The new soundtrack was composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka and would consist of altered arrangements of the original themes. The soundtrack is also not the original one either. The soundtrack sounds grainy and distorted through the GBA speaker and may upset a few fans as they navigate through this familiar story. However, the pitfall of the GBA has always been its audio capacity and the game really does suffer in this department. The visuals would remain as crisp as they ever were, if not better, which is great news for long time fans. The game would also have to bear the struggles that came with porting to the GBA. For the casual player, it’s hardly noticeable but for returning players, you may notice a shift in tone. Not to mention, due to the GBA being a Nintendo branded system, any direct jabs at Nintendo IPs were made much less obvious. So the strip clubs in the game were removed, the gore was scaled back drastically, the crow’s cigarettes we’re removed, knives were removed from the game.

The change in the system meant that it had to be more family-friendly on release. The issue that some avid fans may find is the change in tone in parts of these games. For example, the movement was made more fluid with the removal of single tile movements and the addition of a run feature that doesn’t just play the game on a 2x speed. However, there are changes that make the game run smoother that fans will appreciate. The main bulk of the changes you will notice are related to the change in port from the Famicom to the GBA. In terms of gameplay, the two titles not differ an awful lot from the originals and in all honesty, that’s exactly what fans will want.

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