Castlevania Symphony of the night is one of the best games of the Playstation, and one of the best games ever made, period. Even if you don't agree, it at least has some of the best pixel art ever to grace the screen.

So it's really puzzling to think that the folks at Tiger believed they could create a Game Com port of the game. And all that we had to go along were grainy screenshots and terrible video of a booth. Until one faithful day...

The Ebay listing

A prototype of the game was put on ebay in 2022:

It sold for $7600 and read:

"So how complete is the game? Very. I played through it for several hours, and I can tell you for certain there's a lot of content here: including an ending, if you've got the mad skillz to reach it. The music is all there, plenty of sound effects are present, and a whole pile of graphics were converted down from the original Playstation version of the game. Love and care was put into this adaptation, no question: or, at least, the best effort the programmers felt justified their paycheck."

If you buy this little dandy, what you'll be receiving is an authentic Tiger cartridge, with an authentic printed label, with the game stored on an authentic Tiger development PCB. No boring, ugly, epoxy-globbed production PCB here, folks! No, no! This is a programmable flash cart, used by the developers to test their work on real hardware: Fascinating stuff indeed!

Bottom line: If you're a game.com fan, or a Castlevania fan, or none of the above, I want your money. So! Please consider my greed and find it in your heart to bid high, bid often. Your reward for winning this auction will be a fabulous piece of gaming history, and the knowledge that I'm smiling ear to ear over having some more ca$h to play with.

The Dump

While the ebayer was playing Castlevania on Game Com, leaving everyone to wonder if it even truly existed, the game finally got in the hands of Hidden Palace who dumped the Rom for all.

Gameplay

The Game Com having a tiny screen and a few shades of gray, one has to wonder how well it would perform. Surprisingly, it's one of the most solid ports ever seen given the limitation.

The gameplay is pretty smooth and a LOT has been implemented so the plug was pulled well into development.

Here's the rundown from youtuber Derek:

It's surprising to say but looking at it, as a fan of Castlevania, I would actually get this. The Resident Evil 2 Game Com port looks really different but here it's the same game, just on a smaller screen and grayscale.

As a gamer, one can only hold the nameless programmers who evidently put a lot of work and love into this.