I’ve finished all the games more than once on various hardware, but the collection only became playable on Steam Deck relatively recently. They’re so much better there!

Any lovers of Metroidvanias or platformers in general owe it to themselves to check it out. Since they were originally GBA games, they scale to the Steam Deck’s screen very well and don’t hurt my old-man’s eyes at all.

Great experience! Can’t wait to check out the Dominus collection when I’m done with these. I’ve played through those a few times on OG hardware as well. I bet they’re so much better on Deck! I really hope they’ve removed the awful touch screen boss capture mechanic in Dawn of Sorrow. I imagine they must have given these are playable on PC, and doing them with a mouse would be just short of impossible.

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzMEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I’m looking forward to playing through the DS Castlevania games, I’ve avoided emulating them because I didn’t want to deal with the touch control parts.

    • Underwaterbob@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow are the standouts here for sure. Not that the others are bad, but those two are just exceptional.

        • Underwaterbob@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          It’s good, but beware the OG DS version. There’s a tacked-on minigame when you beat a boss that requires you draw a symbol on the screen to finish the fight. If you mess it up, the boss comes back to life (not full anyway) and you have to kill them again. Early bosses aren’t so bad, but later bosses have some ridiculously complex symbols to draw. It’s infuriating and stupid. I’m sure the new release does away with them in some manner.

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    3·
    3 days ago

    Maybe Emulation is something you would look into? I actually prefer emulating the games myself, over playing the official Steam version (not at least because of the Shaders). Also there are lot of Mods (also known as Romhacks) for these games.

    I imagine they must have given these are playable on PC, and doing them with a mouse would be just short of impossible.

    The Steam Input system allows you to customize controls with lot of features available. So if they butcher this up, you have at least tools built into the Steam Deck to customize it. But it requires some time and effort, and that’s not always someone wants to put into to play a classic game.

    • duchess@feddit.org
      3·
      3 days ago

      The Steam versions are usually less expensive than hunting down the game cartridges and the hardware necessary to copy the contents to a PC ;)

      • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 days ago

        That’s true. But there are legit ways to purchase Roms and extract them for use in your favorite emulator. In example the SNES Classic console from Nintendo, or the Genesis and Sega Games collection on Steam. If I were to buy Castlevania Advance, I would probably extract the Roms for use in RetroArch.

    • Underwaterbob@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I’ve emulated the GBA games in the past. I think the port is actually very well put-together as far as emulated games go. I do wish the menu with savestates were a little snappier.

      I only tried to emulate the DS games once or twice. I’m sure DS emulation is better now, but it was really rough, then.