Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (Player Two Start)

Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night is largely unchanged from IOTL, though there are a few minor enhancements, most notably the addition of anime cutscenes at various points in the game (the voice acting and English translation are still considered fairly lousy), and much more 3-D than the OTL version due to the enhanced graphical capabilities of the Ultra Nintendo, with other graphical effects such as significantly enhanced background and enemy animation also present. The game retains the exploration adventure format of OTL's game, which is comparable to Super Metroid and creates the genre of “Metroidvania” for these types of games. It also retains Alucard as the main protagonist as he struggles to find and defeat the evil Dracula. However, there IS a major secret in the game: if you have a Castlevania: Rondo of Blood save file on an SNES memory card, you can swap the memory cards to access alternate versions of the game, one with Maria (for just having a Rondo of Blood save file on the card) and one with Richter (for having a Rondo of Blood save file where the game has been beaten). The versions are largely the same as Alucard's path in terms of the actual dungeon, bosses, and treasures, but it does unlock alternate dialogue and cutscenes. For those without a Rondo of Blood save file, Nintendo does include a file on the January 1998 issue of Nintendo Underground (the Ultra Nintendo version of Nintendo Power CD) that will unlock the Maria and Richter quests if saved to an Ultra Nintendo memory card. The Richter and Maria quests can also be unlocked if the game is beaten and their names are typed in on the name select screen (similar to how Richter's quest was opened IOTL). There are also Nintendo easter eggs placed throughout the game, Alucard can wield some of Link's weapons (with many more of Link's weapons unlocked in the hidden inverted castle), and there's also an optional boss encounter in the inverted castle with Gaddis from Ocarina of Dreams. When the game is ported to the Sega Saturn (in 1998 in Japan and in 1999 in North America), these Zelda-related things are removed, though they're replaced with items from the iconic Phantasy Star series.