Aria Menu: Areas - Walkthrough - Weirdness - Opening - Ending - Foreign

Aria of Sorrow Weirdness

Take a look at the save room. Anyone who grew up Catholic should recognize the save statue - it's the Virgin Mary. However, take a close look at the rubble on the floor. It appears to be Alucard's old save coffin from Symphony of the Night. Thanks to Sasha Belmont for this pointer.

Take a close look at the fountain in the Arena with the Succubus and Lilith monsters - you'll find a rubby ducky. A similar gag was in Metal Gear Solid 2. Konami, you wacky funsters.

The flames in the Top Floor look suspiciously like the fire in the first level of Dracula X SNES. Sly allusion or lazy programming? Your choice.

There's an interesting debug code in Aria of Sorrow. It also shows the preliminary names for some of the areas: the Entrance was the "Adoration Hall", the Inner Quarters was the "Harem", and the "Floating Gardens" was Babylon. Use the Code Breaker code 880007A2 200E to access this. Check out Tomorrow's Dreams for full information about messing with Aria of Sorrow's coding.

Additionally, the hackers found an item that you can't normally get, called the Skull Key. While it has no use, also remember that one door in the Top Floor area that can't be opened (and would just lead to the outside area anyway.) Perhaps the layout of this level was different in the planning stages, and these bits are all that remains.

Occasionally the regular skeleton monsters will take off their heads and throw them at you. If you deflect them with your weapon, they'll shoot offscreen with a comical "ZIP!" sound effect.

You'll obtain the Galamoth soul after beating Legion. Galamoth was one of the extra bosses in Symphony of the Night and also the main bad guy in the Kid Dracula games. What he has to do with nullifying time attacks, I have absolutely no idea.

If you talk to Mina after you defeat the Headhunter boss, she'll tell you a story about the background of the Hakuba Shrine. This is a true Shinto myth - Susanoo, the god of the sea, was running rampant over the world, and his sister, Tensho Daijin (the sun goddess, also known as Amaterasu-oomikami) hid herself in the heavenly cave, shrouding the world in darkness. This was meant to symbolize a solar eclipse that, according to the game, was supposed to seal evil. However, Susanoo was not entirely bad - you can read about his adventures here.

The tsuchinoko, the snake enemy that buries under the ground (and can only be found in the room where you find the double jump soul) is an actual mythical creature, somewhat similar to the Loch Ness monster mystery of Scotland. You can find info here.

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