Green with Envy

I was out yesterday catching the new Hulk movie which i have been waiting forever to be released ever since they casted Edward Norton and Liv Tyler. While I was shopping with my friends who were eager to get the new Metal Gear Solid 4, I happened to pick up a game of my own.

It was something i have been looking for quite a while and after seeing it lying in this particular store's shelf gathering dust i just had to rescue it and add it to my collection. Granted, it's not a legitimate copy and I probably won't get to play it until I visit my uncle's place and borrow my cousins' GBA but it's still a cool find nonetheless.

The only Gameboy Color game in my collection right now and it will sit very nicely alongside with my original Gameboy games collection. The only question is how long will the battery backed-up save last?

So what's next? Metal Gear: Ghost Babel? The search continues...

Hot Coffee

After going through three episodes of Phoenix Wright, it's finally time to bid farewell to Nick and the others. Though they were released over the span of a few years on the GBA in Japan, Capcom had a lot of catching up to do when they decided to localized it for the Western market. As a result, us english-speaking fans got to enjoy the courtroom drama, all the three episodes in the span of less than two years before the newest episode featuring Apollo Justice arrived.

Honestly speaking, the main attraction of the series has always been the characters and the drama so there really was no reason for Capcom to "reboot" the series as they did with introducing Apollo Justice. Perhaps Capcom felt they have taken the previous storyline and cast of characters as far as they could, no one really knows. This final part of the first trilogy is by far, the best one so far every case ties all the earlier loose ends pretty well and the last case has to be seen to believe, as it feature all your favourite phoenix wright characters in one case. The enigmatic Godot is one of Capcom's most memorable character and it's a shame we won't get to see anymore of him.

Perhaps i could have taken a special liking to him because he was voiced by hideki kamiya in the japanese version...i'll sure miss his coffee proverbs

Code-breaker

Even with the two current handhelds, i have rarely played a handheld game devotely for some time now. Not even with the latest God of War PSP game, but Circle of the Moon recently had me playing religously all the way till the end, despite being a japanese import and i had to refer to an english script translation just to keep track of the storyline. It actually wasn't the storyline that kept me engrossed but the tight gameplay and finely-knitted level design that made things interesting enough to keep me hooked. I finished the game after having clocked 9 plus hours into it and the games' storyline and ending seems like a remiscent to one of the very first Castlevanina games i played, Belmont's Revenge on the Gameboy. Seeing that Konami decided to skip the Gameboy Color during that time by not releasing any Castlevania games on that platform, Circle of the Moon is a memorable return and an early sign of the great success that Konami would soon enjoy on the platform with its Castlevania series.

However if only the game didn't run into some slowdown issues whenever the action is too intense, it would have been worthy of the high praise and score that Gamespot bestowed upon it. Some fanboys call it "bad-coding", the fact that Circle of the Moon was one of the early games in the Gameboy Advance library certainly points towards that. Save for perhaps the last boss fight with the transformed Dracula, the game wasn't too overly difficult to the point where it was impossible. In fact, having just come off playing Rondo of Blood must have helped a lot, as i had a greater endurance to withstand and replay again and again some of the more difficult the boss battles. In the end, i manage to unlock the magician by inputting the password FIREBALL as the player's name which i have yet to try out.

Devil At Work

Castlevania fans are pretty divided when it comes to their opinion on koji igarashi, the man currently at the helm of all things castlevania. Some think he is the best thing to happened to Castlevania, since he was responsible for the most popular Castlevania game Symphony of the the Night while others just think he's the devil at work. For myself, i don't have much of an opinion on igarashi-san since i was a castlevania fan before the Symphony of the Night-era where the baton was officially handed to igarashi and he became responsible for the direction of the series and every Castlevania game to be released. From what i can tell, the guy seems to have a real passion for Castlevania and is trying his level best to keep Castlevania relevant and successful, what with the series having been around for 20 years now. Sometimes it's nice that the people responsible are as much of a fan as everyone else but we all know that passion can't be accounted for talent. His Castlevania are often criticised for having bad level design and poor attempt at storytelling though to his credit, i must say writing a good dracula story is never easy, just look at Van Helsing. Perhaps for those very same reasons Circle of the Moon, one of the few Castlevania games released after Symphony which did not feature iragashi was so highly regarded.

One of the last few Castlevania game to come out of Konami Kobe, the studio responsible for the Castleavania installments on the NES, Circle of the Moon was released as a launch game for the first Gameboy Advance in US, it's initial success was slightly marred by the fact that it was designed to be played with a backlight, something the original Gameboy Advance lacked. It was and still is the highest rated GBA game on Gamespot and has gone down as one of favourite of the series. Well playing for the first time, i must say it is harder than most recent Castlevania with the exception of Rondo of Blood, which was actually a remake of an old Castlevania game. Apart from that, it's quite hard to tell it apart from the other Castlevania games by Igarashi but isn't that the beauty of Castlevania? It never strays too far from it's winning formula and after two attempts to make the transition to 3D, i'm not sure if i would like see a third. However i get the feeling that people have under-estimated igarashi talents and that he will be recognised for his other contribution to Castlevania apart from Symphony. Of course, we are still waiting for this to happen.....

Wii-make over

Everyone complains that the Wii has become the dumping ground for cheap ports and remakes by developers looking to make a quick buck. A similar trend happened to Nintendo's own handheld Gameboy Advance a few years back where a flood of Super NES and NES ports hit the market though Nintendo's themselves were mostly responsible for it as most of this ports were their own first-party titles. Though i don't own a Gameboy Advance, i don't remember hearing any outcry about ports flooding their beloved handheld, possibly because most of these ports were of substantial quality and the original titles the ports were based on were all classic gems.

Capcom have so far, been guilty of three confirmed ports namely Resident Evil 4, Okami and most recently, Resident Evil Zero. While all these titles were all great game when initially released, the fact that Resident Evil 4 and Zero were both made for the Gamecube and the Wii is backwards compatible with GC games makes the whole move questionable. I personally felt that Resident Evil Zero really didn't get a fair chance to shine when it was originally released and this might be a good time to one of the least appreciated RE 'main installment' to find a new audience with the Wii large user base. This will also probably be Capcom's chance to test the water and see how well casual gamers respond to the classic Resident Evil gameplay style. We all know everyone loves Resident Evil 4's gun and run gameplay but does the classic Resident Evil puzzling and adventuring of yester-years have a place in today's gaming standards? We will soon find out...

While i applaud the decision to wii-make Resident Evil Zero, i can't help but wonder why Capcom didn't decide to wii-make Resident Evil Remake instead? Don't get me wrong, the game is as flawless as one would expect from a remake of a timeless classic but the "stuttering cut-scenes" in Remake really had me spooked out as it was the very first game i played on my Wii. I later found out the it's a technical glitch in game and that Capcom was still trying to familiarise themselves with the platform while working on that title. Maybe it's all for the better, a wii-make of a remake is more than enough for anyone fan to handle, and the fact that these are suppose to be quickie ports without much enhancements mean that these small flaws are unlikely to be looked into anyway.

Circle of Life

Ever checked out Gamespot's highest rated games of all time? If you scroll to the all-time list for Gameboy Advance you will notice the highest score they ever awarded to a game on the GBA is actually a third-party game, in fact it's a launch game! It's none other than Konami's Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, the first of three Castlevania games to be eventually released on the GBA. Now either Jeff Gerstmann has been deprived too long of his vampire-staking fix or was feeling generous on launch day, i never really found out as Circle of the Moon was the only Castlevania title from the GBA that i have yet to play. In fact, once i got my Nintendo DS, it was one of the first title i sought to hunt down but during that time, most of the Castlevania GBA titles were already long out-of-print. I ended playing both Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow first when Konami re-printed both games as a Castlevania Double Pack. Yesterday when i happened to stumble onto Circle of the Moon lying in the bargain bins of a video game store. Though it was the Japanese edition, it was too good of an opportunity for me to pass up, especially after coming off the rather import-friendly Dracula X Chronicles.

Coming at a not-so bargain bin price, the cart and box looks to be in pretty decent condition save perhaps for a slight tear on the cover from the old original price tag.Though i was like to point out that i'm very impressed with the cover art for the Japanese edition, it's easily the best non-Ayame Kojima Castlevania cover art I have seen in a long time. Can't wait to get cracking on this game, as soon as i achieved 100% completion on Rondo of Blood....