Castlevania Adventure: ReBirth

[isfet]

oh, this is worth mentioning for anyone who might play this game on an HD set.  you MUST set you Wii's aspect ratio to 4:3 instead on 16:9.  why, you ask?  because the game looks about a thousand times better at that ratio.  not only does it fill in the whole screen, but you can see the actual spritework!  no dumb soft-shading filters.  it looks like pure 16-bit goodness.

Matt, this doesn't apply to you since you probably already have your SD TV set to that, but i'm curious how it looks on your TV.

[dmauro]

So is it running in 480p or are they doing that 480i bullshit they did with MM9?

[FortNinety]

Matt, this doesn't apply to you since you probably already have your SD TV set to that, but i'm curious how it looks on your TV.

What do you think? Until there's an HD set that makes everything old look just as good, I'm sticking with my CRT. Game looks very nice, easily the best that ReBirth has to offer.

[isfet]

damuro:  not sure what it's running in.  but as far as i've learned, the widescreen on Wii is kind of a faked widescreen, so for whatever reason, some stuff just looks better at 4:3.  i'm not trying to figure out why, it just looks better.

[FortNinety]

Mega Man 9 is just a weird one. The visuals themselves is something a NES could have produced, but all the transitions are modern and way out of place.

[dmauro]

EVERYTHING on the Wii looks better in 4:3 unless you really like weird horizontal aliasing. Everything that comes out of the Wii is either 480p, 480i, or 240p. It can't do widescreen, it can only generate a squished image that is the right form factor when stretched out to widescreen. Compare Brawl on an HDTV and on my arcade cabs and you'll see the difference.

Matt, you should get an EDTV. If you REALLY want old games to look good, you have to go to progressive scan

[isfet]

oh, Matt, important info for this game re: level select.

someone on Select Button figured this out

Figured it out, all you have to do is select Game Start at the title screen and hold right on the d-pad for a few seconds. You'll be able to select any level you've already reached on the same difficulty.

obviously i haven't had a chance to try it out, but that makes things a lot more reasonable.

at first i had though that no save was kind of cool and "old school," until i remembered that every CV since the second game has either had passwords or a save function.

[isfet]

i finally had some time to beat the game tonight.  really fantastic.  Stage 5 is totally masterful in every sense of the word.  the game really comes into its own from Stage 3 on, but 5 is just so much fun and such a trial.

the game actually has me excited about Castlevania again.  after beating it, i immediately started over from Stage 5 again and played to the end.  if anything, it really reminded me what i enjoyed so much about this series before it became such a fucking mess of generic-anime garbage and terrible level design.

maybe i have rose-colored glasses with this since the game actually plays like the Castlevanias i enjoy, but i'm pretty confident the game is at least a B+ regardless.

Dave: you have a modded Wii and you can turn the sound effects off entirely.  play this damn thing.

[dmauro]

I don't want to play it without sound effects. And I don't want to play it with bad sound effects. I hate to say it, but I don't think I'm gonna play without someone putting me in front of it and making me. Sound effects are a Big Deal for a game.