I now have a copy of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for my HELLO KITTY PINK Gameboy Advance. This is the first real, legity-type GBA game I’ve gotten, and it’s… fabulous. I mean, it doesn’t do anything new; it doesn’t even particularly try. But it’s extremely solid.

If anything, it reminds me a lot of Bloodlines. Bloodlines was pretty, and very well-made, but it didn’t really do anything particularly new; it was just a good game that followed the standard Castlevania formula more or less precisely. Circle of the Moon is exactly the same idea — only it’s based on the modern, elegant, explorative, Igarashi-influenced image of Castlevania rather than the “classic”, action-based version of the game. So, it’s a terrific game; one of the best in the series. A great showcase for the system. But it’s nothing intrinsically special; just enjoyable and well-made and entirely appropriate.

That’s the only bad thing I can say about it: All it is, is a terrific game. No more. It doesn’t even try; all the effort was in making the game solid, playable, and entertaining. Not that there’s really anything wrong with that. If only more games had such a fault. Harmony of Dissonance, however — that looks to be something more. So I’m looking forward to it.

I’m really getting to like my GBA a lot, now. I’ve been going over eBay, looking for copies of the remaining original Gameboy games which I had, and were stolen long ago. Most of them, aside from Metroid II, I’ve been able to track down at no more than around five dollars (plus shipping). A couple are so obscure and strange that I’ll probably not find them anytime soon. But now that I’ve a system on which to play them again, it’d be nice for my collection to be restored to as it used to be.