out already by letting you take as many cookies as you want, of all kinds, without limitations, for a flat monthly fee.
In fairness, that comes with just not paying artists any money.
That… is a very fair point.
However, that could be resolved entirely by cutting out C-suite/shareholder profits and redirecting that money to the artists. But we all know that’s never going to happen.
I’d love it if we had a music co-op sort of situation. But as you say, that doesn’t make someone somewhere filthy rich.
Congrats on being wrong
I don’t think “because I want it” is a justification for having a right to something. I also pirate things sometimes, which is why I’m here, but I don’t believe I have a right to the content.
So why do you pirate then?
The main reasons people pirate are:
- Affordability concerns
- Corporate Greed
- Region-Locked/Deliberate Unavailability (Not releasing content in other countries, exclusivity .etc)
- Refusal to meet Demand and Supply
- It’s Free, so I’m going to get it
- Dismantled Consumer Rights
Don’t get me wrong, I would have happily bought a copy if it was available. But because of 1, 3, 4 and 5 alone completely justifies pirating.
I pirate if something is otherwise unavailable simply because I want to. But I don’t believe I have a right to whatever I want. It’s pure entitlement. I will almost always go the paid route if I can.
Well, people may feel like they don’t have a right to things. But my problem with that kind of a stance is, why do we allow and enable these kinds of companies who feel it is their right to deny, remove and refuse to distribute legal alternatives? It seems like we feel it is our right to at least enjoy something we’d like to have.
And this moreso applies to people who actually have paid for things. Like for example, online games. One of these days, sometime or another, some big MMORPG is going to be pulled offline for good. And you, a faithful player, has put lots of time, effort and even money into the game for years which would make you a loyalist to it. But the game is pulled offline now and the company will not ever make an offline mode. They just cart out the same old song and dance of “Thank you for your years of support, blah de blah, we’re going to go now and uh, thanks for your money too, goodbye” and that’ll be that.
I mean, wouldn’t that be a little off-setting to you? Sure there’s some gullible people out there who happily piss away a lot of things and in some strange unironic way, accept this kind of practice. But there’s lots of other people who want to keep going on for however long and they too could very well have been paying customers. Shouldn’t it be their right to continue enjoying that game or should they just walk away disgruntled and jaded because they now see their investments as an entire waste?
The whole idea of whoever and whatever has a right to what is entirely case-by-case and subjective. I don’t feel I have a right to everything in a store I work at, I have to pay for something to have it and I’m not going to act like I have a right like I do have them otherwise. What I feel I have a right to, is to go and grab copies of things I know very well that no company is going to lift a finger in ever re-purposing for everyone to enjoy once again because they operate on some stubborn arbitrary system with themselves.
And if people want to take into account about the idea of respecting creators and everything? Dude, a lot of disrespect goes around to creators from these companies that helped create. It’s very well-documented at this point. I now am starting to see pirating as just a way to gain a little sense of redemption for those disrespected creators who have to tolerate their bosses that have absolutely no clue or care in the way in how these things operate.
I really dig your stance, support developers where you can. How do you feel about TV shows though? Does the knowledge that most shows use product placement (baked in ads) alleviate entitlement in this case?
but I don’t believe I have a right to the content.
Like I said: congrats on being wrong. All people have the right to the content anyone else makes and releases for sale if it’s portable, period. Capitalism does not override the right to enjoy the creations of other humans, full stop
I disagree. I believe artists and creators should have the right to control the distribution of their work. There’s plenty of room for criticism of the way we have it structured, the role of profit, whether companies should have the same rights, etc. But I don’t think every person has an intrinsic right to anything that anyone else has ever created.
I believe artists and creators should have the right to control the distribution of their work.
Once you release something into the open world, it’s no longer yours to control, end of story. Don’t want to lose control over something? Keep it for yourself
This is the second time in this thread someone has responded to me with “end of story” or “full stop” as if those statements are some kind of trump card that removes any room for debate or changes the fact that what you said is an opinion.
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.
Go to any casino and you’ll see loads of Konami logos. Hell, fly to Vegas and you’ll see a Konami logo on a hanger from the runway.
They’re a gambling company who dabble in video games
sounds perfect. it’s like your experience here was real life Castlevania. what could be better?
As a gamedev I feel strongly about financially supporting the games and creators I like so I try to always pay for the game if the price is fair. But Konami can fuck right off, they basically hold SotN and all the best Igavanias hostages behind their shitty bundles that are too expensive and sometimes exclusive to some platforms. Some of them were still Nintendo DS exclusive for ages until they got released in a bundle recently. I’ll consider giving them money again when they start actually making games again.
Same treatment applies to retro Nintendo games. You’re telling me I bought basically all your consoles since the GameCube at release day and you’re still gonna fuck me over and make me pay your stupid online subscription so I can play Super Metroid on the switch (even though I still own a working SNES and the game’s cartridge) ? Honestly that was the last straw that made me preorder the steam deck when I heard how easy it was to emulate on it
Konami has been like that for more than a decade. Being a castlevania fan is pain
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.
That or you can most likely find a savegame online where that mode has been unlocked.
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.
They threw Dracula X into the collection with the GBA games. That made no sense, lol.
I had heard, but cannot verify, that Sony paid to get the 2-pack of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night exclusivity and while that agreement may have run its course, Konami hasn’t bothered to port it to PC since. I already own the PSN version, but I’d re-buy it for PC if they’d do a good port.
They released the original Anniversary Collection (Mixed 8-Bit and 16-Bit games) in 2019, Advance Collection (The GBA games + Dracula X on SNES) in 2021 and the Dominus Collection (The DS games) last year. So, there’s probably some hope that maybe the next collection would probably, maybe have Symphony of the Night, Rondo of Blood, the Game Boy games, the N64 games and maybe a few PS2 ones? I don’t know where they could go from there but that’s all that’s left as to what to re-release.
Either way, I don’t have all the time in the world for them to get around to it.
