Hey, guess what. Chris Kohler went to Japan and bought some video games, then he talked about it on his blog at Wired. Among his great finds is a PS2 game I would love to have in my collection which contains the original arcade game (Haunted Castle) and a bunch of bonus items.

In a similar vein, there’s Akumajou Dracula, the original arcade game that spawned Castlevania, rereleased for PS2 in the Oretachi Geesen Zoku (We, the Arcade People) line of 2000 yen re-releases of classic arcade games. The software here is considerably lower-rent, with none of the fancy options of the Sega Ages release. But what you get for your 2000 yen here isn’t just a ROM on a disc — there’s also a plethora of tchotchkes inside:

L-R clockwise, there’s the box, the game CD, a collectible trading card, mini-strategy guide (helpfully sealed to prevent you from casually cheating), the instruction manual, and most interestingly a soundtrack CD and a DVD video showing a complete game playthrough.

As you might imagine, given the fact that this crosses over into the realm of Castlevania collectibles, this tends to be one of the more difficult to find and expensive games in the collection, so when I saw it for 2,100 yen I figured that now was the time to add it to the pile.

I want to go to Japan, where such fantastical items are so very inexpensive. I saw a copy of this on eBay go for about $25 not long ago, but I’m not sure if it was this complete.

Source: Game|Life