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To this day, a lot of gamers are convinced that Castlevania Dracula X is a port of the PC Engine Akumajo Dracula X: Chi No Rondo. The general consensus online - at least that I've seen - is that the game sucks because Konami "screwed up the port" and left just about everything from the original PC Engine game out of the SNES version. This is simply not so. Castlevania Dracula X was not a port of the PC Engine game. It was never intended to be. The Japanese title of the game is Akumajo Dracula XX. Everything about the game is different from the original PC Engine game. Simply put, Castlevania Dracula X is the sequel to the PC Engine game.

However, there was a Super NES game released that was intended to be a direct port of the PC Engine game of the same name. However, since that series didn't have the kind of popularity that Castlevania did, its butchering went largely unnoticed by the general gaming populace that raised such a stink over the "screwed up port" of Akumajo Dracula X: Chi No Rondo. The game was Valis IV... and it's SNES counterpart, Super Valis IV, is a pale shadow of the original PC Engine game.

What went wrong? What happened to the SNES game?

For starters, the status display from the PC Engine game was removed and replaced with a new one. Okay, that's not a very major thing - however, it's indicative of the entire weapon power system being changed, which it sadly has been. Not good so far. The names of some of the bosses were changed - for example, the last boss, Galgiar (aka Garugia) was named King Gallagher in the SNES game. Gallagher. Right. That name makes me think of the comedian that smashes watermelons with a giant mallet, not some evil demon lord or whatever Galgiar is. That's annoying, yes, but still not too big of a deal. However, one thing the Valis series was known for was its absolutely gorgeous cinema scenes that advanced the story, a la Ninja Gaiden. These cinema scenes, for the most part, are completely gone from the SNES game. The only remaining ones are the opening, the cinema scene right before you fight the final boss and the ending - and those were severly altered from the PC Engine originals. You have no idea of what's going on in the game - Lena hops from area to area, moving from Vecanti to Castle Vanity to Babylon to Valhalla and so on. Because of the total lack of story, you have no idea why Lena's heading to these places. There's just no sense of involvement, like the earlier games in the series had.

The most glaring problem with the game, though, is this: in the PC Engine game, you controlled three characters, just like in Valis III. There was Lena, her sister Amu, and Galgiar's father King Asfal (which was a first for the Valis series, as all of the prior playable characters had been female). In Super Valis IV, you get just one character - Lena. That's simply inexcusable. When Valis III was ported to the Mega Drive from the PC Engine, there were some slight changes (a few levels were lost along with one cinema sequence), but all three playable characters (Yuko, Cham and Valna) were left intact. Removing both of the other playable characters from the SNES game was a crime on a par with what Capcom did with the original SNES version of Final Fight - you know, omitting Guy and the the two player simultaneous option completely? Neither company had a good excuse for doing what they did to these games - Capcom rushed Final Fight to get it in stores when the SNES was released, but Telenet didn't have that kind of deadline. The only reason I can think of that Super Valis IV was changed so much from the PC Engine original is sheer laziness on the part of the programmers.

Super Valis IV could have been a top-notch port of a great game, but it wasn't meant to turn out that way, apparently. On its own, it's still a decent game, but the PC Engine game is far superior in every respect. For some reason NEC passed on releasing Valis IV for the Turbo, so unfortunately the SNES game was the only version we got here in the U.S. It's a shame, really... and for those of you that still complain about the "botched port" that was Castlevania Dracula X, take a look at a real failed attempt at a direct port of a fantastic PC Engine game, and be glad that Akumajo Dracula X wasn't disgraced like Valis IV was...