The third game in the Castlevania series, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, was first released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1989 in Japan (under the title of “Akumajō Densetsu“). A North American NES release followed in 1990, and a European release in 1992.
Continue reading Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, NES/Famicom
The second game in the Castlevania series, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, was originally released in Japan (as “Dracula II – Noroi no Fuuin“) for the Famicom Disk System in 1987, and in North America for the NES in 1988. Europe had to wait until 1990 for a release of the game.
Konami‘s brilliant PlayStation game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, was released for the Sega Saturn in 1998, but it was only ever released in Japan (under the title “Akumajou Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku“). Thankfully, an English translation patch is available to make the game playable to those who can’t read Japanese. The patch – created by ‘Knight of Dragon’ – also features numerous bug fixes and improvements.
For those who’ve never played Symphony of the Night before: it is a direct sequel to Rondo of Blood and is rightly regarded as one of the best Castlevania games in the long-running series (if not THE best).
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The sequel to the classic Konami arcade game, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2: The Emperor Yie-Gah was only ever released for home computers and was never produced as an arcade game. It was first released for MSX compatible computers, on cartridge, in 1985.
The Game Boy Advance port of id Software‘s classic first-person shooter sequel, Doom II, was developed by Torus Games and first published by Activision in 2002. Unlike the first Doom on the GBA this port doesn’t use the original Doom engine, but instead uses the Southpaw Engine, that was designed for native use on the GBA and has been used in a number of other games. Torus Games had to therefore recreate all the levels from scratch for this port, and I have to say that they did a great job.
Written by Pete Cooke [Tau Ceti, Academy, Micronaut One, Earthlight, Stunt Car Racer], A Whole New Ball Game is the 1989 sequel to the puzzle game, Brainstorm, and was only made available on the covertape of Crash magazine issue 66 (July 1989). It was basically given away, as a full game, with the magazine.
Golden Axe: The Duel is the third arcade game in the Golden Axe series (after Golden Axe and The Revenge of Death Adder) and is a two-player versus fighting game based on characters from the popular side-scrolling hack and slash games. It was first released into arcades in February 1995.
The third Golden Axe game was initially only ever released in Japan, exclusively on the Megadrive in 1993. It wasn’t until two years later, in 1995, that it received a localised English language release in North America via the online-only Sega Channel.
Golden Axe II is a sequel to the classic Sega arcade game, Golden Axe, and was released exclusively on the Megadrive/Genesis* in 1991 in Japan and 1992 in North America and Europe.
*= It was eventually released as an arcade game using ‘Mega Play’ hardware, which is essentially a Megadrive/Genesis in an arcade cabinet, but the game was initially marketed as a ‘killer app’ on Sega‘s famous home console.
Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is the 1992 sequel to the classic 1989 arcade game, Golden Axe. It features four new playable characters, more detailed graphics and four-player simultaneous gameplay (although that was dependent on the cabinet – variations were available to arcade operators).
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The King of Grabs 