November Rain

In the midst of the good news that suda51 is currently working on a follow-up to No More Heroes on the Wii, i discovered that the DS remake to his lost PS2 classic, Flower Sun and Rain has slipped out of the October release window and is currently scheduled to ship in November.

And that only in Europe region mind you as the game has yet to be picked up by any publisher stateside. This creates a problem, not many online stores carry PAL games and those that i know of have no current plans of bringing in this title. I haven't been buying much DS games since getting my new consoles but the upcoming Order of the Ecclesia has revived my interest in DS games. That coupled with the fact i recently stumbled onto a copy of grasshopper manfacture's Contact means that i'm running high for anything suda51 and Nintendo DS. Of course, all this craze is also partly attributed to GHM announcement of No More Heroes 2 during TGS 08.

Perhaps it's not such a bad thing that the game release date has slipped into November, i have way too many orders waiting to be ship out during the month of October and most are not even game-related. Given the current situation, i might just have to download the game to play while i continued my hunt for it. Chances are there might be game stores in singapore that will bring it in since the influx of PAL DS games into the region.

Dawn of a New Order

It seems that Play has wise up to their customers scheming ways. In the past, they would do partial shipment whenever the other items in your order is already in-stock but not without giving you the full discount on your initial invoice. That way, if you were to cancel your remaining order before it's shipped, you would have earned the full discount on only a partial shipment.

I have unintentionally exploit this to my advantage when i ordered Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow along with another game back when supply of the game was begining to become scarce and rumour started to persist about the low print run. Play partial shipped out the other game in the order which i believe was Sprung, discounted down to USD14.90 after the full USD5 discount. However they took a bit too long in securing new supply of Dawn of Sorrow and during the wait, i managed to buy the game at a local game store as i simply didn't want to take the risk. So i ended up canceling the remaining order with Play and in the process, earned the full USD5 discount on only a partial order USD19.90.

Things seem to have changed as Play have not partial ship my order for the upcoming Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia even though some of the items are already in-stock. Perhaps it has something to do with me using a bigger discount of USD10 off this time?

Order of the Day

I don't usually pre-order games aside from limited edition, the last being metal gear portable ops. However playing symphony of the night has got me all worked up that i decided to pre-order Order of Ecclesia from Play-Asia. After all, Castlevania games are notorious for having a low print run and tend to disppear off the shelf pretty quickly upon release.

I haven't decided yet whether i will play it as soon as i get it, seeing that i have yet to play Portrait of Ruins.

Bittersweet Symphony

Being an avid castlevania, Symphony of the night was a game that i have yet to play despite its huge accolades. Acquiring the PSOne really late when the system was on its way out, all i was left with were huge system sellers re-released on budget labels and some other late releases like Dino Crisis 2. Symphony of the Night was such an obscure little hit that it was very difficult to acquire it from game stores.

Having finished Jeanne D'arc recently , i thought of playing Symphony of the Night on the Dracula X Chronicles so as to drum up some hype for the upcoming Order of the Ecclesia released on the DS next month. I missed the sound of UMD spinning in the disc drive and it's always a good time to give it a good spin after running on the memory stick for so long. I always thought that the Dracula X Chronicles was a really good value for money as you are essentially getting three games for the price of one. I would probably have spent more time on it had it not been for the language barrier on the japan import, it's certain not impossible to play given Rondo of Blood distinctly old school lack of menu and text.

But Symphony was a slightly newer game with a little more emphasis on RPG so there was always that worry there. I'm going to try to play it on the import version and if it really does prove too difficult, there always the US version recently discounted on Play-asia. When i initially boot up Symphony, the graphics took a little getting used to as it was from an era of Castlevania that i was not entirely familiar with. Widely regarded as the pinnacle of the series, this should keep me busy for some time to come.

High for Five

Good news, Play-asia has already started taking pre-orders for the upcoming Resident Evil 5 due for release on 13th March 2009 and it looks like they are bringing in the collector's edition too.

Now the past few collector edition has mostly been Gamestop/EBgames exclusive so naturally were very difficult to obtain especially if you don't live in the states. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Ninja Gaiden Sigma were the most notable examples though some were still able to buy it off eBay but not without paying an arm and leg for it. Since i already missed the Collector Edition for MGS4 and DMC4 (and Sigma while we are at it), there is no way i'm not getting this one ! As you know i'm an absolute RE nut and so that's why i think i'll pass on the upcoming konamistyle edition of Castlevania: Order of Eccelsia in order to save for this one.

New Order

I pick this up today while i was at Borders waiting to pick up my Patapon tee from a fellow forumer. It's been a while since i got this excited about a DS title but i always had the problem of buying more than playing when it comes to the Nintendo DS. Part of the reason for this is because there are just too many great titles coming out on the Nintendo DS, especially during it's peak a couple of years ago. That's why i stop buying any new DS games after my last one which i think was Hotel Dusk. Now that the Nintendo DS has peaked and is slowly winding down, the titles are far and fewer but that doesn't mean the quality has diminished too. There is still this Castlevania title in the horizons plus another Ace Attorney spin-off from the minds of Capcom.

It's been a while since my last DS purchase, but i hope i will get to work on this game right away when it comes out unlike what happened with Dawn of Sorrow,Portrait of Ruins and the many other DS games i have picked up. Of course, with the propects of not able to track down a copy of Dawn of Sorrow soon after it went out of print and the pre-order premiums i didn't really have much of a choice then.