"Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" Ultimate patch gets an updated forked hack with the PSX title and script
Last year, we covered a new romhack for the Sega Saturn release of "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" titled "Dracula X Ultimate" by Team Meduza, which not only did it completely translate the original game into English (since the original Saturn release of SotN never got an English release), but it also went above and beyond and implemented a whole lot of Quality of Life features into the game, like restoring many translucent effects, global map rework, support for the 4MB expansion card, bug fixes, a Hard mode, and a lot more, all this while keeping the original Japanese title for the game in a localized format for both the title screen and loading screens, with the title of "Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight" showing instead of "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night".
However, one key aspect of this project which was a detriment for many that used to love the original PlayStation release, was that this version of the project used the PSP re-release script and dub tracks instead of those from the original PlayStation release. For the unaware, the PSP re-release of Symphony of the Night, included within the "Dracula X Chronicles" game, which also included Rondo of Blood, saw the entire script and voice acting of Symphony of the Night to an updated version. This has been a point of debate between Castlevania fans, as some think the original script with all and its quirkiness had its charm, while others prefer the updated version with a more revised script.
Given this point of discussion between scripts of Symphony of the Night, the developers of the original Ultimate patch were not interested in reworking or making an optional patch that could include the original PSX script and voice actors, nor one that could revert the title screen to that of "Symphony of the Night", leaving many fans of the original PSX release and its script out of the really enjoying this new hack.
That all changed this weekend, as yesterday, November 2nd, 2025, SegaXtreme forum user, DraculaX350, forked the Ultimate patch and added back not only the entirety of the PSX script and voice acting, but also reverted the title screen and loading screens back to the classic title of "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night", as well as implementing a couple of bugfixes still found in the main Ultimate v1.5 patch, like a couple of weapons having the wrong palette, and adding missing sprite frames to Richter's new costume. And to wrap it up, DraculaX350 also modified the in-game font that Team Meduza used to use a more user-friendly font instead of the gothic-stylized font the original Ultimate patch used.
The full changelog of this new fork compared to the original Japanese release of the game is the following:
- Increased overall performance in the game (increased CPU frequency)
- Removed voids at the top of the screen in some locations
- Improved “Hard Mode” (enemies deal 2X damage)
- Added translucency of clouds against the background of the moon (flickering)
- Added translucency to the large window in Count Dracula's apartment
- The name of the current location is now displayed in teleport rooms
- Prologue Richter missing sprites rewritten
- Fixed the flame palette in the prologue (before the picture burns)
- Fixed a bug with the palette of a huge skull in an inverted castle
- Fixed minor bugs in pop-up messages
- Fixed “Fire Shield” color palette
- Fixed number of items overlapping the item name
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