The newest Castlevania. I've only beaten the first boss so I don't really want to say anything about the game (other than how I embarassed myself by running in circles around the castle about five times looking for the priest's store because Wind wanted me to buy some stuff, only to find out it was
right behind Wind). However, I want to talk about that 20th Anniversary thing you get for preordering it.
The outside: The ads claimed this was wax sealed, and while it looks like a wax seal it's just a piece of plastic glued to the top flap, and the thing is kept shut with velcro. Of course, if it really was wax sealed, it would probably be too expensive to make and put out for free. Go figure.
Art Book: It's light on anything pre-IGA (the art for the NES games are just the BOX ARTS! WEE!) and most of what is there is box arts and other stuff I've seen before (granted, the "box art" ones have more to them than what was cropped to fit on the box). There's some character designs (it's funny how they have both good and evil Maxim in HoD, but not both good and "evil" Soma in AoS, probably because the evil Maxim isn't as blatant as "evil" Soma), but concept sketches would have been neater.
Timeline Card: Basically, how IGA sees the Castlevania story. Circle of the Moon and the two N64 Castlevanias, which IGA retconned, are listed, but not surprisingly there's no details about them. Legends isn't on here at all. Neither is Vampire Killer, but nobody cares about that game anyway.
Music CD: It doesn't seem to be a "Best Of" collection so much as a "What people remember because they were listening to it for most of the game" collection. Their choices for Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night fall under this. For AoS it's the main castle hallway song, for SotN it's FOUR castle hallway songs. I guess I can't say I have issues with the songs, but why they choose that song for AoS instead of, say, Heart of Fire, and didn't everybody agree that Young Nobleman of Sadness was the best song in Symphony of the Night? Except for the Castlevania "classics" (which they're missing the CV3 version of Beginning for some reason), about the only song I agree with them on is Dracula's Tears in Dawn of Sorrow. Also, for some reason they put Bloody Tears under the first Castlevania. It's from CV2.
Stylus: Me likey. I was never bothered by the length or the thickness of the classic DS stylus. What DID bother me was that stupid knob you put a strap through to connect it to the DS, as well as the bump on the opposite side of the stylus. It always rubbed and poked and irritated me. While this also has a knob for a strap and a bump, this baby extends to almost twice it's length, so those things are nowhere near me.
The Case for the Two DS games: You're supposed to put Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin into this thing, but really you could put any two DS games in it. Frankly, I don't know what the point is.
Where are these lemmings going? Not the Super Nintendo Super Shire! They know to go to
Codiekitty.com now!