Over the Moon

Castles are always most beautiful during a
sunrise, aren't they? Especially when they're
about to crumble into dust.

It took twenty years (yikes), but thanks to the recently released Castlevania Advance Collection, I've finally beaten Circle of the Moon. What took me so long? Aside from misplacing my copy and a bunch of other Game Boy Advance games in a Detroit airport fifteen years ago, I dunno... I guess I just lost interest. Repeatedly. There's more than one way to play Circle of the Moon, of course, but I found that regardless of the format, I'd get about halfway through the game, tire of grinding for spell cards and items, and move on to something else. I'm fickle like that.

Not THIS time, though! I vowed that I would play the game from beginning to end, and after roughly twelve hours of exploring Casa Del Vania, endlessly whipping Arch Demons for their rarely relinquished bounty and shuffling a handful of magic cards, I finally reached Dracula. A dozen Thunderbird summons later, Vlad went down for another century-long nap, and I could finally move on to something else, without carrying around the residual guilt of unfinished business.

I'm talking like finishing Circle of the Moon was a dreadful obligation, and while that was true some of the time, I honestly enjoyed the overall experience. Is it the best game in the Castlevania series? No, not really. Is it the best game in the subgenre of Metroidvanias? Not that either. Is it the best of the three Metroidvanias on the Game Boy Advance? Er, no... but it sure beats the crap out of the tinny, dayglo nightmare that was Harmony of Dissonance! There, score one for Circle and me not wasting my time.

Anyway, I had a few stray observations after beating Circle of the Moon. The first is this... why are all the health ups in the form of a pitcher of Kool-Aid?

(image from Junk Food Betty)
(Junk Food Betty, wham the bam)

When you put it that way, it makes much more sense. Oh yeah.

Secondly, this game has a big thing for furries. It's not just the Robin Hood-looking Fox Hunters scattered throughout the machine tower, but entire corridors stocked with Hyenas, Werewolves, Were-Panthers, and Were-Bears, offering threats ranging from "eh, that'll heal" to "that frickin' punch took HOW MUCH damage?!" You start to think about halfway through your adventure that Dracula's castle doubles as the hotel for the Romanian branch of Anthrocon.

What else? I recently learned from the game's strategy Wiki (an invaluable resource, by the way) that Konami doesn't even consider Circle of the Moon part of the official Castlevania timeline. That seems a little harsh... sure, it's a little lacking compared to Symphony of the Night or the later Sorrow games, but in the distant, technologically-impaired year of 2001, Circle of the Moon blew minds and melted faces. Listen to that crisp digitized sound! Look at those detailed graphics! Wait wait, let me get this lamp closer to the screen... okay, NOW look at those detailed graphics!

It's hard to overestimate the impact of hearing the title screen music from the cutting edge Symphony of the Night, on a handheld game system, a year after quality-challenged Game Boy Color titles were the depressing norm. Frankly, no portable game system was punching at that weight... not the Wonderswan, not the Neo-Geo Pocket, and not even 16-bit systems turned into handhelds, like the Nomad and TurboExpress. Circle of the Moon has its problems, some stemming from being a freshman effort and others being inherent in the Metroidvania formula, but considering its advancements over past handheld Castlevanias, and the direction it paved for future titles on the GBA and Nintendo DS, it's hard to justify blotting it out of series canon.

Then again, retconning Circle means bitchy-ass Hugh Baldwin never existed, so maybe it's not that bad.

Pretty Sneaky, Sony

Remember when Sony planned to shutter its digital storefronts for the PS3 and Vita, leaving owners of those systems without a quick and convenient way to buy games for those machines? Luckily, consumers called Sony on its crap, and the company retreated from its original plan of... uh, planned obsolescence. The stores for both systems remained open (at least on those systems... they've been purged from the web store accessible from your computer), and fans breathed a sigh of relief.

Don't get too comfortable, though. Sony still wants to wean gamers from their legacy systems... they're just being craftier about it. Video Games Chronicle reports that starting on October 27th, if you want games for the Playstation 3 and Vita, your payment options will be drastically limited. You won't be able to buy them with PayPal or credit cards... just whatever credit happens to be in your Playstation account's wallet. Sure, you can buy credit online or from brick and mortar stores, but it will make future legacy purchases more inconvenient... and might give Sony an excuse to retire the PS3 and Vita's respective digital stores for good. And people wonder why I've shifted my allegiance to the Xbox. 

(Note: People actually don't give a damn about that, but if they actually were wondering, that's the reason.)

In non-Sony-is-full-of-douchebags news, the final fighter has been announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and it's...

That looks like a gas station logo.
(image from Smashpedia)

Er, no. That's the company that makes Super Smash Bros. Let me try that again...

image from Amazon

Yeah, the little dork from Kingdom Hearts, with the key-shaped sword and shoes Bozo might wear while going out for a morning jog. Any connections Sora has to Disney properties will be cut loose in his Smash Bros. appearance, which is odd as that's his whole raison d'etre. Without Mickey, Goofy, and Donald at his side, what's he got going for him? It sure ain't his fashion sense, or his Gordion-knotted storylines.

Speaking of confusion, the three mainline games in the Kingdom Hearts series will be coming to the Switch... except they'll be cloud-based and won't play on the system without an online connection. Look, I get that the Switch is a little underpowered, but it's also a handheld game system, and thus not always near an adequate wi-fi signal. Maybe Square-Enix should have made the visual compromises expected of Switch ports, rather than having the system dial out for an experience that's likely to be even less satisfying to players without Gigabit internet access.

One other thing. Nickelodeon's own platform fighter, All-Star Brawl, has just been released. So far, it's got just twenty fighters, a small fraction of what's available in Smash Bros. However, hackers have been nosing through the code, and discovered clues that strongly suggest there will be DLC characters in the future. Shredder's a candidate for inclusion, along with Garfield, but the most promising addition would have to be XJ-9, aka Jenny Wakeman from My Life as a Teenage Robot. If you've never seen that show, imagine all three Powerpuff Girls aged up a decade and welded into a tin can in a skirt, and you've got the right idea.

Direct to You

The recent Nintendo Direct has revealed games that were painfully obvious (Castlevania Advanced Collection, which was referenced in Australian content rating documents months ago) along with titles that came completely out of left field (ActRaiser Renaissance, a modernized version of the cult classic with polygonal graphics and expanded town building gameplay). The most surprising of these announcements was Kirby and the Forgotten City, a 3D platformer set in an abandoned metropolis. Yeah, his royal pinkness has gone all post-apocalyptic on us. I never would have seen that coming! 

Post-apocalyptic settings have been
done to death in video games as of late,
but this well-worn cliche almost seems fresh
again now that Kirby is doing it.
(image from game-news24)

Forgotten City also features stages that stretch out in all directions, letting Kirby explore at his leisure and adding depth to his copy abilities. Take Needle, for instance. Instead of just sitting there with his spines out, Kirby can roll around the playfield as a salmon-colored sea urchin, sticking to any foes unfortunate enough to be in his path. Some people are already fretting about Kirby's shift to a 3D environment, but personally, I'm eager to see what this will bring to the series.

The strangest announcement was the reveal of an expanded online service, which gives players access to a small pool of games originally released for the Nintendo 64 and... the Sega Genesis. Okay, I get the N64, but can't you play Sega Genesis on practically everything these days? Hell, there's a collection on the Switch right now. That's a library of thirty something games you can fire up whenever you like, and you don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee for 'em.

Similarly, Namco's arcade oldies, already represented on the Switch with Namco Museum, will also be released a'la carte, under Hamster's Arcade Archives banner. You know, just in case you didn't already have Pac-Man for a dozen other formats. I shouldn't complain too much... this opens the door to a lot of games that weren't included in the Switch version of Namco Museum, including Assault and Libble Rabble. It's just a shame that Namco made its Arcade Archives debut with... what else?... Pac-Man. The poor guy's jaw is gonna fall off at this point.

Speaking of all things Switch, there are a ton of games on sale at the eShop right now. We're talking the original Castlevania Collection, Axiom Verge, Borderlands, Valkyria Chronicles, Mortal Kombat 11, Blaster Master Zero 3, a dozen flavors of Mega Man... it's going to take a heavy toll on your wallet.

A Deluge of News

Whoo. Lots of gaming news has piled up in the five-ish finkel days since I've posted, so let's get right to that. The first is that video game box cover artist Mick McGinty (not to be confused with the man who broke Steve Martin's hand in The Jerk) recently passed away. Thousands of gamers on the internet have expressed their disappointment, but Street Fighter II's resident kickboxer Sagat is taking the news especially hard.

Next on the menu is an unexpected but nevertheless welcome Playstation Vita port of Space Cadet Pinball. This was the app included with early versions of Windows, that kept kids entertained on their parents' computers before the widespread adoption of home internet. Hey, it was either that or Minesweeper... for kids who wanted to lessen their boredom rather than increase it, the choice was obvious. 

Twenty five years later, Space Cadet still plays a mean pinball, and is well adapted to the Playstation Vita. Pressing X launches the ball, and the shoulder buttons swing the flippers. However, it's important to note that the game won't work at all unless you pluck some files from the original Windows version of Space Cadet and drop them in the appropriate folder on your Vita. Later versions of Windows don't include the game, but Groovy Post's Brian Burgess has a solution for that irritating omission. PINBALL.DAT is the bare minimum required for getting the game to work, but you're going to want all the WAV files too, so you can hear every funky noise as the ball slams into targets and slips past your flippers.

There was something else, I'm sure... oh yes, the long awaited and excessively hyped indie game Skatebirds sucks eggs. Look, I wanted this to be good. I'm a casual fan of the Tony Hawk series, and saw merit in a tongue-in-cheek parody with avian skaters. The whole affair feels soft boiled, though, from the camera that points everywhere you don't want to the samey characters who roll around on the floor like they never hatched after a wipeout to the ollie play mechanics that force you to hammer buttons like you're playing Joust to get any lift. After waiting so long for its release, Skatebirds was a nasty surprise, like when my cockatiel shifts the papers in his cage at night so he can crap on the bare floor the next morning.

Okay, okay, this is the news you really wanted to hear. There's been a massive leak of Dreamcast and Xbox prototypes... we're talking nearly 150 of the former and 350 of the latter. Most of these games ultimately found their way to store shelves, but a small handful were never released in the United States, particularly Shanghai Dynasty for the Dreamcast and Dinosaur Hunting for the Xbox. Special thanks to Hidden Palace for finding this deluge of software and sharing it with the world.

Now Hear This

I guess this news is as worthy of an update as anything else. After four years of digging in its heels and ignoring its customers' requests, Nintendo is finally letting players use their own Bluetooth audio equipment with the Switch. It's bad news for anyone who bought expensive gray market peripherals to get around this limitation (and the makers of the paint program Colors! Live, who had to include a wired stylus with the software because of Nintendo's senselessly locked down Bluetooth protocol), but good news for everyone else. Just install the latest Switch firmware update- and your JoyCons while you're at it- and you're in business.

Before I go, does anyone know how to connect USB controllers to a Super NES Classic? I got a couple of those 8BitDo SN30 Pros from ShopGoodwill, and they seem like they'd be a great match for Nintendo's micro console... except for the fact that there's no way to plug them into the system. The bitter irony is that you could plug them into a Sega Genesis Mini, but the button configuration is all wrong for Genesis games, and there's no guarantee the system would even recognize them. Damned if you Nintendo, damned if you Ninten-don't.

Tall Order of Ecclesia

So I was poking around the internet, and I came across this news.

image from Wiffle GIF

I'm qualified to use that GIF. See, I'm a grunkle myself.

Anyway, someone is working on a Sega Genesis port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Technically, it's less of a straight conversion and more of an adaptation, the way Dracula X for the Super NES was a reworking of the PC Engine favorite Rondo of Blood. The designer intends to make the game a more straightforward experience, with eight linear levels for both Alucard and beastmistress Maria. You can probably also count out the absurd amount of little details from the Playstation game, like the peanuts you catch in your mouth for a small health boost or the rainbow of jewelry that bestows elemental resistance or the shield spell that gives you the force fields from Gradius.

Strangely, I'm okay with this. I don't think it's a realistic goal for one developer to smash the entire Symphony experience into a Genesis cartridge. Besides, I've been worn smooth by the concept of the Metroidvania anyway. If you want that kind of game, there's always the original Symphony of the Night... or the very similar Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night... or Axiom Verge... or its recent sequel... or Chasm... or TimeSpinners... or any one of the search action titles that I gave up on halfway through. A classic Arcade-vania is just what the creepy beak-nosed medieval doctor ordered right now.

My major concern is how it will play compared to other Castlevania games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. The developer promises the same silky smooth animation as the Playstation game, but judging from the early test footage, it's going to take a while before this adaptation is up to those high standards. On the other hand, the backgrounds are already shaping up to be incredible, as you can see from this image taken from Pigsy's Retro Game Dev Tutorials.

I think the term "dayum" applies here. Similarly impressive is that the developer has already put the boss Granfalloon on the Sega Genesis, with the corpse-amari dropping its usual payload of zombies on the player's head.

It's probably harder to appreciate in 2021, but on the Genesis, where every programming victory has to be earned with blood, sweat, tears, and profanity, an enemy of this size and with this much detail is astonishing. And it frickin' moves! Bravo, Pigsy. Special thanks to Nintendo Life for spilling the tea on this unexpected (hell, nearly unfathomable) project.

Eight Way Third Degree Burns

It's almost fall. I've got one last chance to squeeze in a post before August comes to a close, so let's talk Hellfire.

Not that hellfire. By the way, who shouts "Dersh!" as a victory cry? That's the worst exclamation for a warrior since The Tick's "Spoon!"

Yeah, okay, that's the Hellfire I meant. Hellfire is an early Sega Genesis shooter tragically buried under an avalanche of early Sega Genesis shooters. Sure, it doesn't have the visual flair or the clever hook of Gaiares, or the blistering speed of Thunder Force II, or the depth and open level design of Granada. However, in keeping with Toaplan tradition, it's a hypercompetent shmup which makes its appeal obvious once you get used to the dull colors and questionable enemy designs. I still don't know what the hell this thing is supposed to be, other than deadly.

Unfortunately, Hellfire has one especially nasty fly stuck in its ointment. It takes a lot of inspiration from SNK and Tose's Vanguard, which puts emphasis on firing not just forward, but around your ship to take out dangerously close enemies. That's the good part. Hellfire is designed to force the player to frequently switch between bullet trajectories, to either concentrate fire on one target or to sink shots into cannons tucked between impenetrable walls.

Now comes the bad part. When you only have three buttons on a stock Genesis controller, you have to cycle through forward, back, vertical, and diagonal firing with button taps. In all fairness, the arcade game was like this too, but it's nevertheless awkward and counterintuitive, especially after forty years of twin stick shooters like Robotron: 2084 and Smash TV. Your mind is forced to find a perfect balance between dancing around the bullets Hellfire throws at you and hammering the bullet cycle button to find the right trajectory for the current situation. That inevitably leads to confusion, chaos, and ultimately, a fiery death from a collision your brain was too knotted up to notice.

What I'd like to see is a hack that removes the trajectory cycling button completely and replaces it with omni-directional firing, provided by the six button Sega Arcade Pad. Holding B fires forward, while holding X fires backward. Y or A fires vertically, while any combination of the two buttons lays down a spread of diagonal fire. Finally, Z or C fires the Hellfire cannon, a forward facing thermonuclear ray that scorches all enemies in its path. 

You could even adapt this control scheme to an older Genesis controller... it wouldn't be ideal, but it would certainly be an improvement over Toaplan's default setting. A fires backward, B fires vertically, and C fires forward. Any two buttons fire diagonally, and all three together unleashes hellfire on your enemies.

I'd like to see this happen, but I doubt there's enough interest in a crusty old shooter like Hellfire for anyone else to tackle this project, and I just don't have the mad hacking skills to make it a reality. Even making Peter Pan green in the Genesis version of Hook without everything else adopting the same hue was beyond my reach...

Green cherries. Mm, bitter and possibly toxic!