Recently, I've been playing a lot of Castlevania 2 on the 3DS Virtual Console.
As a kid, I thought this game was absolutely impenetrable, but after seeing some other people playing it, and looking at a map of the world. It's actually not that bad. In fact, it's probably the easiest Castlevania ever made.
I bought and played through the US version. After I finished it, I wanted to try out the Japanese version, so I downloaded that on my Japanese 3DS. There are some interesting differences.
First off, when it was originally released in Japan, Castlevania 2 was a Famicom Disk game, rather than a cartridge. The 3DS game emulates the loading effects of the game, too, so every time to switch areas in the game, it's accompanied by a 3-4 second loading screen.
Also, the music is absolute trash. It the same music as the US version, but without several added "instruments" that create the iconic tracks everyone knows from the game. It's really weird listening to it.
The Japanese version sounds and feels so incomplete. It's so weird that they completely dropped the ball on the translation for the US version. They clearly spent time fixing the other problems with the game.
Along with the translation, the ending of the Japanese version is WAY more complete, and actually features credits! The US version just mentions a few mistranslated things, and ends.
Here's the full good ending to the Japanese version for comparison:
It's all in English, too! Why did they cut this?
Anyways, it's crazy being able to break open this game after thinking it was a complete mystery.
Also, I wanted to do a side-by-side comparison, but Miiverse doesn't work on the US 3DS edition of the game. Weird.