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We’ve made no secret of the fact that we really want to see Castlevania: Symphony of the Night come to Switch. It’s arguably one of the greatest games ever made, and, alongside Super Metroid, is one of the true innovators of the ‘Metroidvania’ genre. Originally released in 1997 on the Sony PlayStation and later ported to the Sega Saturn, SotN has since found its way onto the PSP, PS4 and (annoyingly) smartphones, but a Switch version remains frustratingly out of reach.
Amazingly, it might be the case that a console released in 1988 gets its own version of SotN before Switch does – albeit a port that is drastically altered and not in any way officially sanctioned by Konami.
YouTuber Pigsy has taken it upon themselves to back-port the 32-bit epic to a 16-bit system, namely the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis. Pigsy has previously ported the Game Gear Shinobi title to the Mega Drive, and felt like taking on a sterner challenge.
As you can see from the video, impressive progress has been made, and while the Mega Drive is clearly no match to the PlayStation in technical terms, it’s impressive how well the visuals hold up.
Those of you expecting the full SotN experience on Sega’s 16-bitter should note that the intention is not to port the entire game to the console, but use it as a basis for a traditional, level-by-level experience more akin to the old-school Castlevania titles.
Pigsy intends to use a combination of assets from both the PlayStation and Saturn versions (the latter features Maria as a playable character and contains extra levels), and the game will showcase two modes: one with Alucard and one with Maria. They will, according to Pigsy, play very differently from one another with different routes through the castle, split into around eight levels each.
Given that Pigsy is a self-proclaimed newbie when it comes to this kind of thing, it’s perhaps wise to expect this project to take a while, and it remains to be seen if Konami will take a dim view of such efforts and request the work to be stopped – something fellow industry veteran Nintendo has been rather fond of recently.
Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see how this classic title can be reimagined for humbler hardware – but man, what we’d give for a legit Switch version, seriously.
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