Castlevania: Timeless Classic Or Retro-Goggled Nostalgia (Editorial)

“isn’t this the score you really want when battling the most legendary of all monsters to avenge the love of your life?”

No? I want catchy music a mixture of styles and influences to backdrop my action games that itself is a mixture of old horror and action movies. I can hear bland background music on soap operas if I need my fix.

“But, when one listens to Castlevania he would never guess which game (or even which genre!) it might score.”

I think most game fans can instantly recognize Castlevania music as Castlevania. That’s why the soundtrack from the entire series is one of the most well known and respected in gaming, and why there are orchestra concerts exclusively dedicated to it. And game fans are the intended audience, not stubborn music students.

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Morticia, REAL Jerkface Gideon. REAL Jerkface Gideon said: I make the case for the new Castlevania while slightly ripping the old. #nerdrage #Castlevania ^[8] […]

I’m sure a decent number of game fans could identify the music as being of the Castlevania series, but my point is that those who don’t know the score would have no way to ascertain even what kind of game it is scoring because cheesy beats and cutesy 80s-sounding rock tunes have no connection to the subject matter – unlike Zelda, Metroid, etc. which both do a far better job enhancing the action on the screen.

With respect, it seems that your feelings on what a soundtrack ought to be are fundamentally different from mine. Though I don’t personally love the music, my argument is not with its musical aptitude – which is what you are arguing. I am arguing about what I feel is a gross incongruity between its wonderfully dark presentation and hokey score.

The new Castlevania is intended for modern-day gamers who want drama with their action, not stubborn purists who tacitly allowed a valuable franchise to die in dated obscurity while its contemporaries in Mario, Metroid, Zelda, and now even Kirby are still as relevant today as they were when we were young.

Castlevania has been synonymous with very particular styles of music over the past twenty years or so, and with Lords of Shadows having removed it, it removes one of its most distinctive elements. In its place is another dramatic but ultimately generic orchestral score that typifies 90% of Western soundtrack output. I completely disagree that people cannot place a piece of music as “Castlevania”, because there’s a very distinctive sound, which is especially true in Yamane’s work.

Much like the game itself, fans are annoyed because they took something distinctive and make it suitably bland so it would suit the template of a modern 3D action game. It was something that had to happen to keep the Castlevania game from fading into obscurity, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be disappointed in it, or that Konami shouldn’t be criticized for it.

Also, the original Castlevania was based off cheesy monster movies. The end credits were silly homages to famous actors of the period. This goofiness can be traced through the rest of the series, with the horror shlock of Bloodlines to the fun house surrealism of Super Castlevania IV to the playable little girl in a pink dress in Dracula X and so forth. It was never meant to be taken ENTIRELY seriously. That sort of playfulness tends to be lost on a lot of Western developers, unfortunately, which affects both the game and the soundtrack. This is why it’s OK to run through dungeons whipping up fishmen to dance techno and power rock in the previous games.

Great points, Alucard, and thank you for reading/responding! Even with all the homages mentioned, the score does not go far enough in any direction: it neither has a deeply dark or an ironic sensibility like Ghosts N’ Goblins. It’s stuck in this nether region. It should pick one or do them both together well (like Evil Dead).

Since you took exception to the same point as Audun, I can only gather that I wasn’t clear enough so I’ll try to better explain. If I were to play the soundtrack to Castlevania for somebody not familiar with the franchise and asked that person to match the soundtrack to a game (or type of game), that person would probably not be able to. I know this because it happened to me initially, as well as others with whom I tried the experiment. I think it fits now in retrospect because of the attachment and nostalgia. We associate the two together. However, I don’t feel they are a natural fit.

Cheers! 🙂

Also, i haven’t played through symphony of the night in quite some time, but I don’t recall any of the irony or intentional cheesy stuff in that, and that’s considered the pinnacle of the series. Was it there?

“But, when one listens to Castlevania he would never guess which game (or even which genre!) it might score.”

I disagree. Although the iconic tracks you mentioned fit the argument, this ignores all the other songs that DO fit the horror theme and tone. I have to agree with Gideon Dabi here with SOTN being the best example of this. Cheesy rock? Where??

“Suffice it to say (and much to my own chagrin), it is safe to say that the series was no longer relevant; a sentiment shared by Konami, as well. One need not look further than the underwhelming Harmony of Despair for proof of this need.”

Didn’t understand this. Konami can’t be arsed making good Castlevania games?

I think the fact that Castlevania music isn’t as well known as Zelda/Mario/etc. has more to do with the series in general not being as well known. Nintendo and its franchises have entered a part of pop culture consciousness where pretty much everyone knows what they are, but that’s something few video games have obtained.

For SotN, outside of the faux-Shakespeare writing and voice acting? There’s lots of silly little weapons and enemies and stuff. Try using the Shield Rod with the Leather Shield to summon a cow, for instance. Or the Wizard of Oz bad guys in the inverted library.

Your Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins boxart doesn’t allow hotlinking.

P.S. I disagree with a lot of your points, but I’m too tired to go into it… it seems like you aren’t much of a chiptune aficionado (nothing wrong with that) but I would suggest listening to ^[9]. It’s partly in the style of early Castlevania soundtracks and really helped me realise what the Castlevania musical style is and how it ties into the ‘gothic’ setting.

@Sergio I enjoy chiptune music a lot. Check out my take on VVVVVV. Plus, I love the chipmusic of its contemporaries.

@Matthew my point about Harmony of Despair is that they tried a new take on the old style Castlevania and it bombed.

Agree or disagree, thanks so much for the discussion and reading. 🙂

You make a really good debate, Gideon. I’m almost convinced. It’s nearly impossible, however, for those of us who are fans to really believe that the “Vampire Killer” and “Bloody Tears” don’t fit those games or the genre. They sound like Castlevania to us, so I don’t think we can really comprehend otherwise.

While I enjoyed Araujo’s work, I don’t think it’s nearly as catchy as say, Demon’s Souls, which was a similar kind of score. I don’t think I’m going to walk away with any of Lords of Shadow’s melodies in my head, although Belmont’s Theme borders on it. Maybe that’s not the intent, as we’ve debated back and forth for months, but it’s something me and a lot of other people look for.

@Gideon I’ve read your PPPPPP review, it was the man reason for my assessment! To quote from the review: “I know very little about the chiptune process and don’t own an album from one chiptune artist”.

@Gideon With Harmony of Despair, I don’t believe it was an actual attempt to infuse something new into the old Castlevania style of music. After all, it was already done in Judgment and the Dracula Battle albums. If anything, I would presume the abysmal rock route they took was a sign of laziness and lack of creativity than a desire to rework the music into something refreshing. Needless to say, the way they were executed would have made any song sound horrible anyway.

As for the older music not fitting their settings, I found that even the darker games in the series usually had a vivid array of colors in their backgrounds. The music itself was also a nice compliment to the action and pacing of the games in my opinion. So in those regards, I thought they were fitting for the series.

NES Castlevania music fits the series perfect, in a genre sense. In a story-specific sense, indeed it doesn’t fit it at all.

It fits in the sense that you’re raiding an old castle whipping everything back to hell with the assistance of daggers, axes, etc. etc. It doesn’t fit in the fact that you’re in (supposed) Transylvania, all alone, surrounded by the undead in search of Dracula.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but imagine what the 1931 Dracula film would be like with NES Castlevania music plastered over it. Like I said, it’s a bit of a stretch but speaking strictly on a setting/story level, the music doesn’t fit at all.

My main gripe with LoS’s soundtrack is that it sounds just about like every other quasi-fantasy action game’s soundtrack. Michiru Yamane’s work on SoTN gave the series a distinct Baroque & Rococco inspired soundtrack punctuated with occasional classical metal licks (fitting since classical metal borrows heavily from the Roccoco period). LoS in comparison, seems to discard this. Nothing in the game has given me the same chills as the beautifully haungting Baroque choral piece “Requiem for the Gods” from SoTNs chapel.

That said, you might want to read up on Paul Esch’s article “Music For a Tragic Prince: A Look at the Music of Castlevania” for how Rococco and Baroque has influenced CV music.
^[10]

Having just finished LoS moments ago, I can’t fathom how anyone can be upset with the soundtrack, nostalgia or no. It’s full of memorable hooks and swells, and evokes images of decaying beauty and the end of days, hopelessness and loss, and man’s twilight hours encompassed in sorrowful melodies…images that I’d argue are the main theme of the game. I take no issue with previous Castlevania soundtracks, but since when does a soundtrack need to be rooted in its predecessors to be effective?

I haven’t heard the score for the new Castlevania, and if it is really that different from the original, I don’t think I will mind much. I can say agree with you on the whole point of the music having to convey the general atmosphere of the game.

But I differ in what that exact atmosphere was supposed to be in the old Castlevanias. To me, the original games were never about horror at all. Sure there were vampires, werewolves, skeletons and gothic castles… But you were in control of a hero who was deadlier than most of them, so it always felt more like D&D with vampires (and, later, Metroid with vampires) than “Horror of Dracula” to me.

In my opinion (and I still like to use that word), the original soundtracks were mostly adequate to the atmospheres of each individual game up until Symphony of the Night, the last one I played through.

I think my objection here is with the metric you’re using with which to judge the prior soundtracks in the Castlevania series. I understand your approach in that you expect he music to support what’s presented in the game and it’s a valid metric, but it certainly isn’t the only way to approach music in a medium. I feel that with Castlevania the music and the game have always met each other half way. The music isn’t supporting the visuals and the visuals aren’t supporting the music, instead the two make a unique whole and I think people who have played the game pick up on that, even if only subconsciously.
For example, the movie A Knight’s Tale uses the music of Queen in some of its tournament scenes. In no way does the imagery on screen logically suggest that choice of music, and in no way does Queen invoke images of a medieval tournament. Still, the two, the images and the music, combine into a unique milieu. This is different than simply putting in music that is inappropriate. The use of 99 Red Balloons in Watchmen, for example, was unnecessary, jarring, and not the same way Castlevania uses its music.
You suggest that the classic tunes such as Vampire Killer and Bloody Tears can be easily interchanged with any other random game of its time, which is something I cannot agree with. Now, music theory has never been my forte so while I would almost certainly be on the losing side of the argument on these grounds, I believe that Castlevania’s music, since the first game have had a certain je ne sais quoi that makes them distinctly Castlevania, despite the variety of musical styles employed. Like a band that changes style from album to album and despite working in different styles still retains a unique stylistic identity.
Sure songs like Dracula’s Castle don’t evoke the generic haunted castle imagery you seem to expect, but Castlevania certainly is no generic haunted castle. You seem to suggest that the feelings or moods it invokes are nothing close to what the Belmont world should be. Yet the world is as much defined by the music as it is by anything else. The music gives color to the surroundings, the way Alucard moves, and the way he fights. The music though rock/dance inclined still retains the feeling of music you’d hear echoing through long, gilded halls. Maybe it’s the synthesized strings or some other musical aspect I’m not qualified to describe but it’s certainly fitting with the castle you’re given to explore.
I’ll personally agree with you that the series was no longer relevant in many ways, but lacking a distinct musical identity was not one of them. I chalk all that up to the fact that the man in charge of the series, Koji Igarashi, is an untalented designer. The best he could do was regurgitate Symphony of the Night onto handhelds with only a different magic system. He has no knowledge of how to build a 3D game and his attempts at doing so were just putting characters in long corridors with a combat system ripped off of better games, or his attempt at making something different with the horribly conceived Castlevania Judgement and all this is to say nothing of his abhorrent attempts to change up the story with everything from Castlevania locked in an eclipse in Japan to his fanboyish attachment to Castlevania 3. I do not believe that any of the aesthetic conventions of the series were the source of the game’s fall from the public mind so much as the fact that the guy in charge cannot design a game to save his life.
I personally don’t have a problem with what I’ve heard of Lords of Shadow’s soundtrack. I believe it has a different goal with its music than the rest of the series and I do not hold that against it or against the prior games in the series. In fact, I’m reminded almost of my favorite game in the series, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, which you did not mention in your blog. While the game was not as influential as Symnphony of the Night, Castlevania 64 (of which Legacy of Darkness is a director’s cut of) was received very well only to be later ostracized by the fanbase, and the new producer of the series, Koji Igarashi (who later went on to remove it and all the rest of the post-Symphony games he did not work on from the series’ main chronology). This game took a different attitude towards the game and did a good job of bringing the series into 3D. I attribute part of its success to the fact that it puts you into the castle, whereas games in the vein of Symphony of the Night have you looking at a cross section of the castle, removed from everything inside. When Legacy of Darkness/Castlevania 64 brought you into the castle, they did exactly what you wanted with the music and made it to support your surroundings which, for the first time, actually surrounded you.
^[11] That is the introduction to the game. The music is suitably moody and echoes through the castle, really emphasizing the imagery on screen and manages to do it while working in some classic melodies.
All this is not to say that a 3D Castlevania could not work using the type of music the series is known for. Legacy of Darkness and Lords of Shadow set out to be very different games than the rest of the series and their approach to the music followed suit.

i must say im really disappointed, disappointed in whining people who consider themselves castlevania fans yet when an epic game is in their grasp they shout blasphemy and disrespect to the amazing people who worked hard on this reboot.. look at the design, characters, levels, music and story its beautiful and original.

i consider myself the biggest castlevania fan and own pretty much all the games (except the fighting one on the wii which i wont talk about) and I never even considered LOS with the old soundtracks, it would not fit at all! people who say it would fit are gravely wrong. I love castlevania music, all of em I love them. but they seriously would not suit this reboot, some people are deff or dumb, perhaps both. and yes mabe afew tracks from SOTN would fit if done well, but SOTN is NOT the castlevania, everything turned too camp after that.. ironicly i love that game and it is one of the best, but alot of people have never played a castlevania game before that and some consider it to be the 1 to do justice to all the others, not true..

Gideon sir i applaud you, ignore these fools. LOS soundtrack is amazing, and it not generic i havent heard a score like that in other games? give me one?? the trailer sent me in chills of anticipation and hugely because of the score.. well done konami and i look forward to the next title immensely

I think this entire discussion is missing a fundamental difference between a movie soundtrack and a video game soundtrack.
A movie soundtrack has to be crafted to draw the viewer into the scene in a much more meaningful way than in a video game. A video game soundtrack, on the other other hand doesn’t need to do that to the same extent. The player is already immersed into the environment by virtue of the fact that they are in control of what is going on to a great extent. In contrast, a movie viewer is simply a bystander and needs more stimuli to immerse them in what they are watching. However, a gamer has different needs of the music in the game he’s playing. As an active participant in the action the music needs to entertain more and immerse less. In a game you don’t need the music to perfectly match the environment or bear the full burden of evoking emotions because the player is already there feeling the emotions that they feel in response to what they are involved in. That said, I find that the LoS soundtrack does do a good job of functioning like any Hollywood-style soundtrack should and it might have been great if it had been in a movie. However, as a game soundtrack it is a complete failure. Part of what makes a game memorable IS the music and this soundtrack is completely forgettable bland in general. I played through the entire game, and can’t remember a single tune, let alone hum one. However, even tunes from the Nintendo 64 games, which are not my favorite, linger in my mind and can be summoned at will. As of a couple of months ago the LoS soundtrack has the dubious honor of being the ONLY castlevania soundtrack ever to be deleted from my hard drive for fear that I could fill the space with something else I might actually WANT to listen to.

i think part of the issue is the fact that lords of shadows is neither a good game nor a good excercise in music: its music is incredibly compositionally uninteresting. it is Film Score: The Film Score, and lords of shadow is no better than god of war, an equally awful game. i could talk for quite some time about why lords of shadow is a horrible game (and, in turn, why god of war is as well) but that isn’t really the point. simply put, lords of shadows music is nothing remarkable; it pales in comparison to the osts of games like Nier or Final Fantasy XIII or Dark Souls/Demon’s Souls (which, incidentally, would probably better serve the idea of a wholly serious castlevania game far more than the filler score we had for lords of shadow).

i am a fan of castlevania games, and i do like the soundtracks although i don’t listen to them all that often anymore. lament of innocence was the peak, musically. and yes, to answer your question, symphony of the night also has a number of ironic or amusing flourishes. castlevania has never taken itself entirely seriously, and that has been the point; the music in castlevania is meant to fit, clash and entertain all at the same time and it does so remarkably well. lords of shadow’ soundtrack does only the first, unfortunately.

@ Vanya: I do admit that some tracks are forgettable, but there are a few that stick in my mind, belmonts theme being one of em, its so deep and gives the feeling of sadness and loneliness, the ice titan theme as well still echoes in my head i get goosebumps listening to it. most the score fits very well when your roaming or solving puzzles, in a way it was the designers intention of giving you that fixed camera to see the world they created from their perspective and inhale those scenes with the score playing, sometimes peaceful, sometimes eerie. Your right about the score being aimed at it being a film score tho, but perhaps its their intention of it being that way as they mentioned their reasoning of the fixed cam, their focus was taking you on a journey. the point i miss, and im sure you agree with this from reading your post is that the combat music wasn’t memorable, and that’s what the old castlevania games were built on, fighting hordes of enemies and figuring out their movements and attacks etc whipping away while having a faster more beating tune. maybe it would’ve been different if the designers just focused on constant combat and jumping around whipping candles and such, then it would suit the faster older score, I don’t know. thanks for the movie v game score input much appreciated, you learn something everyday.

@ Manfredo: I can see where your coming from mate, but what is a good game and what is bad? believe me ive played baaaaad games and there’s a big difference, bad games are games like Vampire Rain (check it on youtube lol) and Dark sector, but i still played em till the end because i liked the challenge. Niers music and lament were awesome too, but again they suited their games, I really like lament of innocence too as a game I dont know why people didn’t enjoy it. at the end of the day a good game to me might be bad for some, its all a matter of opinion at the end of the day. I understand where your coming from with regards to the game being story driven and not so much entertaining and playful, but that’s why it is called a REBOOT! thanks for the input

oh yeah forgot to type, hopefully the baroqu esque transilvanian oldschool horror music would be in the sequel, after all. there was no dracula in the first game 😉 so i can totally see them using more of the old music for it especially when approaching the castle. tis good to dream

Theres really no point in arguing this. Its so incredibly obvious that you simply don’t understand the series, specifically when you say “It’s abundantly clear that the Castlevania series has always been meant to be taken seriously”.
Its so incredibly incorrect (For gods sake, this is a series that has hollywood monsters, fleamen on geese and a skeleton that eternally chases its own head) that any further argument would be lost on you. Castlevania is defined by its challenge, level design, mixture of camp and seriousness and music. Lords of Shadow has terrible level design, is incredibly easy, far too serious and musically boring. Sorry, bro.

I had the luck of assisting to a mini-course imparted by Araujo this month, and I asked him THE question: Did you thought on getting old themes in the OST?
And his response was that they tried to put some classic Castlevania themes in the game at the beginning, but the old tunes just didn’t fit with the atmosphere. Everyone in the team feel that something wasn’t right, so finally they decided that every music must be done from scratch to match the game’s meaning