Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)

Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

Game Boy Advance

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the 17th 2D Castlevania platformer, Aria of Sorrow!

My gimmick this year is that I'm playing games you can find in a top ten list, and this one can be found in Nintendo Power's 20th anniversary Best of the Best list (in the 'GBA' section). It actually made top three, with the other two games being Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Metroid: Zero Mission. Hey I've played both of them already!

This was the last of three Castlevanias on the GBA, though the first to have a title beginning with 'A'. The series continued on the DS with a direct sequel called Dawn of Sorrow, which cleverly referenced both the 'D' and the 'S'. Sadly the adventures of Soma Cruz didn't get a second follow up on the 3DS, so we never got to see how they would've worked the number 3 into the title.

There'd been handheld Castlevania games for over a decade by this point, ever since Castlevania: The Adventure came out for the Game Boy in 1989, but whenever people talk about the classic 80s and 90s Castlevania titles they're generally talking about the console games. Something weird happened in 1999 though. Veteran game series were making the switch to polygons, with sequels like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Metal Gear Solid presenting a good argument for 2D being hopelessly archaic, and Castlevania was no exception. The thing is, Castlevania 64 was bloody terrible (I've been told), especially compared to Symphony of the Night from two years earlier. So when the 2D GBA games started mimicking Symphony's style and carrying on the 'music term of X' naming tradition started by Rondo of Blood, they were ones that came across like the true successors to the Castlevania franchise instead of the 3D games.

Anyway I'm going to play the first hour or so and write too many words about what happened. Plus there'll be screenshots! So many screenshots.

Indivisible (PC)

Developer:

Lab Zero

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

PC

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Hey, guess what I'm writing about on Super Adventures this week! Okay maybe the title screen makes it a little obvious, but I didn't see it coming. Here's a life hack: get amazing friends who'll occasionally drop a brand new game on you with no warning or explanation.

The least I could do in return was write about it, and I'm all about doing the least I can do, so here's my review of Indivisible, the latest game by the makers of Skullgirls. I don't know much about Skullgirls as I only play fighting games when I feel like mashing buttons and being humiliated, but I do know it's got some fancy cartoon animation so I'm coming into Indivisible with the preconception that it's going to look fairly pretty as well. I also know it's a bit of an action RPG inspired by Valkyrie Profile, but other that that I'm fairly clueless about it.

Super Panda Adventures (PC) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has returned to write about a game with the best title. It's literally 'Super Adventures', except with a panda in it! Now I just need to find a science fiction movie called Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Cat Adventures so I can manipulate him into to writing my other site for me as well.

Also I realise that this was published on a Wednesday, not a Monday, but mecha-neko has a fondness for his banner and I didn't have the heart to tell him he couldn't use it. I guess you could read it on a Monday if that works better for you.

Hello everyone! I hope the new year is treating you well!

Hmm... hands up who'd like to see a brightly coloured platform game about a loveable panda!

Developer:

Paul Schneider, BlueEagle Productions

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Release Date:

23rd April 2013

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Systems:

Windows

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With a title like that, how could I possibly resist?

Metroid Prime (GameCube)

Developer:

Retro

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Release Date:

2003 (2002 NA)

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Systems:

GameCube, Wii

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I'm trying to figure out what the game's moody title music reminds me of. I think it might actually be Deus Ex, but I feel like it could turn into Perfect Dark at any moment. Not a bad place for a theme to be.

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Metroid Prime, the sequel to the legendary Super Metroid! Well, kind of. It came out the exact same day as Metroid Fusion and I think that's considered to be the older twin (it even claims to be "METROID 4" when it starts up.) So I guess this is Metroid 5 then?

It's definitely not the fifth game in the timeline as they've slotted it in between Metroid and Metroid II for whatever reason. I didn't realise the Metroid games had enough of a story to require making interquels, but that's probably because I rarely finish the things. Plus it's been six years since I've played any of them and my memory's pretty fuzzy. Though at the time this was released fans had actually been suffering through an eight year gap between games, as the series skipped the N64 era entirely. The series also skipped the Wii U afterwards, fading away again despite the run of continuous Metroid Prime sequels and spin-offs.

Developer Retro Studios were responsible for the three main Metroid Prime games but after putting out the non-HD remake compilation Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii in 2009 they've been keeping themselves busy making Donkey Kong Country sequels instead. Though it was announced last month that they're taking over development on Metroid Prime 4! Is that a good thing? I wouldn't know, I haven't even played this first one yet.

Okay I'm going to play Metroid Prime for an amount of time somewhere between 'barely giving it a fair shot' and 'enough to bore the hell out of everyone reading', and take screenshots along the way. There will also be writing under these screenshots because... I don't know. Maybe I like writing about video games? No, that doesn't seem right.

Zillion (Master System) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures I've got good news! Mecha-neko's come back after a seven month absence to write another guest post, so I get to take the week off.

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Hey stranger-folk. I'm mecha-neko and today I'm playing a Master System game I found called Zillion. Or perhaps it's Z⚡LL⚡ON!

Developer:

Sega

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Release Date:

1987

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Systems:

Sega Master System

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Hmm, what to make of this? From the look of the pulsating ray-gun on the title screen, it's probably a light-gun game. But don't be fooled: the cat from Interpose (my very first Obscure-As-All-Hell Animated Cat Game August post!) twiddles ray-guns all over the place on his title screen, and that one turned out to be a side scrolling shooter. Yeah, that sounds right. "Zillion." It's like it fell right off the bottom of the periodic table or something. Gotta be a shooter.

In fact, the 27th of May is the thirtieth anniversary of Zillion! It was released in Japan on 27th May 1987. Happy birthday, Zillion! This post's going up a couple days late, 'cause cats work to their own calendar. (And I'm not making a new banner!)
But even so, why would I ever post another side-scrolling shoot-'em-up? You're just going to have to read on and find out!

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSX)

Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

PSX, PSP, PSN, Saturn, Xbox 360

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Today on Super Adventures I'm celebrating the 20th anniversary of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night! It was the 20th anniversary of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series a few days back and it'll be the movie Blade's 20th birthday next year too, so in retrospect the late 90s was a terrible time to be a vampire.

Speaking of things that happened in ages past, man it's been while since my epic marathon of all the traditional Castlevania platformers. "This is going to be the final Castlevania game I'll be playing for a long long time," I wrote at the end of my Castlevania Legends article, but I had no idea it'd take me 6 years to get around to the next one! You could make a third of a Duke Nukem game in that time.  Though in my defence I used to avoid writing about games I'd played before and I've actually beaten this one on the Xbox 360.

If playing all those classic Castlevanias taught me anything, it's that Konami were determined to get those Belmonts onto every system they could, and that each console had to get its own exclusive game. Seriously, to play the whole series up to this point you would've needed access to a NES, an MSX2, a Game Boy, a PC Engine with a CD drive, an X68000, a Mega Drive, a SNES and an arcade with the Haunted Castle cabinet. In this case though they skipped the Sega 32X due to it being dead and put their new 2D Castlevania on two consoles, the PlayStation and Saturn (with the Game Boy getting Legends instead and the N64 getting both Castlevania 64 and Legacy of Darkness two years later).

It was a bit strange though that Konami released this for the PlayStation, at least in the West, partly because Sony of America had a real hate on for 2D and partly because it's the direct sequel to a game that didn't get an English release until a decade later! In Japan the game’s called Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku (Nocturne in the Moonlight), because it follows on from PC Engine game Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (Rondo of Blood). This 'music term of the vampire-related thing' theme carried on through a couple of the GBA games until they started throwing in words like 'Dawn' and 'Portrait' and ruined the pattern.

Anyway I've waited long enough to give this a replay so I should get on with it. I hope I don't hate it now!

Rogue Legacy (PC)

Today I feel compelled by fate to take a quick look at genealogical Rogue-lite Rogue Legacy (not to be confused with PlayStation 2 JRPG Rogue Galaxy, which is something presumably very different.)

All I know about this game is that it's supposed to be ridiculously difficult and that someone thought it was worth gifting a copy to me just so they could watch me suffer, so I imagine this is mostly going to be screenshots of me getting my ass kicked on the first level and crying.

Though you won't actually see the crying part show up in the screenshots.

Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)

Today I'm finally getting around to Metroid: Zero Mission, only a year or two after it was requested. This is the fifth 2D platformer in the series and despite the name it's actually about bounty hunter Samus Aran's first video game mission, as it's a remake of Metroid 1.

I have played this one before, though just enough time has passed now for me to have entirely forgotten everything about it. I actually managed to finish the game... on the easy difficulty. This time though I'll be playing it on normal mode, so I'm expecting it to be closer to the original's level of challenge and kick my ass from one side of Zebes to the other.

Super Metroid (SNES)

By request, Super Metroid (aka Metroid 3 according to the intro text). It's always nice to get another game with 'Super' in the title onto the site.

It's not often you see a SNES title screen featuring corpses lying in pools of their own blood.

Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB)

For some reason I always assumed Metroid 2 was a NES game like Zelda 2 or Castlevania 2. But no, the franchise jumped to the Game Boy for one game, so I'm stuck showing black and white screenshots again. Sorry.

Metroid (NES)

Apparently Metroid is a portmanteau of the words "metro" and "android". Though that doesn't really explain anything.