Retro Gaming Australia

The best game in the GBA launch line up.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (or just Castlevania in Europe, again) was the first Castlevania game for the Game Boy Advance, and the second to use the free roaming structure set by Symphony of the Night. Unfortunately, due to its release with the original non-backlit GBA, a lot of players had a hard time actually seeing what the heck was going on when attempting to play.

Stop the zombie apocalypse with a water pistol.

Zombies Ate My Neighbours (or just Zombies here) was a collaboration between LucasArts and Konami. It was one of LucasArts’ earliest console specific efforts, mixing up classic horror tropes with LucasArts trademark comedy stylings. It’s a bit long in the tooth and quite unforgiving, but worth playing.

Another Gradius side story.

Gradius Galaxies takes place between Gradius III and Gradius Gaiden, with a previously forgotten Bacterion weapon being rediscovered and the Vic Viper being sent to destroy it. Pretty standard Gradius fare, though that’s not exactly a bad thing.

Belmont’s second GB outing.

Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge is the direct sequel to Castlevania: The Adventure, and is generally one of the lower profile entries in the series, despite being quite good.

Divisive.

Castlevania‘s first trip into 3D was well received by critics at the time of release, despite what they try to claim years later. It was cast out of series canon by series producer Koji Igarashi in around the time of the release of Harmony of Dissonance, though his official stance is that Castlevania 64 is now a side story.

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The Contra series’ darkest hour.

It seemed like a good idea on paper. Give Contra to a competent developer, bring it into 3D, make money. Unfortunately, the first part of this experiment, Contra: Legacy of War was a shameful effort. Yet Appaloosa managed to do worse on its second attempt – C: The Contra Adventure. These games are so bad that Konami refuses to acknowledge them as part of the Contra series. The game ended up being released exclusively in North America.

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Pretty much the greatest name for a video game.

Pooyan puts you in control of a mother pig defending her litter from hungry wolves. Often seen as one of Konami’s “forgotten” hits, Pooyan got a fairly hefty referencing in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. There is a mission where players must shoot down soldiers being lifted off by Fulton Recovery Balloons – it even has the original Pooyan sound effects.

Hideo Kojima has confirmed via Twitter that the version of Metal Gear Solid 3 featured in the upcoming HD Collection is based on Subsistence, not the original Snake Eater. He also confirmed that the redone versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake that were featured in the PlayStation 2 release of Subsistence will be included – in their low res glory, of course.

Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 were updated for cellphones early last decade. While they retain their distinct MSX2 attributes, the game’s character potrait art was changed to reflect the series’ post Metal Gear Solid style.

This means that if you buy the Japanese version of the collection, you get Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid (the Game Archive version via download code), Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3, with Peace Walker HD sold separately. Westerners lose out on the downloadable version of Metal Gear Solid, but gain Peace Walker HD.

There is no word yet on whether the version of Metal Gear Solid 2 included in the collection is based on the original Sons of Liberty or the updated Substance version.

Via Andriasang

The NES version of Konami’s arcade shooting classic TwinBee is the next game to be released under Nintendo’s 3D Classics line.

It’ll be out next week in Japan – August 10 to be exact, and will set you back 600 yen.

TwinBee is the fourth game to be released as part of the 3D Classics line. While early reports suggested that 18 games were planned for the line, Nintendo has indicated that only six were actually in active development, one of which – 3D Classics: Tennis – has been cancelled.

Via Andriasang

One of a handful of Contra games not released here.

Contra Force is the third and final game in the series released for the NES. It was originally scheduled to be released in Japan as Arc Hound, a title completely unrelated to the Contra series, but Konami decided to cancel the Japanese release and localise it for release in America as a Contra game.

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