Here's something we missed in this week's release roundup, probably because Konami didn't seem to give it any real publicity at all: Castlevania Dominus Collection is a four-game bundle that includes PC ports of three venerable DS Castlevanias and a remastered version of Castlevania Haunted Castle, the first Castlevania game to grace an arcade machine. It'll set you back $25, £20 or €25, and my driving analysis of the trailer below suggests they've done a good job with the ports.
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The DS games in question are Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow, where you can combine souls to craft weapons; Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin, where you switch between two heroes with different abilities; and Castlevania Order of Ecclesia, where you search for magical glyphs in Dracula's Castle. They've all been re-arranged to fit on a single screen, naturally, with the inventory and map materials on the right. When it comes to more complex DS-specific flourishes, like Dawn Of Sorrow's drawing mechanics, they've found some… simple solutions. Haunted Castle's port, meanwhile, features both a redesigned version with more detailed pixel art and a direct port of the original.
Ah, wait, I see why we missed that in the synopsis. They threw shade during one of the Nintendo Direct events where the Silksong team screamed their heads off, and also brought the news that Konami's Suikoden 1 and 2 HD remasters are coming in March. Konami is currently doing a brisk trade in revivals of various kinds, with a new version of Silent Hill 2 and a relatively new version of Metal Gear Solid 3 on the cards.
My thoughts naturally turn to the future of the Castlevania series. Our friends the Belmonts and old Dracula got a new life/death opportunity on Netflix, but it’s been a while since the last real new Castlevania game, the lackluster Lords Of Shadow 2. Konami currently seems content to lend its various vampires and vampire hunters to games like V Rising. I’d really like to see a Sonic Mania-style reboot of the 2D series. In the meantime, you can check out the Dominus Collection on Steam.