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56-462: Super Castlevania IV features expanded play control, 16-bit graphics featuring Super NES's Mode 7 , and a soundtrack featuring new pieces and arrangements based on previous Castlevania music. Following the same setting as Castlevania on the NES, the game takes place in 1691 Transylvania , where the vampire hunter Simon Belmont must defeat the vampire Dracula. The game received critical acclaim and

112-541: A drop in software sales in subsequent years. This generation ended with the discontinuation of the Neo Geo in 2004. Features that distinguish some fourth generation consoles from third generation consoles include: Additionally, in specific cases, fourth generation hardware featured: The PC Engine was the result of a collaboration between Hudson Soft and NEC and launched in Japan on October 30, 1987. It launched under

168-536: A new Factor 5 branch in California. There, the core of the development team from Germany was established after they finished work on their PlayStation games in late 1996. For a long time, the North American branch of Factor 5 was an exclusive, prominent development partner with both LucasArts and Nintendo , developing both game titles for the former and middleware tools for the latter. During that time,

224-500: A review for the release on the Wii U's eShop, Nintendo Life wrote "Unlike many of the other 16-bit platformers of the era, the game has a mature and distinguished feel to it", and concluded it was the best of the original Castlevania installments. In 2018, Complex listed the game 13th on their "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time", writing: "Next to Symphony of the Night , this is

280-601: Is an independent software and video game developer . The company was co-founded by five former Rainbow Arts employees in 1987 in Cologne , Germany , which served as the inspiration behind the studio's name. In order to have a stronger relationship with Factor 5's North American partners like LucasArts , Factor 5, Inc. was established in the United States in May 1996 with legal support from LucasArts, and in late 1996

336-399: Is considered one of the greatest video games of all time . Super Castlevania IV is a side-scrolling platform game where the player takes control of Simon through eleven levels . Players begin the game with five lives , and it ends in a game over once they have lost them all. The player will lose a life if all of Simon's health gauge is depleted, fall into a hole or if they do not finish

392-496: The Amiga computer. There, they had their earliest moderate success with Katakis , an R-Type clone of impressive technical performance. Due to the game's obvious similarity to R-Type , rights holder Activision Europe delivered an ultimatum: either Factor 5 accept a contract to perform the official R-Type conversion for the Amiga home computer, or receive a lawsuit for rights infringement. According to Julian Eggebrecht, this

448-603: The DivX For Games SDK , integrating the functionality of the popular video codec into Nintendo's development tools. In late December 2008, several online media outlets reported that Brash Entertainment (Factor 5's publisher of their current project) would close at the end of the month after encountering financial problems. This sudden interruption in funding left Factor 5 with their own funding difficulties, eventually causing its closure in May 2009. Factor 5 had been involved in litigation with its former employees in

504-611: The Mega Drive/Genesis console, the Super NES eventually took the top selling position, selling 49.10 million units worldwide, and would remain popular well into the fifth generation of consoles. Nintendo's market position was defined by their machine's increased video and sound capabilities, including exclusive first-party franchise titles such as F-Zero , Super Mario World , Star Fox , Super Mario Kart , Donkey Kong Country , The Legend of Zelda: A Link to

560-835: The Satellaview and the Super Game Boy . The Satellaview was a satellite service released only in Japan and the Super Game Boy was an adapter for the SNES that allowed Game Boy games to be displayed on a TV in color. Nintendo, working along with Sony , also had plans to create a CD-ROM drive for the SNES (plans that resulted in a prototype version of the Sony PlayStation ), but eventually decided not to go through with that project, opting to team up with Philips in

616-857: The Sega Mega Drive (known as the Sega Genesis in North America) and the Super Nintendo (known as the Super Famicom in Japan). Cartridge-based handheld game consoles became prominent during this time, such as the Nintendo Game Boy , Atari Lynx , Sega Game Gear and TurboExpress . Nintendo was able to capitalize on its success in the third generation , and managed to win the largest worldwide market share in

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672-740: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis , codenamed Pegasus SNES and Pegasus Mega Drive. Subsequently, they decided to focus their efforts towards console game development in 1992 with several projects for the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis, including new Turrican games and other titles contracted by companies like LucasArts , Hudson Soft and Konami , the latter of which had also Game Boy development contracts with them. In 1993, Factor 5 produced their last Amiga effort, an Amiga conversion of Mega Turrican handled with programming support from fellow company Neon Studios. They would develop games for

728-758: The Virtual Console in 2006 for the Wii , in 2013 for the Wii U , and in 2016 for the New Nintendo 3DS . In September 2017, it was included on Nintendo's Super NES Classic Edition , a miniature replica of the Super NES featuring many built-in games. The game is included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection , a compilation of past Castlevania installments released on May 17, 2019 for Nintendo Switch , PlayStation 4 , Windows , and Xbox One . The music for Super Castlevania IV

784-549: The 1980s, in what cofounder Julian Eggebrecht described as a culture of hacking and multimedia programming on the local demo scene . Eggebrecht attended the Filmhochschule in Munich to become a movie director , and all the other members studied computer science . While its founders were still university students, Factor 5 started out in game development as a part-time activity under partnership with Rainbow Arts for

840-652: The American and Japanese NTSC standard to the European and Australian PAL standard. Companies such as Konami , with large budgets and a healthy following in Europe and Australia, readily optimized several games (such as the International Superstar Soccer series) for this audience, while most smaller developers did not. Also, few RPGs were released in Europe because the market for the genre

896-481: The Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo decided to censor the game's gore, but Sega kept the content in the game, via a code entered at the start screen. Sega's version of Mortal Kombat received generally more favorable reviews in the gaming press and outsold the SNES version three to one. This also led to Congressional hearings to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children, and to

952-485: The Hedgehog , pushing the Genesis as the "cooler" alternative to Nintendo's console and inventing the term "Blast Processing" to suggest that the Genesis was capable of handling games with faster motion than the SNES. Their advertising was often directly adversarial, leading to commercials such as "Genesis does what Nintendon't" and no scream at all. When the arcade game Mortal Kombat was ported for home release on

1008-546: The Japanese and English versions of the game, with the latter featuring some instances of censorship. He was asked to alter the color palette in the English version in order to remove some depictions of blood in stage eight. The packaging artwork for the North American version was created by Tom Dubois, who designed the packaging for many other Konami titles outside Japan. The game was released in Japan on October 31, 1991 for

1064-604: The Mega Drive in Japan to concentrate on the new Sega Saturn . While this made perfect sense for the Japanese market, it was disastrous in North America: the market for Genesis games was much larger than for the Saturn, but Sega was left without the inventory or software to meet demand. Nintendo executives were initially reluctant to design a new system, but as the market transitioned to the newer hardware, Nintendo saw

1120-475: The Monitor" column. In 1992, Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Vampire noir: dark, earthy colors; ominous, almost subliminal sound effects — and when your hero swings from chandeliers or dispatches monsters with his iron flail, a spine-tingling sense of impending doom." Super Castlevania IV has been praised in retrospective reviews as well. In a 1997 Castlevania retrospective, GamePro said it "is still one of

1176-525: The North American company. However, in January 2011, Moller liquidated Factor 5 GmbH, and all game licenses were transferred to "Eggebrecht, Engel, Schmidt GbR". On March 15, 2017, Factor 5 co-founder Julian Eggebrecht had announced that the company has returned and re-acquired the rights to the Turrican franchise. The programming group which would eventually become Factor 5 had originally formed in

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1232-550: The Past and Super Metroid . The CD-i format was announced in the late 1980s, with the first machines compatible with the format being released in 1991. The Philips CD-i's main selling point was that it was more than a game machine and could be used for multimedia needs. Due to an agreement between Nintendo and Philips about an abortive CD add-on for the SNES (which eventually evolved into Sony 's PlayStation ), Philips also had rights to use some of Nintendo's franchises. The CD-i

1288-670: The SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, and Game Boy until 1996, when they switched their efforts to the PlayStation . With the development of PlayStation games for LucasArts, the personnel located in Germany experienced communication difficulties in working with their North American partner due to the distance between both countries and the Internet speeds of that time being insufficient for the requirements of console development. This, together with legal assistance offered by LucasArts, resulted in

1344-587: The Super Famicom. It was released in North America in late December 1991. Factor 5 created a short demo of the game running on the Mega Drive and presented it to Konami. Konami was impressed but ultimately chose to keep all Mega Drive development in-house, and did not pursue porting the game to the system. The game has been re-released on several platforms over the years. It was re-released on

1400-636: The Turbo Duo, ceased manufacturing in North America by 1994, though a small amount of software continued to trickle out for the platform. The Mega Drive was released in Japan on October 29, 1988. The console was released in New York City and Los Angeles on August 14, 1989, under the name Sega Genesis, and in the rest of North America later that year. It was launched in Europe and Australia on November 30, 1990, under its original name. Sega built their marketing campaign around their new mascot Sonic

1456-479: The TurboGrafx advertising from 1990 to 1994. The platform was well received initially, especially in larger markets, but failed to make inroads into the smaller metropolitan areas where NEC did not have as many store representatives or as focused in-store promotion. The TurboGrafx-16 failed to maintain its sales momentum or to make a strong impact in North America. The TurboGrafx-16 and its CD combination system,

1512-426: The all-time best games". It was named by Nintendo Power in a 2006 issue as the 66th best game made on a Nintendo system. It was ranked 27 in the last issue. Official Nintendo Magazine placed the game at 70 on their list of the 100 best Nintendo games ever. Game Informer 's review opined that it "perfect[ed] the classic formula" due to its whip and less stiff gameplay. It also praised its use of Mode 7 . In

1568-1507: The amount of translation required. Popular US games imported at this time included Final Fantasy IV (known in the US as Final Fantasy II ), Final Fantasy VI (known in the US as Final Fantasy III ), Secret of Mana , Street Fighter II , Chrono Trigger , and Super Mario RPG . Secret of Mana and Street Fighter II would eventually receive official release in Europe, whilst Final Fantasy IV , Final Fantasy VI , Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG would be released in Europe years later on other consoles or formats outside of this generation. US$ 399.99 (Silver version) (equivalent to $ 890 in 2023) Game Boy (using Super Game Boy ) Hudson Soft HuC6280 A (based on 8-bit 65SC02 ) 1.79 MHz (0.77  MIPS ) or 7.16 MHz (3.08 MIPS) 32X Add-on: SA-1 enhancement chip : Upgrades: Enhancement chips : Hudson Soft HuC6280A PSG 32X Add-on: 32 KB main, 128 KB video RAM Upgrades: Enhancement chips: Upgrades: Enhancement chips: Upgrades: Hudson Soft HuC6280 A (based on 8-bit 65SC02 ) 1.79 MHz (0.77  MIPS ) or 7.16 MHz (3.08 MIPS) Philips SCC68070 @ 15.5 MHz Motorola 68000 @ 12.5 MHz (2.19 MIPS) Philips SCC66470, MCD 212 Sega ASIC coprocessor Oki MSM5205 MCD 221 Ricoh RF5c164 Super CD-ROM²: Upgrades: 1 MB RAM CD BackUp Ram Carts: Factor 5 Factor 5 GmbH

1624-467: The attack button, the whip will go limp and can be waved around with the control pad, which can be used to block projectiles. The length and power of the whip can be increased up to two levels by collecting an item called the Morning Star. The whip is used for fighting and for latching onto rings to swing over areas that are too wide or dangerous for the player to jump across. In addition to jumping,

1680-467: The best Castlevania game of all time. The control is perfect, the progression is perfect, and even the ramping up of the difficulty is flawless, as it gets difficult in all the right spots. Also, it has the best soundtrack ever." In 1996, GamesMaster ranked the game 55th in its "Top 100 Games of All Time". Several publications have lauded it as one of the greatest video games of all time . History of video game consoles (fourth generation) In

1736-529: The console only accessible to a niche market. A less expensive version, retailing for $ 399.99, did not include a memory card, pack-in game or extra joystick. Nintendo, NEC and Sega also competed with hardware peripherals for their consoles in this generation. NEC was the first with the release of the TurboGrafx CD system in 1990. Retailing for $ 399.99 at release, the CD add-on was not a popular purchase, but

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1792-561: The core of the development team in Germany was relocated to the North American company headquarters in San Rafael , California . Julian Eggebrecht , one of the five initial co-founders, served as President of Factor 5's U.S. branch. The U.S. company closed in May 2009, following the closure of Brash Entertainment , with which the company had multiple contracts. The original German company, headed by CEO Achim Moller, remained active due to its unrelated business policy and operations with

1848-695: The creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board . Sega concluded that the superior sales of their version of Mortal Kombat were outweighed by the resulting loss in consumer trust, and cancelled the game's release in Spain to avoid further controversy. With the new ESRB rating system in place, Nintendo reconsidered its position for the release of Mortal Kombat II , and this time became

1904-522: The development of the add-on instead (contrary to popular belief, the CD-i was largely unrelated to the project). The fourth generation was also the era when the act of buying imported US games became more established in Europe, and regular stores began to carry them. The PAL region has a refresh rate of 50 Hz (compared with 60 Hz for NTSC ) and a vertical resolution of 625 interlaced lines ( 576 effective), compared with 525/480 for NTSC. Because

1960-669: The erosion of the commanding market share it had built up with the Nintendo Entertainment System . Nintendo's fourth-generation console, the Super Famicom, was released in Japan on November 21, 1990; Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours. The machine reached North America as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on August 23, 1991, and Europe and Australia in April 1992. Despite stiff competition from

2016-432: The eventual creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board . The emergence of fifth generation video game consoles , beginning around 1994, did not significantly diminish the popularity of fourth generation consoles for a few years. In 1996, however, there was a major drop in sales of hardware from this generation and a dwindling number of software publishers supporting fourth generation systems, which together led to

2072-636: The fourth generation as well. However, particularly in the lucrative North American market, there was a fierce console war that raged through the early '90s, which eventually saw Sega outselling Nintendo in North America by 1991. Sega's success in this era stemmed largely from its launch of its popular Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to compete with Nintendo's Super Mario series, as well as a very stylized marketing campaign aimed at American teenagers. Several other companies released consoles in this generation, but none of them were widely successful. Nevertheless, there were other companies that started to take notice of

2128-508: The game's music was released on vinyl by Mondo. The game sold 800,000 cartridges worldwide. Upon Super Castlevania IV's North American release, the game was acclaimed by critics. Nintendo Power gave the game four overall scores of 4.0, 4.0, 4.5 and 4.5 out of 5. Among several items, the magazine cited the game's graphics, music, and action sequences as positives. In 1994 the game was reviewed by Sandy Petersen in Dragon #209's "Eye of

2184-445: The game's whip system, which was to introduce some new gameplay that was not possible on the NES. This idea was once planned for the original Castlevania game. As the enemy and boss programmer, Ueno conceived some rough ideas and additional programmers would implement more detailed boss patterns. Earlier bosses were designed to be easier so that players could discover weak points and effective weapons without retrying. Ueno worked on both

2240-469: The history of video games, the fourth generation of video game consoles , more commonly referred to as the 16-bit era , began on October 30, 1987, with the Japanese release of NEC Home Electronics ' PC Engine (known as the TurboGrafx-16 in North America). Though NEC released the first console of this era, sales were mostly dominated by the rivalry between Sega and Nintendo across most markets:

2296-467: The level within the time limit. The health gauge can be restored through food items that can be dropped from candles and breakable blocks, or with the Magic Crystal, which is received after defeating the boss at the end of each level. A password can be entered to continue the game. With Simon's whip, players can attack enemies in eight directions with the use of the control pad. By holding down

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2352-626: The maturing video game industry and begin making plans to release consoles of their own in the future. As with prior generations, game media still continued to be distributed primarily on ROM cartridges , though the first optical disc systems, such as the Philips CD-i , were released to limited success. There was additionally technical competition with home computer games on the Amiga and on DOS -based IBM clones . As games became more complex, concerns over video game violence, namely in titles such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap , led to

2408-538: The most and wanted to make a pure action game that was similar to it. Ueno only considers Super Castlevania IV a remake of the original Castlevania to some extent. Early design documents depict the player-character in modern attire, since the setting was not decided at the time. Many features in Super Castlevania IV were introduced to make it a less frustrating game for players, such as giving them more control over Simon when he walked up stairs. Due to

2464-592: The name TurboGrafx-16 in North America on August 29, 1989. Initially, the PC Engine was quite successful in Japan, partly due to titles available on the then-new CD-ROM format. NEC released a CD add-on in 1990 and by 1992 had released a combination TurboGrafx and CD-ROM system known as the TurboDuo . In the United States, NEC used Bonk , a head-banging caveman, as their mascot and featured him in most of

2520-459: The player can control Simon to move while crouching. Like its predecessors, players can use secondary weapons that consume Simon's hearts, which are dropped from candles and enemies. The secondary weapons include an axe which can be thrown in an arc, a watch which stops all enemy motion and a dagger that can be thrown across the screen. Collecting the items known as the Double and Triple Shots allows

2576-415: The player to throw secondary weapons up to three times in a row. Super Castlevania IV was directed by Masahiro Ueno (credited in the game as Jun Furano since Konami did not allow the use of real names at the time), who was also the main programmer. His first 16-bit game, Ueno's team possibly started development on it during 1989. Ueno liked the original Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System

2632-517: The preferred version among reviewers. The Toy Retail Sales Tracking Service reported that during the key shopping month of November 1994, 63% of all 16-bit video game consoles sold were Sega systems. The console was never popular in Japan (being regularly outsold by the PC Engine ), but still managed to sell 40 million units worldwide. By late 1995, Sega was supporting five different consoles and two add-ons, and Sega Enterprises chose to discontinue

2688-533: The prospect of corporate formalities imposed by the video game console industry, the company founders quit school in favor of full-time corporate careers. Eggebrecht explained, "[t]he moment you go into console programming, you won't get a development system from Nintendo unless you have a reputable company." After they finished work on Turrican II: The Final Fight for the Amiga and Atari ST in 1991, Factor 5 built their own development kits and software environments for

2744-525: The simulation speed of contemporary game systems was directly linked to the output frame rate , which was in turn synchronized with the TV's refresh rate, this meant that the game would run more slowly on a PAL television. The smaller number of vertical lines in the NTSC signal would also lead to black bars appearing on the top and bottom of a PAL television. Developers often had a hard time converting games designed for

2800-456: The studio gained considerable critical and commercial praise for its technical proficiency , producing what are often cited as some of the most visually advanced titles on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube , all based on LucasArts properties. Two high-profile middleware tools were also developed by the company for Nintendo: MusyX, a sound system produced in cooperation with Dolby Laboratories ; and

2856-514: The team being small, everyone was involved with the design and some ideas came from the creative artists and others by the programmers' experiments. The team drew maps on paper and a lot was changed as the game was worked on. Branching stages, previously seen in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse , were once considered but not included in Super Castlevania IV . Mitsuru Yaida (credited as Yaipon) programmed Simon and also implemented

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2912-539: Was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1998, selling only 1 million units worldwide despite several partnerships and multiple versions of the device, some made by other manufacturers. Released by SNK in 1990, the Neo Geo was a home console version of the major arcade platform. Compared to its console competition, the Neo Geo had much better graphics and sound, however, the prohibitively expensive launch price of $ 649.99 and games often retailing at over $ 250 made

2968-440: Was because "Activision couldn't find any programmers" however the opportunity was "a dream come true". Their first important success, however, came with Turrican , a game designed by Rainbow Arts designer Manfred Trenz . Factor 5 handled the Amiga and Atari ST versions of the game; and together with the original Commodore 64 version and several others, Turrican was a major hit across Europe in 1990. In 1991, faced with

3024-440: Was composed by Masanori Adachi and Taro Kudo (credited as Masanori Oodachi and Taro respectively). Ueno wanted to make the environment of Super Castlevania IV more interactive and was proud of how the game's sound effects and music contributed to the atmosphere. It was released on Akumajō Dracula Best 2 in a compilation with Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge ' s music. On June 21, 2017,

3080-493: Was largely responsible for the platform's success in Japan. The Sega CD was released with an unusually high price tag ($ 300 at its release) and a limited library of games. A unique add-on for the Sega console was Sega Channel , a subscription-based service (a form of online gaming delivery) hosted by local television providers. It required hardware that plugged into a cable line and the Genesis. Nintendo also made two attempts with

3136-498: Was not as large as in Japan or North America, and the increasing amount of time and money required for translation as RPGs became more text-heavy, in addition to the usual need to convert the games to the PAL standard, often made localizing the games to Europe a high-cost venture with little potential payoff. As a result, RPG releases in Europe were largely limited to games which had previously been localized for North America, thus reducing

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