Games - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon / Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

So in my ongoing quest to play all the newest and hottest games, I downloaded Castlevania: Circle of the Moon from the WiiU eShop. Using the most advanced home console system Nintendo has ever produced to play a 13yo Game Boy Advance launch game. Its a game I originally purchased launch day with my GBA when it came out.

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I took the City Bus downtown because I didn't have my license yet. Went to the bank where I "snuck" money out of my savings account that I wasn't supposed to have access to. Then took the bus to the Mall and went store to store trying to find a GBA. Ended up finding it at Target, and got Castlevania and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.

Now keep in mind this was the original GBA, so Circle of the Moon was a dark game, and that system had no backlighting. So while I liked that game it was super hard to play. But I played the crap out of it, but never finished it. Eventually I got an GBA SP, which is one of my favorite designs ever, which had a backlight and made playing those games SOOO much better. But by that point I had lost Castlevania, and since I never finished that first one I never wanted to continue with the other ones.

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Well I spent a few good hours getting back into that game after so many years. Wife was watching YouTube on the XBox One with the TV, while I played my game on the WiiU Gamepad. I made a lot of progress, beat the first couple bosses. Have tried opening up as much as the Map as possible, beating the bosses, getting a new ability, and using it to get to new parts of the Castle. Game's graphics are simple but get the job done. Its a straight up Metroid-Vania, which at the time we hadn't seen since Symphony of the Night. It has a simple Item system and card system, all obtained from random drops when killing enemies. The Items you by can get different armor/clothes and accessories for Body, Left Arm, and Right Arm. The Card system is used for different Magic abilities, there are 2 kind of cards Ability and Effect. I currently only have 1 Ability card which is for my whip, and I have 2 Effect cards, one which gives me a flame whip, the other a thorn whip. I'm having a lot of fun with it right now, been a long time since I played a good game of this type, glad I finally have another chance to finish this game.

Other Game I played a bit of has been sitting in my Steam Library for almost a year now, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. Oddly enough its actually another Metroid-Vania type game, but your a little UFO ship exploring a hostile environment, reminds me a bit of PixelJunk Shooter. Exploring and finding new abilities to help to explore more areas and new abilities. The art style is mostly black and white but it is 3D rendered and has a lot of depth. The Art style is fabulous, I kind of just had time to fiddle with it, but its very cool and I hope to spend more time with it.

Also played a little more TIE Fighter. I went from Flight Training before to Mission Training. So I got to fly about and scan some ships for contraband, then I stepped up to combat simulations and did pretty well there. I'm slowly working my way up the ranks, next time I'll actually try to jump into the Campaign.