Hanabi Festival returns to Virtual Console

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 March, 2010

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood featuring.

Nintendo has announced that the Hanabi Festival returns to Virtual Console starting this week, and that Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is among the games due out during its latest run.

The Hanabi Festival is Nintendo's way of flogging retro games previously only released in Japan through WiiWare, and is named after a Japanese fireworks festival.

The latest Hanabi kicks off on Friday 12th March, and will include Rondo of Blood (originally only released on the PC Engine in Japan), Milon's Secret Castle (NES), Ironclad (NeoGeo) and Lode Runner (NES). Exact dates for those games are TBC.

Rondo of Blood was last seen on PSP in 2008's Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles. It came out in Japan on Virtual Console in April 2008 as well.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Der_tolle_Emil #1 2 years ago

    Rondo of Blood sounds interesting, I have never played it. I bought Castlevania Rebirth last weekend and it's really good fun (and thank god challenging as well) so I should probably get this too.

  • dudefella #2 2 years ago

    I got Castlevania Rebirth as well. It's great that it's old school, but I really really would've loved to be able to continue from the level I left off at.

  • HEAVYface #3 2 years ago

    ironclad is a real neo geo rarity. don't know if its any good however.

  • Kay #4 2 years ago

    Rondo of Blood! I still haven't picked up the PSP re-release, but if the VC version's due out this soon then I might not bother. I'm guessing it'll be a straight port of the Japanese version though, with none of the English voice-overs from the PSP version.

  • swissorc #5 2 years ago

    Parasol Stars was available in the Uk. But maybe that was only on the Amega 500+(oh how I miss thee). More to the point where is an udated version of Cannon Fodder on Wiiware with leaderboards. That would be sublime.
    Edited by 1 at 10/03/10 @ 11:16

  • JahB #6 2 years ago

    Lode Runner? Rondo of Blood? i want a wii now

  • Diogo_Ribeiro #7 2 years ago

    Rondo can stand proudly next to Symphony of the Night as one of the last, great CVs. Awesome news for fans or those who want to see the other evolutionary road the series could have taken.

  • gamingdave #8 2 years ago

    Nice that they do these, but I wish they would do Tetris Battle Gaiden. Such a gem of a game, that sadly not enough people have heard of.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #9 2 years ago

    Super Mario Kart has been available for quite some time now.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #10 2 years ago

    Thought it was available here as well since it already has a US release. I remember some guys in the forum talking about it. Even though I played it a lot when I was a kid I really don't feel like going back to it so I didn't buy it (not that I could anyway)
    Edited by 1 at 10/03/10 @ 17:00