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Deadeus (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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For something that looks like Pokémon on the Game Boy, boy did this take a turn. It’s a Game Boy game, set in a little village, with a nice beach and a church and a school and a library, but there’s a dark and sinister secret that the locals don’t want to talk about. And you and your friends have just started having nightmares about it.

With just three days until An Event, you have to get the truth out of people. Or, you can just leave town. In fact, it seems there are a number of different endings available to you, of which I found four. Two of which involve you dying,

It’s an unusual little game, and some bits don’t quite work (like the school only offers three classes and you just turn up to lessons when you fancy it), but the story is compelling and some of the shocking events on the third day are genuinely pretty shocking.

And you can dig up a dead cat. What’s not to enjoy?

Foxyland (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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This isn’t quite what I was expecting. You see, I’ve seen Foxyland (and several sequels) on the Switch eShop and PSN, and this isn’t quite that. It’s actually a Mega Drive version of the game, which had different levels.

It’s a basic platformer, where you have to collect a number of gems on each short level as well as optionally collect cherries (get enough and you get an extra life). Foxy can only jump and double-jump, and there’s various baddies, spikes, traps and falling blocks that kill him. Every few levels you get a boss fight, of sorts, and later levels get a bit bloody tricky both because of the difficulty but also some have puzzles involving switches.

It’s probably not a game I’d have bought otherwise, but it was nice enough.

Cosmic Spacehead (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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Although I own this on the Mega Drive, I don’t think I’ve ever played it. But with it being on the Evercade, as with many other titles, I’m rectifying that. And. completed it, of course.

The game is split between a Lucasarts-style point and click adventure game (there’s even a reference to Lucasarts in the form of a cave painting) and a platformer, with simple platforming sections wedged between each location.

With simple puzzles and no difficult platforming, it didn’t take me long to reach the end. As you’d expect, using a joypad to point-and-click isn’t ideal, but you can cycle through actions with the buttons to save manually selecting them with the pointer which helps. I like the art style, and although the backtracking was a bit of a pain I enjoyed it overall.

Castlevania: Vampire’s Kiss (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Vampire’s Kiss is A Bad Game. I’ve no idea why Konami decided to dump this poor Super Castlevania IV followup on the Castlevania Advance Collection because it’s neither a GBA game nor is it a “metroidvania” style game. And it’s rubbish.

I’m trying not to represent it badly because it isn’t the same genre as the other three games on the collection, and it’s several years older, but no – it’s just no fun to play. It’s short, it has about three near impossible sections but the rest is pretty easy, and it plays really, really slowly. It does, however, look incredible, especially early on in the game, and the fact it’s a Super NES game makes that all the more impressive. It’s just a shame it’s way too clunky to go with it.

I mentioned Super Castlevania IV partly because that game is so much better than this, although it doesn’t look as good. It’s also linear, and also slow, but it’s much more fun to play. Vampire’s Kiss is just bobbins,

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Switch): COMPLETED!

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And that’s it. The Unholy Trinity of Game Boy Advance Castlevania Games, all completed.

Once again, I found this easier than I remembered. Something else I had obviously remembered wrongly was that I’d thought this was the best of the three games, but in fact, this time around I think I enjoyed Harmony of Dissonance more. A combination of the dash moves, the double castle and the lack of the silly “broken up map” of Aria of Sorrow, perhaps.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this, though, as I did. Very much. It’s still better than 99% of other games and even better than most other Castlevania games. It’s so slick, so well put together, and just so playable it can’t be anything but – but – but, I liked Harmony more. Tch, eh? Yes, this one has even better graphics and Soma doesn’t have Juste’s Ready Brek glow, but still.

Nudity? On a Nintendo platform? Won’t someone think of the children?

100%ed this one too. But now I’m sad that there’s very little chance the three Nintendo DS Castlevania games aren’t likely to appear on the Switch (unless they edit all the second screen stuff out somehow), and of course the series has been dead for years. Boo.