A prototype of Castlevania Bloodlines that's even earlier than the infamous 0.5 build made its way out yesterday. Some more analysis here: https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php?topic=9526.0 Rom link: https://gofile.io/?c=h8KAdw Will this bring out the 0.5 proto or any other builds? One can only hope!
It only goes up to level 2 and just loops back to level 1 afterwards. I have no idea if there's a way to see if the infamous blimp level exists in this prototype or not. This is a fantastic find, however!
It's kind of weird that setting the region to "Japan" gives a "Vampire Killer" copyright screen but a "Castlevania Bloodlines" title screen, almost as if they were making this game more with the overseas public in mind.
Found the level RAM value, these are the inaccessible levels: FFFB2B:001BA Uninteresting fall to your death (clone of the water-rising boss fight, I guess). This seems to be there just in case that the player somehow managed to go back upstairs from the boss screen, but they messed up the player coordinates. =P FFFB2B:001BB Uninteresting copy-paste of a previous level but without water and a bad palette. FFFB2B:001BC Quick entrance to the Tower of Pisa. FFFB2B:001BD The non-leaning Tower of Pisa.
The Konami code on the titlescreen also opens up a level select, but it looks like you found all there is. My guess is they didn't have much of the game past the first two levels complete at this time, so they stripped it down to those two levels and got rid of the rest in order to avoid people from seeing the incomplete mess and getting a bad impression.
Ah nice, I'm glad to see this proto finally out there. I remember when it was still an auction and stuff :P. I actually really like the new title music. I'm currently looking through all of the stuff inside of the rom, as well as working on a in-depth proto comparison. I've actually managed to do some object hacking and have listed down all objects that are present in the game. It seems from my current impressions, there could have definitely been some stuff stripped from the rom, as there are some bits of art for some Stage 4 and 5 things, as well as some strange objects I had never seen before. Interestingly, this prototype uses what seems to be Rocket knight adventure's compression format for its level layout and art. Unlike the final version which uses what seems to be modified version of it (which can't be used with the "Rocket" format compressor/decompressor.). I was able to decompress the art and look at what was there. Here is a listing of what I've found. Code (Text): 00071302 - Skeleton Enemy 00071CAC - Skeleton Accessories 000720BE - Crow Enemy 00072516 - Zombie Enemy 000730FE - Bone Dragon Enemy 00073B52 - Bat Enemy 00073E4A - Stage 1 Boss? *00075760 - Unknown, it has a fireball and a lot of bonelike sprites, but I'm not sure what its supposed to be. *00076D74 - More unknown tiles. *00078EB0 - A large chunk of blank tiles with 3 orbs in them. 000790AE - Unknown, some kind of enemy. it has a face, but what it is i have no idea. I had trouble assembling it, so i give up 00079BE0 - Medusa Head enemy 0007A0F8 - Minotaur Enemy 0007AAD4 - Stage 2 Boss 0007C2E6 - More Stage 2 Boss Stuff 0007CF66 - Even more Stage 2 Boss Stuff 0007DAAE - Harpy Enemy 0007E4AA - Merman Enemy 0007FB1C - Hellhound miniboss 000810B6 - More Hellhound stuff *000818C4 - Stage 2 midboss (giant mace knight), *000822C8 - A very odd, what seems to be unused plant enemy. *00082C18 - The vine enemy from Stage 5 *00083A84 - Some kind of enemy, and some cannonballs? 00084B3E - Peeping eye enemy 000851A4 - Stage clear orb 00085358 - Debug Numbers 00085412 - An Unused enemy presumably for Stage 5, He has a fire attack and seems to hop around (!!) 00085D48 - Stage 5 Moth Boss from the unreleased prototype 0008748a - Boss Accessories for the Stage 5 boss. 00087D54 - 2 tiles and then a ton of blank tiles. clearly very unfinished. 00087E12 - Mummy enemy (Stage 3) 000887C8 - Main game font (Title/Option/etc) 0008892A - Title Screen Logo 00089B2A - Early password border. I believe this is also in 0.5 too, and maybe even in the final as well. 00089B40 - Character select art borders 000898F6 - A miniature version of the title screen. its loaded in the PLC, according to hex data, but isn't seen anywhere. 0008A46C - Character select fonts 0008A7D4 - HUD tiles, Pause logo (Unused), and selection cursor from title screen 0008C072 - Candles, Gems, Subweapons, 1up, Money, and other things 0008C8C2 - Subweapon Candle 0008C92A - Skull and Book Powerup 0008C9EC - Powerups for Eric 0008CB8E - Powerups for Johnny 0008CCE6 - Special subweapon icons exclusive to this beta 0008CE36 - Whip sprites 0008D490 - Powered up whip sprites and lightning whip 0008DB22 - Spear Sprites 00090210 - Spear special attack sprites 0009056C - Whip effect and enemy death effect 00090940 - What might be a falling chandellier. I think this may have been in Stage 5. 00090BE6 - 1-8 Swinging axe, 1-7 blood droplets, a chain and some other weird things. 00091226 - 1-7 rotating trap spike platform (it's also used as a placeholder for the logs in Stage 2) 00091566 - Some unknown thing, Stage 3 leaning tower platforms, Water surface, and the log tiles to those platforms in S2. They aren't used in this build 00091820 - Seemingly some pillar tiles either to Stage 2 or Stage 3. 00091976 - Door 000919d4 - Door Open 00091d16 - Stage 1-2 Art 00092240 - Stage 1-2/3/4 Art 00093302 - Stage 1-2/5 BG 00093652 - Stage 1-4 Art 00093C2E - Stage 1-6/7/8 Art 000946D2 - Stage 1-7/8 FG 0009554a - Stage 1-9 Skeleton 00095dA8 - Stage 1-9 BG and FG 000965D8 - More FG Stuff 00097594 - Stage 1-10/11 FG and BG 00097ADA - Stage 1-11 Castle BG 000985A4 - Stage 2-1 BG 00098A60 - Stage 2-1/5 FG 00099204 - Stage 2-2/3/4 FG 00099AB2 - Stage 2-2/3/4 BG and assets 0009AF7C - Stage 2-5 BG and Head 0009BB96 - Stage 2-6 BG/FG and some boss stuff? 0009C680 - Stage 3-2 Art and BG 0009CE68 - Stage 3-3 FG Art 0009D1D2 - Stage 1-1 FG and BG Art 0009D892 - Stage 1-1 Animated Grass 0009DB2E - More Stage 1-1 FG tiles 0009DFA0 - Animated Grass Frame 2 0009E248 - Animated Grass Frame 3 0009E4EC - Stage 1-1 FG Art Continued *0009F2E2- Stage 1-1 Clouds at the top of the stage. *0009F44E - Stage 4's Boss 000A04B4 - Mace Enemy from Stage 2 *000A106C - An early Frankenstein, presumably from Stage 4 000A2542 - Water Magician miniboss from 2-3 I'm gonna keep combing through stuff to see if I can find anything else. Level-wise, 3-3 seems to be the last entry, internally. there are no other levels on the list. so no later levels it seems.
The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive wasn't exactly selling like hotcakes in Japan but was doing pretty well in the west. Konami seemed to have jumped on board with the Genesis in 1993... right around the same time the PC-Engine started to lose steam in Japan - starting with Rocket Knight Adventures. I'm guessing ever since RKA, Konami had planned to make a Genesis Castlevania game made for the west, and when they eventually got around to it, we got Bloodlines. Also, aside from the first couple of Castlevania games - they don't really sell well in Japan. I'd have to dig to find the raw sales data, but it seems like Simon's Quest kind of killed the franchise in Japan (The Famicom Disk System version of Simon's Quest has loading times that make Sonic 06 jealous, for what it's worth). For all intents and purposes - Castlevania is a franchise aimed at the west through and through.
I'll sum it up just in case this info means anything someday. The 0.5 build was sold on eBay in the early 2000s by a user named TARA200. Collector Niels bought it and years later sold the ROM for $3k to the guy who, after holding onto it for the past several years, shared the ROM today. The original plan was to use the cut stuff from it and hack it into the final to make it into some sort of ultimate edition, but it never was fully realized. I originally owned the 0.1 cart and traded the guy for his 0.5 ROM back in 2016. I've been messaging him sporadically the past few years asking if he'll finally release it since I eventually did put the 0.1 ROM out there myself. Yesterday I emailed after not being in touch over a year and he surprisingly was very quick to just say yes and release it. There's a couple more builds out there that I'm hoping to still track down and hopefully get released some day
Thanks for the clarification! I assumed that this was an even earlier prototype, but it turns out it's an intermediate of sorts. So 0.1 and the European beta were released first, and now 0.5 is the most recently released. The walking animation for Eric in 0.5 is the same as in 0.1 - he holds the spear on his shoulder. Oddly enough, here's the progression of death animations throughout the versions: 0.1 John Morris instantly turns into a pile of bones, Ghosts 'n Goblins style Eric just stays on the ground, no spear impaling occurs 0.5 John still turns into bones, but the animation is more detailed. I guess they realized the GG style death was too cartoonish when the rest of the game is supposed to be kind of gruesome. For some reason the last frame of animation doesn't look right though - it contains the same graphics from 0.1, but it seems like they screwed up the mappings. Eric gets impaled Final Since they couldn't figure out a proper bone animation, John just gets MS Painted out of existence. Eric is the same as 0.5
