Contact - Reached Akumojo Castle

So, after acquiring the Shadow Thief costume, I went back to pick the locks of all those treasure chests I couldn't open before. I used to like this mechanic in games. In the Dragon Quest games, after getting new keys, I would enjoy going back to all the previous towns and seeing what they unlocked. I have become less enamored of this game mechanic in more recent times. Partially it is because games are much bigger, so remembering where all the possible doors to unlock are is tough. Also, there is generally more travel time required to get to them (Contact is especially bad for this, because in order to go to another island you must set course and then either wait for a period of time, or save your game which is shorter but still takes time).

Anyway, after acquiring all the new stuff and selling off some extra items I had, I did indeed have enough money to purchase the song and so I set off to Rizo isle to replace the Stormy song with the Blue Sky song.

I now head to Akumojo Castle.

Alert: Semi-exclusive game information coming up

The name Akumojo Castle seems to be a reference to the Castlevania series. In Japan, the games are called Akumojo (or Akumajo) Dracula, which roughly translates to "Demon Castle Dracula". So, why would the castle be named after Castlevania?

Apparently, the game designers wanted to reference Castlevania. In the Japanese version of the game, the castle was called "Belmontal Castle", where the Belmont family are prominantly freatured as the vampire killers in most of the Castlevania games. As the man in charge of localizing the game writes*:

In the Japanese version it was "Be-ru-mon-ta-ru" Castle. The translators wrote it as "Vermontal" which I couldn't figure out the reference of. So I did a little katakana-magic of my own and read it as "Belmontal." Doesn't sound right, but I do like Belmonts. And "mojo" is a funny word.

So I did a play on the Japanese title for Castlevania, as you guessed. Akumojo Castle.

Fascinating!

*No, I didn't actually interview him. He posts on the message board I read and posted that in response to someone asking if Akumojo Castle was supposed to be a Castlevania reference.