DankZone Studios Presents The Dankest Release to Date 🔥👀

We've been in the lab cookin' up something extra loud, so we skipped right past 0.7 and rolled straight into v0.8.1. Think high-grade visual overhauls, loading and startup improvements, and control upgrades so smooth they oughta be illegal.

This project is a dedicated one-man band. I've been grinding away behind the scenes to push this port as far as possible, and this build has had extensive playtesting, including confirming that quite a few classic speedrun tricks still work. My goal is to keep improving this into the best Castlevania 64 experience on PC. If you run into a bug, toss it into the Issues tab.

⚠️ Ray tracing is experimental. It needs a GPU with Direct3D 12 ray-query support, and it is off by default. See Known limits below before reporting issues.

📸 See it in action

Tower of Sorcery

Tower of Science

Tower of Execution

Gilles de Rais

🌿 What's new since 0.6.1

Ray Tracing: Pure Visual Gas 💡✨

Optional real-time ray-traced lighting and shadows (sun, moon, candles, torches, chandeliers, crystals and magical effects), plus water and crystal/ice/metal reflections, bump-mapped stone, brick and wood, and stage-specific atmosphere like mist, particles and light shafts. Outdoor lighting follows the game's own time of day.

How to turn it on: Settings → Graphics → Lighting → Ray Traced, then apply. Pick Original to go back to the stock lighting while keeping your other graphics settings.

Special touches:

• Tower of Sorcery: cold crystal-and-ice shading, cyan light, frost and luminous motes.
• Tower of Science: low green vapor, descending chain wisps, pale yellow opening lights and dust.
• Both towers have optional config files (sorcery-visual-profile.ini, science-atmosphere.ini) so you can tune the look. Close the game and back the file up before editing. Details are in the guides included in the package.

Original Presentation (F8): The Flashback Button 📺

Curious how far down the rabbit hole we've gone? Press F8 in-game to instantly switch to the original 4:3 aspect ratio, native resolution and frame rate, original lighting and native camera. Press it again to jump back to your enhanced settings. The key can be rebound under Settings → Controls.

Modern Camera: Smooth Rollin' 🕹️

Control the camera with your right analog stick. First-person mode is still intact whenever you need it.

• Enable it under Settings → Controls → Modern Camera. It's optional, and turning it off restores the native camera.
• While it's on, the legacy right-stick C-button defaults move to the D-pad during gameplay.
• The native R action recenters the camera.

Level & Boss Selectors: Choose Your Strain 🏰👹

Jump straight to your favorite stage or boss: 27 regular stage entries and 19 boss encounters/gauntlets, with character and difficulty (Easy / Normal / Hard) selection.

1. Enable Settings → General → Level Selector before starting the game.
2. Choose Stage or Boss, Test Character and Test Difficulty, then start the game.
3. Relaunch the game to pick a new selection.

Selector sessions don't advance or replace your campaign saves, and Save Crystals are automatically disabled while the selector is on. Turn Level Selector off before playing your normal campaign.

Unlockable bonus: finish a normal campaign on Hard to unlock two explorable ending areas, Forest Road and Cliff Overlook, in the selector. (Selecting Hard in the selector, or importing a save, does not count.)

Import Saves: Pack Your Progress 💾

You can now import your campaign from 0.6.1 or earlier supported versions.

1. Back up your complete old saves folder (all Controller Pak files) and keep your old install until you've checked your campaign.
2. Open the new launcher before starting the game and choose Import Save in the game options.
3. Select controllerpak_header.bin from the old saves folder. Selecting only cv64.us.1.0.bin may import settings without campaign progress.
4. Confirm the prompt. Conflicting files are backed up before anything is replaced.
5. Start the game with Level Selector off and pick your existing campaign slot.

Emulator save imports are currently untested, so use caution.

Mod Support: Fully Loaded 🎨🧩

Custom HD texture packs and general game mods were both tested and work out of the box.

Fresh menu font and UI polish 📜

A crisp new menu font, clearer Castlevania-specific control descriptions, a Test Rumble button with adjustable rumble strength, and startup/loading feedback, including a small corner wheel while ray tracing prepares.

🛠️ Bug fixes & cleanups

• Uncut campaign intros: fixed audio truncation so the narrator finishes his monologue.
• Menu book polish: the book graphic now closes at the right moment instead of lingering.
• Seamless campaign banners: menu images are realigned so they look like one continuous piece of art.
• Widescreen puzzle fix: resolved the text corruption on the 3 Goddesses puzzle at 16:9.
• Castle Centre jitter cure: fixed the post-3-Goddesses cutscene bug that left your character twitching until a hard restart.
• Castle Centre materials: entrance floor bump strength reduced by about 70% and wall trim corrected.
• Corrections to widescreen/ultrawide rain, HUD and menu alignment, camera cuts and character materials.
• The option formerly labeled "Note Saving" is now correctly labeled Save Crystals.

🖥️ Native PC foundation (retained from 0.6.1)

• Dynamic widescreen rendering: object visibility boundaries scale with your aspect ratio so things don't vanish at the old 4:3 edges. Original 4:3 is still fully supported.
• Ready-to-run Windows x64 build: no emulator setup required.
• Portable settings and saves live beside the executable.

📦 Installation

1. Download CV64-Ray-Tracing-1329-Windows-x64.zip.
2. Extract it to a new folder. Keep your previous installation and saves as a backup.
3. Run Play.cmd and select your own ROM when prompted.
4. Open Settings to choose graphics and controls. The in-game settings shortcut is Esc (keyboard) or Back/Select (controller).

🔑 Required ROM

This release requires the North American USA v1.0 version of Castlevania 64.

SHA-1: 989A28782ED6B0BC489A1BBBD7BEC355D8F2707E

Other regions or revisions are not supported. Verify your file's hash before launching. No ROM or campaign saves are included; you must supply your own legally obtained copy.

💻 System requirements

• Windows x64.
• A GPU with Direct3D 12 ray-query support to use Ray Traced lighting. Original lighting is available without it.
• The current Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2015–2022 (x64) may be required.

⚠️ Known limits

• Ray tracing is experimental. Whole-game coverage, startup reliability and formal performance testing are incomplete.
• Ray tracing and material quality vary by stage, view and effect. It is direct lighting with selected reflections and atmosphere, not full path tracing.
• Modern Camera can still struggle in tight spaces and scripted transitions. Disable it for native behavior.
• No FPS target is promised. Lowering resolution and anti-aliasing helps, and Original lighting is always available.

📁 Release files

🔒 SHA-256 checksum

CV64-Ray-Tracing-1329-Windows-x64.zip

📜 Source & licenses

The source corresponding to this release is available from the v0.8.1 tag in this repository. CV64Recomp is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3; see COPYING. Third-party software and assets keep their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and the third_party_licenses folder.

Castlevania 64 was built for the Nintendo 64. Now it's been fully recompiled, and completely blazed, for modern PCs.

🔥 Enjoy Castlevania 64: Recompiled v0.8.1! 🔥