So April hit, I put off preparing for this, and suddenly this month I got hit with two weeks of ridiculous work on April 14th! Hopefully this two-day writeup does some justice. I'll start with a fittingly short summary of the game from The Cutting Room Floor:

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is a Castlevania game that, shock, isn't about one of the Belmonts! Instead, we get some white-haired emo kid that happens to have the ability to absorb souls.

... Thanks, TCRF.

SOME BACKGROUND

In which Konami tries to make a decent Metroidvania

Or two

Or three

Unfortunately, as a slap in the face to my thirties, the GBA really is a decidedly proper "retro" console now. That shouldn't actually be a surprise to anyone, as it's a distinctly 16-bit console with many parallels to SNES hardware. Sampled audio, mode 7 graphics... But only a little 240x160 screen. Despite that, a few companies managed to pack in some very robust experiences on the hardware.

Konami gave this a try with Castlevania. Before Aria came Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance. At the time, these were pretty well-received - Circle was nominated for a few awards and sold ~500k copies. Harmony wasn't quite as universally acclaimed, but sold a respectable 120k in America. It flopped in Japan.

That said, nowadays the first two GBA titles aren't esteemed quite as well. Circle is a very polarizing title. Some appreciate the mechanics and exploration, while others detest it for some awful control scheme decisions. The GBA display did not suit its dark color palate well, and playing it on original hardware without a backlight is asking for eye strain. Since it was made by a different team than the contemporary Castlevania devs headed by Koji Igarashi, he swept Circle under the rug when it came to establishing a Castlevania timeline. (I have not played it myself yet, though I suspect my wrists are not ready for the impending RSI of a double-tap dpad run command.)

Where Circle's experimental bits get some occasional love, Harmony of Dissonance has really not aged well. Igarashi was looking to get a Symphony of the Night experience in a mobile form factor by design, but this meant a pretty conservative approach. He unfortunately left the comparison quite open - at a time when you can play both games on the same device - to call Harmony "SotN at home". The aesthetics are kind of nutty as well; the team flew in the opposite direction of Circle by making things - including Juste Belmont - glow with a very garish set of vibrant blues, reds, and greens, on top of purple and sky blue backgrounds. This was to REALLY stand out without a backlight. Boy do they. The soundtrack was also compressed to save room on the cartridge, leading to a reputation as one of the worst Castlevania soundtracks in a pretty musically-storied franchise. (With some proper sampling, I personally love it! Played back on the little high-pass GBA speaker, though, stuff like this really grates.)

Igarashi and his team had one more shot on the platform. This time, they nailed something special.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Aria takes place - rather than 1600s-1700s Europe - in the year 2035. Japanese transfer student and fashionista boy band dreamboat Soma Cruz is hanging out with his friend and shrine maiden Mina Hakuba to observe a solar eclipse. In doing so, he finds himself warped to the eclipse itself, where Dracula's Castle has been imprisoned. There, an enigmatic man introduces him to his unknown power - the dominion over monsters' souls to use for himself. Trying to find his way out of the castle, he meets a few other mysterious figures who are there for various reasons and agendas... I'll leave the rest of the plot to you to discover.

We're not quite at Aria's era of a bell bottom jeans revival paired with fur coats and flame boots, but it is 2026. Much like the cycle of Dracula's castle, last year's most hyped release looped around to a 2D Metroidvania! Despite over 20 years of iterative work on the genre, though, Aria marks with a few things that still stand out - not just against Castlevania's run of six handheld games in about seven or eight years, but arguably today in a very crowded genre.

Mainly, what I'd like to point out and highlight in our classic game ventures, is that this game is eight megabytes large. It's nipping at its big brother Symphony's heels despite it being a little over one percent of SotN's CD file size, and some crazies like me still prefer it. The team made damn good use of that space after learning their mistakes from Harmony.

Despite that little pocket size, it's a memorable adventure! I hope you enjoy it. I find Aria's main strength is setting a pace and scope which it meets and rarely overstays. It's also an aesthetic crown jewel for the GBA platform; the colors are still a bit washed out to accommodate OG hardware, but there's much more mastery of the system. Flowing water, the flickering moon, bats flying off in the distance... It captures the gothic feel in a more subtle way. And while I'm fond of Harmony's, uh. Dissonance, the sound design is much tighter here. Some little bits of lore and character interactions help color the adventure, and it creates plenty of space for your head to fill in the gaps, too. (Hey! Konami! 1999 when??)

The game has a number of neat secrets that I'll let you discover. So - I'll leave you to it!

...Or, if you'd like, I won't! Since Aria isn't the most obscure game, some of you may have played it. With that - or, to kick off some discussion of the game's flaws - I'd like to pivot into a new topic here!

Mods

Aria of Sorrow is great, but there are a few rough edges. Notably, the stats are a little fucky - Wit barely influences item or soul drop rate. Int is also a little weak, not influencing your bullet souls. The colors still acquiesce to the GBA screen, a bit too bright on modern displays. Weapon balance is a bit off, due to one particularly dominating choice.

Of course, with that 8 MB filesize, numerical problems are just a hex edit away! Bump some values around and you maybe can "solve" these problems. But is that better? Worse? In line with the developers, or a bastardization of their vision? The most powerful tool in the hands of modern video game players? Does it ruin a shared conversation of art, or does it stoke it?

For what it's worth, I personally fell off Super Metroid about three times until I applied a patch that gave Samus movement closer to the GBA games. Modding sometimes just opens up options or tastes to us - and I think when it comes to pure enjoyment, go buck wild. So I invite people to try it and see what you think!

As always, I'm a slut for randomizers and Aria rando seems fairly robust. But since I suspect I will eventually play that in Archipelago many times, I think instead I'm going to try a slew of new hacks and throw them together to see what happens. Weapons modifications! Color palate changes! Vegan items? Sure, why not! I'll post what I go with in the end.

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

Share which version of the game you're playing
Share what hardware you're playing it on
Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
What about its system or era?
What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
What are you expecting from this game in particular?
Which Castlevania game has the best Death fight? 

Colossal Game Adventure (CGA) is Tildes' retro video game club.

Each month we will play a different retro game/games, discuss our thoughts, and bask in the glorious digital experiences of yesteryear!

Colossal Game Adventure is a reference to Colossal Cave Adventure. It's one of the most influential games of all time, one of the first text-based interactive games, and one of the first games to be shared online.

What do we want to do with this group? Play influential games; interact with each other through text; and share the love for retro games online!

It also abbreviates to CGA (because we love chunky pixel art), and its name communicates the Colossal amount of fun and excitement that we have with retro video Games in our shared Adventure of playing them together.

No. Participation is open to all.

There is a Notification List that will get pinged each time a new topic goes up. If you would like to join that list, please PM u/kfwyre.

Each month will have a focus game or games that will guide our discussions. Beyond that, there are no restrictions. The philosophy of CGA is to play in a way that works for you!

This means:

• Choose whichever version of the game you want.
• You can use cheats, save states, mods, etc.
• You can watch a streamer or longplay instead of playing it.

If you have already played a game and want a different experience:

• Try a randomizer or challenge run.
• Play a different version of it.
• Play a related game (sequel, spiritual successor, something inspired by it, etc.)

There is no wrong way to participate in CGA, and every different way someone participates will make for more interesting discussions.

Each month the Insert Cartidge topic will be posted on the 1st, while the Remove Cartridge topic will be posted on the 28th.

Nomination and voting topics will happen in March and September (every 6 months).

Schedules are also posted then.

All CGA topics are available using the colossal game adventure tag.

Inserting and removing cartridges are our retro metaphor for starting and stopping a given game or games.

The Insert Cartridge topic happens at the beginning of the month and is primarily about getting the game up and running.

The Remove Cartridge topic happens toward the end of the month and is primarily about people reflecting on the game now that they've played it.

There are no hard restrictions on what has to go in either topic, and each can be used to discuss the game, post updates, ask questions, etc.