Vampire Killer SCC

Nice, great work!

Fixed the link.

Jan, great work and great to hear from you like this after so many years. What a hell of a come back.

Going to check it out right after I've done the laundry.
Awesome game, and the PSG sound track wasn't half bad to begin with.
Looking forward to hear what you've done with it!

[edit]
Wow! Just .... wow!
Any chance of you giving Metal Gear an audio overhaul?

I tried quickly on real Turbo R. Musics sounds well adapted. Great work.

Wonderful work, really, Janvv!
We all are very pleased to see so many enthusiastic people interested in the beloved Msx Games!

Soooo great

Yes... but... now you have a problem... We want moreeeeee!!!

Thank you! I am definitely interested in doing another game at some point. Maybe Metal Gear, Maze of Galious or Penguin Adventure. It’s a lot of work though so I am going to tale a little break first

Wow, great work !

Great job! And welcome back, janvv!

Nice, great work ! The music is awesome

Awesome job!!! Thanks for removing any doubts that the MSX version is the one true first version of Castlevania!

And like many others: here is hoping that other PSG only greats like MOG, MG, Penguin Adventure or Hinotori will some day have a similar nice SCC experience! But for now, time to get whip Dracula's A$$ in even more style than before!

Thanks for all the comments everyone, it really means a lot!

Thank you for such awesome work!!!

Wow, that's a great achievement! While I really like the PSG music, here are some fantastic renditions!
Maybe a stupid question as I haven't tried yet, but can one apply multiple IPS patches? As for Vampire Killer we have a few other great patches, like the turbo patch and the CastleVania patch.

The Turbo (and other improvements) patch from FRS are already included in this patch. The Castlevania patch is for another .ROM so won't work.

Not sure to what extent you're serious or not ;-) But to remove further doubts, according to what I've learned:

a) 悪魔城ドラキュラ Akumajō Dorakyura FDS was release *before* Akumajō Dorakyura MSX (Sep 26 & Oct 30 1986 respectively). For Europe, I believe, VK MSX (1987) came before CV NES (Dec 1988), not sure if NA's NES release (May 1987) did or did not predate EU VK release;
b) technically MSX never knew 'Castlevania', being dubbed Vampire Killer (in the West).

(Sorry for being a bit of a nitpick/wise-ass perhaps )

I will dedicate my next post to JH

-edit: interesting: on the back of the EU release there's the heading Dracula's Satanic Castle.
I see 悪魔城ドラキュラ Akumajō Dorakyura often being translated as Devil's Castle Dracula (bit weird IMO) I'd rather translate it as Demon(ic) Castle Dracula myself, but perhaps the proper translation would indeed be Dracula's Satanic Castle?

And the arcade version was called Haunted Castle. They sure tried a bunch of things before settling on a name for the west .

Looking forward to that, seems like an interesting story!

@Ren: I meant that it was was the one TRUE first version of the series; especially now. (was actually jokingly not acknowledging the NES/ Famicom game even though it is good, but because I prefer the MSX version)

Yes, it is widely known that the FDS version is released before the Japanese msx version. But the MSX version was in development first. So the series originated on MSX; the Famicom team played catch up some time after start of development, then they both developed in tandem and then just happened to finish/ release first. And that is not surprising seeing levels and mechanics are greatly simplified.
I was not being literal about it being called Castlevania; at the time of the FDS and Famicom versions Castlevania didn't exist either since the name was thought up much later for the NES release. Kenji Hiraoka (founding director of Konami UK) was the one who came up with the the name "Vampire Killer".

I don't remember where I read it. It was a long time ago. I do remember that it was one of the series' directors who said that the development started on MSX.

Huh, Hideo wasn't a director for this series in the beginning?

JK: many of these stories are similar since often stuff got done simultaneously. Snatcher also got done mostly simultaneously with the PC88 version but in that case the PC88 version was the leading one and the one that got released the first.

My compliments again for this fantastic work, janvv!

BTW, here goes a bonus tip: The WYZ's patch for the drum kit can be applied on the Nemesis-3 ROM beforehand, and later use it for the Vampire Killer SCC patch. This will make the music even more awesome.

@Randam What/who are you addressing?

@ARTRAG: yes

Probably not, but the code for the patch is open source, so if anyone is interested in porting it to the Castlevania version then I would encourage them to do so.

Such a lovely 1:50-long tone.

Thanks!

Thanks man I'm really pleased that you noticed those things.
Before I arranged each song I listened to the NES version, and any other versions I could find.
I wanted the music to be different than the original MSX version, but I also wanted to stay true to how Konami intended it to sound.
Thanks for posting that.

Could this mean that the MSX version was made before than the NES version?

I always thought that the MSX version was finished before, but releasing on cartridge (production time) takes more time than on disk.

For example, "or 00100100" must be replaced by "or 10100100b" in vkiller_scc.asm (line 135).

https://bitbucket.org/jan11011977/vkiller_scc/src/0cdde5f7bb...

In Rom image this is the 24h at address 021FFFh that must be replaced by A4h.

Edit: Only with this modification the patch for JoySNES works! :)

This patch changes the drums of Stage 1 music or all stages?
Why did not you correct the issue with PSG I/O (register 7) at the same time?

021EFFh

Nice to see all these fixes so we can end up with a "perfect" version

WYZ, Your drumset makes better on emulator but I hear almost no difference on my Turbo R. Maybe the Turbo R needs sound fix.

Sorry the right address is 0021EFFh.

Mercurial repositories is no more. Wondering if I can still get the source code repository somewhere else. Thank you!

We archived it here: https://github.com/peterhanraets/vkiller_ssc

Wow! I'm surprised with the Audio Quality of my Sanyo WAVY 70FD MSX2+ Computer because this model is very well known to have a bad Cartridge Audio Mixer then I decided to eliminate those lines installing two(2) RCA AUDIO connectors and re-routing CARTRIDGE AUDIO IN to the back of my Computer from there to my Roland M-12 Mixer.

Youtube Video

@sdsnatcher73: "Nice, the audio fix as documented by FRS for the PHC-70FD actually turns that machine into one of the best (audio-wise)."

Sorry, but this not an audio fix is just cutting traces from SLOT cartridge 1 and 2 and re-routing in the back of the computer mod adding RCA female connectors.

Well, I sent my SCC+ Audio Cartridge to a hardware guru in Italy ( I don't remember his name right now)
This the picture of my PCB.

I understand what you did was not the audio fix ;) It was just a comment that with the actual audio fix the machine sounds really good with external cartridge sound through internal mixer. I had it installed in a PHC-70FD2.

Nice modification on the SCC+. I never saw it before (just the 128kB I knew).

I followed the instructions on github but I can't seem to create the vkiller_scc.rom.
Any pointers? What has to be in what directory? And why/how to use sjasm in this?

Thanks, found it!