New Castlevania Patch Adds English Text, Speech

Saturn fans rung in the new year with an updated patch for Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight — or as it’s better known in the West, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The patch comes from a familiar group: Paul Met and Meduza Team, who first released a patch for Castlevania in September 2021 called the “Extended” version that improved the game’s graphics as well as sped up load times and start menu access.

But what the Extended version didn’t do was translate the game outside of a couple menus. That’s been corrected with this week’s update, dubbed the “Ultimate” version, which replaces most of the game’s text and speech with the script and audio from the PSP release of Symphony of the Night. It can be downloaded here, a Mega-hosted 7zip file linked to from a YouTube video that Paul Met uploaded.

To apply the patch, as specified by the readme that comes with the download, users should put a copy of the original Japanese game — in the form of bin and cue files — into the same folder as the unzipped patch files, then run the START.BAT file there. It should automatically patch the game in that folder, then clean up after itself by deleting the patch files.

One note for anyone looking to play Dracula X Ultimate on real hardware using a MODE: Derek “ateam” Pascarella said you first must create a file named mode.cfg in the game folder containing the line “Flags=11” or just manually disable fastboot and soft-reset. Otherwise, the patched game won’t run.

Other ODEs seem to have no issues running the patched game.

On the left is the new Dracula X Ultimate patch. On the right is the original game. In addition to English text, Richter’s portrait has been unstretched and his name has been moved below his portrait, plus the blue screen behind the portrait and text have been changed from mesh to true transparency.

Many of the standout features of Meduza Team’s patch originated with the Extended version from 2021 and have carried over to the Ultimate version; namely:

• Access the global map by pressing Up and Start at the same time.
• A hard mode accessible from the main title screen.
• Richter’s alternate costume is seen by default, although his classic outfit can be accessed by holding Up when selecting a character at the beginning of the game.
• If a 4 MB expanded RAM cartridge is present, the game will load assets when it first boots up to improve load times throughout the game.
• The start menu appears faster than in the original game (about 1 second versus 3 seconds, by SHIRO!’s unscientific timing using a RAM cartridge) and returns to gameplay much faster as well (2.8 seconds versus 4 seconds).
• Many mesh transparencies from the original game have been converted to true transparencies.
• Some graphics have been corrected to not appear stretched like they do in the original game, such as explosions and smoke, pickup icons, character portraits during dialogue, Alucard’s on-screen user interface, some background trees and bushes, etc.
• Press Start to skip cutscene videos and dialogue sequences.

On the left is the new Dracula X Ultimate patch. On the right is the original game. The trees are narrower thanks to the patch correcting their width.

Under the original title “Akumajou Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku,” Konami’s iconic sidescrolling platformer with RPG elements was first released in Japan on the PlayStation in March 1997 before coming West that fall with the name “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.” The company then ported it to the Saturn in Japan only in June 1998 but left the work to a group of younger developers who apparently struggled to make the game run well on Sega’s console.

The Saturn port is marred by horizontally stretched graphics — caused by the Saturn not having the option to run games in the same resolution as the PlayStation version, 256 by 224 — long loading times between areas as well as when bringing up or leaving the pause menu, and transparency effects that use mesh pixels rather than true transparency.

But the Saturn version also features quite a few bonuses that are not present in any version of Symphony of the Night, even in modern ports to the PSP in 2007 and cell phones in 2020. Those include Maria, a new playable character; the ability to play as from the beginning as Richter, who was unlockable in the PlayStation original; a third hand for equipping items to Alucard; two exclusive areas, Cursed Prison and Underground Garden; 18 new enemies and bosses like Efreet and Maria herself; 11 new weapons and items like God-speed boots; some new music; and Maria’s voice actress emphatically announcing the time by using the Saturn’s internal clock if the player idles on the title screen for several minutes.