Been playing some Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (or just "Castlevania", as it was known in Europe) in the Castlevania Advance Collection, and I'm having a great time. I owned a copy of this for GBA back in the day — I actually might still have it somewhere — but for one reason or another never got that far with it.
Now I can play it on the big screen, however, I'm really enjoying it. The GBA may have been low resolution, but man, it could push sprites around the screen and scroll incredibly smoothly, so the whole thing looks absolutely great blown up.
The few little additions M2 have made to the game are excellent, too; much like they added "Gadgets" to the Aleste collection, so too have they added additional info here — most notably a little popup that shows whether the enemy you just hit is one that drops a card for the game's magic system, and whether or not you've got that card already.
There's also a helpful in-game encyclopaedia that includes info on all the enemies, the card combinations and the items. You don't have to use any of this info if you don't want to, but its inclusion definitely saves a trip or ten to GameFAQs!
Like most games from this era that I'm returning to now, I'm really appreciating the excellent design of the game in a way I probably wouldn't have noticed back then. I'm particularly appreciating the boss battles — these are well-designed encounters that are challenging but always based on clear patterns; you just need to spot 'em.
I also started watching the Castlevania series on Netflix, but I feel that's probably a discussion for another day when I've watched a few more episodes!
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