Konami has announced a trio of Anniversary Collection compilations pretty much guaranteed to delight fans of old-school gaming, with one dedicated to classic Castlevania games, one for Contra and one for arcade hits.
Slated to launch on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Steam and Nintendo Switch, each game in the Anniversary Collection line will boast eight games, as well as a bonus digital book that includes information about each game, interviews with the development team, extra behind-the-scenes content, sketches, design documents and more. They’ll all be digital-only, though, a fact likely to upset a few fans who prefer to pick up physical copies of their games.
First up is Arcade Classics, which is slated to launch on April 18 for $19.99. This collection will include Haunted Castle, the frequently overlooked arcade entry in the Castlevania series. Also up for grabs are Typhoon, Nemesis, Vulcan Venture and Life Force, which were respectively known as A-JAX, Gradius, Gradius II and Salamander in other regions. The rest of the collection includes Scramble and TwinBee.
The remaining Anniversary Collection games are currently slated for “Early Summer” and have only had half of their titles revealed up to this point. They also don’t have a price attached, so don’t be surprised if they don’t go for the same 20 bucks as the arcade collection.
The Castlevania title has so far announced the original NES game by the same name, as well as Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge for the Game Boy, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and Super Castlevania IV. Feel free to guess what the remaining four games will be in the comments below.
Finally, there’s the Contra collection. This one includes the original Contra, as well as Super Contra, Super C and Contra III: The Alien Wars. Once again, there are four open slots and what games will be announced for them is anybody’s guess.