Trivia / Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

• Acting for Two:
  • Maria's younger self and the fairies are both played by Hekiru Shiina.
  • Richter Belmont, Fake Trevor, and Shaft are voiced by Kiyoyuki Yanada.
  • Lisa and the Succubus are voiced by Rika Fukami.
  • Death, the opening narrator, the Ferryman and the Master Librarian are all voiced by Masaharu Sato.
    • In the original PS1 release, Death, the Ferryman, the Master Librarian, and the ghost priest are all voiced by Dennis Falt, although the priest's lines were Dummied Out.
  • In the PSP/PS4 rerelease, both Dracula and Death are voiced by Patrick Seitz in the English dub.
  • The ghost priest, Devil Familiar, Sword Familiar, and Shaft are all voiced by Tony Oliver in the PSP rerelease and versions based on it. This time, the priest's lines are used.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Whenever Dracula's famous question is quoted, the word "little" is commonly forgotten.
• Completely Different Title: The game's Japanese subtitle translates to Nocturne in the Moonlight.
• Creator Backlash: Takayuki Fuji, one of the game's musicians, isn't fond of the cut of "The Tragic Prince" that ended up in the game, as he neglected to tune his guitar before recording.
• Disowned Adaptation: Assistant director, programmer, and scenario writer Koji Igarashi wasn't very fond of the Sega Saturn port, which was developed by a different team (Konami Computer Entertainment Nagoya), as noted in the June 2007 issue of Play Magazine:
  "I understand why fans who've never played the Saturn version would be interested in those features, but I really, really don't feel good about them. I couldn't put my name on that stuff and present it to Castlevania fans." — Koji Igarashi
• Dueling Dubs: The PSP version, later released as part of the Castlevania Requiem bundle for the Playstation 4, vs. the original PS1 version, which can be found in the PlayStation Store for the Playstation 3, and the Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360.
• Dummied Out:
  • In the PS1 version, a glitch allows you to drop into a normally-inaccessible area with a save point. In the Saturn port, this can be opened normally and serves as the entrance to a Saturn-exclusive area. Also, Richter once had a taunt, a low kick, and a spinning kick that was eventually brought back.
  • There's a whole bunch of unused audio clips. Some are translated-but-not-used quotes that normally play over the Game Over screen in the Japanese version, some are mid-battle taunts, and some are alternate takes. Two particular fragments stand out. The first is extended dialog with Richter and Maria after saving the former, which is partially restored in the PSP/PS4 version by temporarily keeping them as NPCs. The other is dialogue for an unimplemented bad ending where Maria intervenes in the Richter fight only for Shaft's orb to then transform her into a boss monster, much like Annette's alternate fate in Castlevania: Dracula X and the Rondo of Blood remake, with Alucard lamenting her and Richter's deaths (see What Could Have Been below); according to developer notes by Yoshinori Suzuki, this "Black Maria" had full graphical assets with an entirely different set of attacks compared to what was used in the Saturn version.
  • Several items were cut, including a flashing treasure chest worth $5,000 (more than any other collectible) and graphics for what looks like a rainbow Magic Max Up potion (ala Life and Heart Max Up items) and two books (one with a hand on it and one with a question mark).
  • Several Cut Songs. The "Nocturne" lullaby would be used in the Saturn version under certain circumstances as well as the later Japanese 1.2 rerelease, and a rendition with English vocals was included in the PSP version. The foreboding "Silence" would be partially used in the Sound Test added to the English and PSP versions. Two sequenced tracks remain completely unused.
• Inspiration for the Work: Igarashi and the designers took a lot of cues from the The Legend of Zelda games when making Symphony of the Night. The game's exploration, backtracking, and the initial inability to explore the castle without the proper items and abilities all stem from this.
• Fan Translation: Gemini made a rather excellent Italian translation and English retranslation for the PlayStation version. There are also more recent efforts to translate and improve the Saturn version.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Shaft was cut out from Castlevania: Dracula X, despite appearing in the original PC Engine game (as Dracula X was a Reformulated Game on account of the lower memory capacity of the SNES's cartridge format), so most players outside Japan first knew about him in this game.
• Meaningful Release Date: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was released in 1997, a full century after the original Dracula novel was published in 1897. The game itself also takes place in 1797, a full century before the events of the original novel.
• Referenced by...: DragonForce has a song named “Symphony of the Night”. It’s lyrics are explicitly about this game, which shouldn’t be too surprising, as the members of the band are all huge video game nerds. They also sometimes play “Dracula’s Castle” during live shows.
• Sequel First: Unless you count Castlevania: Dracula X.
• Sleeper Hit: The game initially didn't sell particularly well between being a 2D game in the emerging 3D era and the lack of advertising. Good word-of-mouth eventually made it successful, turning out to be one of the better-selling games in the Castlevania series.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Kiyoyuki Yanada voices Richter Belmont instead of Jin Horikawa.
  • Chisa Yokoyama plays Maria Renard instead of Yoko Teppozuka.
  • Norio Wakamoto voices Dracula instead of Hiroya Ishimaru.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: For decades almost every website and guide, probably even here on tvtropes itself, has said that you need to beat the game once in order to unlock a Luck Mode playthrough. This has never been true and it can in fact be accessed right from the start, and the entire reason people believed it for so long was because the other special game modes require a clear file.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Another Rondo of Blood follow-up was in development circa 1994 for the Sega 32X^note incorrectly named Castlevania: The Bloodletting by fans, which may have been a tentative title for Symphony of the Night as Konami attributed it to a PlayStation and Saturn title, which would have featured different designs for Richter and an older Maria, as well as possibly a new rival character based on Richter's original design^note the rival character is unconfirmed to have been designed for this game specifically, but the fact that the Sega 32X was developed by Sega of America and this character was said to appeal to overseas tastes makes it likely. All that is shown of the game is some spritework of these characters. Several developers, including IGA, were reassigned to work on Symphony of the Night, and it is believed that Richter's sprite was reworked into Fake Trevor.
  • In a 1997 developer interview, IGA revealed that the initial plans for the story was to put it in the same setting as Castlevania: Bloodlines, with the first idea being to include the final Belmont as your enemy and another idea being to reveal that Alucard dealt the finishing blow on Dracula instead of Quincy Morris. IGA also stated that much of the planned scenario had to be cut due to pacing issues, including characters such as Elizabeth Bartley from Bloodlines and Gilles de Rais, the latter of which would go on to appear in the N64 Castlevania and Legacy of Darkness. In another interview at the time, IGA suggested that the reason Alucard can use holy weapons despite being Dracula's son is because his mother Lisa may be descended of holy blood, which is a detail that isn't mentioned in the game. This was to be expanded as an alignment system where Alucard would be in touch with his light side if he used subweapons a lot and dark side if he used magic a lot, which would've affected the ending, and some early subtitles were even proposed that highlighted this aspect of the game. Additionally, familiars weren't playtested extensively since the developers barely had time to add them to the game.
  • IGA also stated in pgs. 126-127 of The Dracula X Chronicles' official Japanese guidebook that storage and time were also factors in cutting many things in the planned scenario. Maria's boss fight for the Holy Glasses was indeed intended for the PlayStation version, meaning that the recordings present in the Saturn and PSP versions were all reused from the original development. He also suggested that the unused ending where Maria becomes a monster (see Dummied Out above) was one of the ideas he had if Alucard defeated Richter despite being able to see Shaft's ball, but in the final game, there is no difference in the ending if Alucard defeats Richter with or without the Holy Glasses equipped, only if he obtained it or not.
  • IGA revealed more during a "Devs Play" Special (times in notes). English narration was originally recorded for the prologue, but it was cut since it was considered absolutely terrible by the US PR people, though it was rewritten and re-recorded for the PSP version^note (25:09). The reason the menu screen looks so bare and ungothic is because it is a Permanent Placeholder that ended up in the final game due to time constraints, so IGA made sure that placeholders looked more polished as a rule in the future^note (28:32). In the PlayStation English dub, Alucard originally let out a Big "NO!" when Death takes his stuff, which even the Japanese developers realized was lame, so they scrambled through the recordings and found a "what?" clip that better fit the tone and asked if they can use it^note (35:39). A special move called "Darkness Edge" was to be used with the Sword familiar, with lines recorded for each character preparing the attack and then shouting "Darkness Edge!" together, but the developers couldn't figure out how exactly the skill would work in the game^note (1:04:09). Alucard would have had a bedroom maintained by a "Skeleton Carpenter" NPC who constructed more of the room over the course of the game and could decorate it with certain collectibles^note (1:06:27), which was to be located where the save room now is at the top of the Outer Wall^note (1:22:21 & 1:40:05). An idea was toyed around of a skeleton candlelighter who relit any candles you broke in order and quickly ran away if approached, but if caught and beaten, then the candles would no longer be fixed between screen transitions^note (1:07:46). The vase at the bottom of the Outer Wall was supposed to grow more and more roses over time^note (1:31:45). Finally, Alucard's Nightmare almost didn't make the cut in time^note (2:03:43), and the Succubus' toplessness was more evident in-game^note (2:06:44).
  • A conversion of the game was planned for the Game.com, but it was cancelled with only a few screenshots verifying its existence for a while... however, a prototype was eventually found and dumped, and Stop Skeletons From Fighting found out that it was actually SHOCKINGLY far along in development, with the game entirely playable from start to finish, and seemingly most of the game's content present and intact, albeit definitely in need of more development polish.

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