Castlevania Development History, Part 4: The Handheld Codes That Are One Suffix Too Long

In Part 3, the PlayStation product code worked and the Nintendo 64 product code returned HTTP 404. The handheld era fails in a third way, and it is the one that costs a buyer the most time: the codes are there, they are correct, and they return nothing as the catalog stores them. Delete the last few characters and most of them start working. The Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS rows are also where the catalog spells the name of the series three different ways, and where the year and the JAN sitting on one row point at a different edition than the code on the same row.

• The Kataban catalog holds 14 Castlevania rows on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS; only 5 of them carry a product code at all
• 暁月の円舞曲 is stored as AGB-A2CJ-JPN-1, which returns HTTP 404 and zero listings; AGB-A2CJ returns two
• 蒼月の十字架 is stored as NTR-ACVJ-JPN-2, which returns HTTP 404 and zero listings; NTR-ACVJ returns four
• 蒼月の十字架 was issued in Japan four times — 25 August 2005, then three budget editions in 2006, 2009 and 2010 — and the catalog's four rows carry exactly those four years, with the code and the JAN sitting on the 2010 one
• The Japanese title on the 暁月の円舞曲 row is written in Latin letters, Castlevania 暁月の円舞曲; searching it returns four listings and none of them is the Game Boy Advance cartridge
• The two shops want different queries: Suruga-ya answers the product code, and Buyee returns nothing at all for AGB-A2CJ or NTR-ACVJ — the measurements are below

What Does the Catalog Hold for the Handheld Era?

Fourteen rows carry a Castlevania title on Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS. Five of them carry a product code: AGB-AAMJ-JPN-1 (Circle of the Moon), AGB-ACHJ-JPN-1 (白夜の協奏曲), AGB-A2CJ-JPN-1 (暁月の円舞曲), AGB-FADJ-JPN (the 2004 Nintendo-published 悪魔城ドラキュラ from Part 3) and NTR-ACVJ-JPN-2 (蒼月の十字架). The other nine carry an empty product code field, among them 奪われた刻印, both ギャラリー オブ ラビリンス rows, and three of the four 蒼月の十字架 rows.

That empty field is the catalog's gap, not the games'. Both boxes are printed with a code: 奪われた刻印 carries NTR-YR9J-JPN, and ギャラリー オブ ラビリンス carries NTR-ACBJ-JPN together with a second number, RY024-J1, as the photos below show.

The series name is not spelled one way across those rows. Three forms appear in the Japanese title field of the same era: 悪魔城ドラキュラ in kanji (Circle of the Moon, the 2004 Nintendo release, every DS row), キャッスルヴァニア in katakana (the uncoded 暁月の円舞曲 and 白夜の協奏曲 rows), and Castlevania in Latin letters (the coded 暁月の円舞曲 and 白夜の協奏曲 rows). The same game is written two ways depending on which of its two rows you are looking at: row M720055 says Castlevania 暁月の円舞曲 and row M747166 says キャッスルヴァニア -暁月の円舞曲-. Which one you copy decides what a shop search returns.

Why Does the Product Code Return Nothing?

Four of the five stored codes return HTTP 404 and zero listings on Suruga-ya exactly as written: AGB-A2CJ-JPN-1, NTR-ACVJ-JPN-2, AGB-AAMJ-JPN-1 and AGB-FADJ-JPN. Cutting the trailing region-and-number segment turns all four into working queries. AGB-A2CJ returns two listings, NTR-ACVJ returns four, AGB-AAMJ returns one, AGB-FADJ returns one. Cutting only part of the suffix is not enough: AGB-A2CJ-JPN still returns HTTP 404 and zero listings. The break point is the hyphen before JPN.

No primary source for what that trailing segment means was found for this article. Nintendo does not publish the format, and the collector references that describe it are not documentation. So this article claims nothing about what -JPN-1 and -JPN-2 encode. What is measured is only this: the shop's search index answers the stem and does not answer the full string.

The fifth code is the exception, and it is worth stating precisely rather than rounding off. AGB-ACHJ-JPN-1 returns HTTP 200 and two listings, both of them budget re-releases: キャッスルヴァニア ～白夜の協奏曲～ [コナミ ザ ベスト] and キャッスルヴァニア～白夜の協奏曲～ [廉価版] (箱説なし). The truncated AGB-ACHJ returns four, those two plus キャッスルヴァニア～白夜の協奏曲～（美品） and キャッスルヴァニア～白夜の協奏曲～ (箱説なし). So the full stored code is not simply broken here; it is narrower. Where it resolves at all, it resolves to the later editions and misses the earlier ones.

Which Fields on the 暁月の円舞曲 Row Point Where?

キャッスルヴァニア 〜暁月の円舞曲〜 shipped for the Game Boy Advance in Japan on 8 May 2003, published by Konami, two days after the North American release on 6 May 2003 and one day before the European one on 9 May 2003.

The catalog holds it twice. Row M747166 carries the title キャッスルヴァニア -暁月の円舞曲-, year 2003, no product code and no JAN. Row M720055 carries the title Castlevania 暁月の円舞曲, platform ゲームボーイアドバンス, product code AGB-A2CJ-JPN-1, publisher コナミ, year 2005 and JAN 4988602126327. The row that carries the code is not the row that carries the release year.

The measurements say what the 2005 row's fields reach. Searching the JAN 4988602126327 returns two listings, and both are labelled [コナミ ザ ベスト]: キャッスルヴァニア ～暁月の円舞曲～ [コナミ ザ ベスト] and [外箱のみ] キャッスルヴァニア ～暁月の円舞曲～ [コナミ ザ ベスト]. The JAN does not return the plain listing at all. Searching the truncated code AGB-A2CJ returns two different listings: キャッスルヴァニア～暁月の円舞曲～ and キャッスルヴァニア ～暁月の円舞曲～ [コナミ ザ ベスト]. So on one row, the JAN finds only the budget edition, and the code finds the budget edition and the earlier one.

One thing to be precise about: no source consulted for this article gives a release date for the コナミ ザ ベスト edition of this game. The Japanese Wikipedia article lists the Game Boy Advance release, the Wii U Virtual Console release and the Advance Collection, and no budget edition. What is measured is that the 2005 row's JAN returns only [コナミ ザ ベスト] listings and that the row's year is 2005. Those two agree with each other; agreement is not a citation, and this article does not turn it into one.

One label to read before buying: [外箱のみ] means the outer box only, with no cartridge. It is one of the two listings the JAN returns, and it carries the same JAN as the complete copy. A JAN search alone will not tell you that one of its two results is not a game.

What Happens if You Paste the Japanese Title Straight from the Row?

Searching Suruga-ya for Castlevania 暁月の円舞曲 — the title field of row M720055, copied verbatim — returns HTTP 200 and four listings. None of them is the Game Boy Advance cartridge. All four are named Castlevania Advance Collection, in [通常版] and DELUXE EDITION forms.

Those four listings exist because the compilation exists on shelves. Castlevania Advance Collection was released on 24 September 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC as a download, developed by M2 and published by Konami Digital Entertainment, and a packaged version followed on 31 July 2025. 暁月の円舞曲 is one of its included titles. So the Latin-letter query is not returning noise — it is returning a different, current product that legitimately carries the word Castlevania in its Japanese name.

Searching the katakana form instead returns the cartridge. キャッスルヴァニア 暁月の円舞曲 returns eight listings: the four Game Boy Advance ones (キャッスルヴァニア～暁月の円舞曲～, the [コナミ ザ ベスト] re-release, an (箱説なし) copy and the [外箱のみ] lot) and the same four Advance Collection listings. Dropping the series name entirely and searching just 暁月の円舞曲 returns the same eight.

This is the same failure Part 3 recorded for LEGEND OF CORNELL, on a different field of a different row: the catalog writes a Japanese title in Latin letters, the shop writes it in katakana, and a query built by copying the catalog straight across returns either nothing or the wrong product. Here it returns four results, which is the worse case — a query that returns zero announces its own failure, and a query that returns four items of the wrong hardware does not.

What About 蒼月の十字架 on the DS?

悪魔城ドラキュラ 蒼月の十字架 shipped for the Nintendo DS in Japan on 25 August 2005, and was issued three more times in Japan after that: コナミ ザ・ベスト 廉価版 on 29 June 2006, コナミ殿堂セレクション 廉価版 on 29 October 2009, and ベストセレクション 廉価版 on 9 December 2010. Europe got the game on 30 September 2005 and North America on 4 October 2005.

The catalog holds four rows for it, dated 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010 — one for each of those four Japanese issues, in order. Only the 2010 row, M720996, carries a product code (NTR-ACVJ-JPN-2) and the JAN 4988602156287. The other three carry JANs (4988602121568, 4988602129977, 4988602149067) and no code. So the single coded row in this group is the last budget edition, five years after the game came out, and not the 2005 original. All four write the title with the kanji series name.

The copy in the photo below carries the older CERO mark, 12才以上対象, at the top right of the cover. CERO replaced its original age-based categories with new ones for titles reviewed from March 2006, so this box was rated before that change. That makes it most likely the 25 August 2005 first edition, which is the 2005 row with no code, though a budget reissue printed with the older mark cannot be ruled out from the box alone.

Searching NTR-ACVJ returns four listings: 悪魔城ドラキュラ ～蒼月の十字架～, 悪魔城ドラキュラ ～蒼月の十字架～ (箱説なし), 悪魔城ドラキュラ ～蒼月の十字架～[コナミ ザ・ベスト] and 悪魔城ドラキュラ ～蒼月の十字架～[コナミ殿堂コレクション]. Searching the title 蒼月の十字架 returns five: those four plus 悪魔城ドラキュラ～蒼月の十字架～[廉価版]. Searching 悪魔城ドラキュラ 蒼月の十字架 with the series name returns the same five.

The fifth listing is the one the code cannot reach, and the JAN on the same row reaches nothing else. Searching 4988602156287 returns exactly one listing: 悪魔城ドラキュラ～蒼月の十字架～[廉価版]. So on row M720996, the code returns four listings, the JAN returns one, and the two sets do not overlap.

The shop's edition labels and the documented edition names are also not the same strings. The 2009 issue is documented as コナミ殿堂セレクション; the shop's listing reads [コナミ殿堂コレクション]. Two of the four documented issues are named 廉価版 in their own titles, while the shop uses [廉価版] as the label of one listing only. Matching a shop label to a dated edition is therefore a guess, and this article does not make it — what it reports is which query returns which listing.

(箱説なし) is the condition label to read here. It means the box and the manual are not included — the cartridge alone. It appears in both the code result set and the title result set, so neither query filters it out for you.

Which Query Should You Actually Use?

These are measured results, not assumptions. Suruga-ya was measured with raw search URLs; Buyee was measured in a real browser against raw search URLs, because Buyee answers a command-line request with HTTP 202 and an empty body.

The two shops do not take the same query. On Suruga-ya the product code is the precise instrument: AGB-A2CJ returns two listings and NTR-ACVJ four, all of them the right game. On Buyee the same two codes return nothing at all — the page loads, and there is no hit count and no result grid on it. What Buyee answers is the Japanese title with the hardware name appended: キャッスルヴァニア 暁月の円舞曲 ゲームボーイアドバンス returns 47 hits with the cartridge at the top of the list, and 悪魔城ドラキュラ 蒼月の十字架 ニンテンドーDS returns 91.

For 暁月の円舞曲 on Game Boy Advance: use AGB-A2CJ on Suruga-ya for the cartridge in either edition, or キャッスルヴァニア 暁月の円舞曲 to see everything including the box-only lot. Do not use AGB-A2CJ-JPN-1 as the catalog stores it, and do not paste Castlevania 暁月の円舞曲 into a shop.

For 蒼月の十字架 on Nintendo DS: use 悪魔城ドラキュラ 蒼月の十字架 to see all five listings, or NTR-ACVJ for four of them. Do not use NTR-ACVJ-JPN-2.

The general rule the handheld era adds to this series is one edit: when a catalog code ends in -JPN or -JPN-1 or -JPN-2, cut from the hyphen before JPN and search the stem — at Suruga-ya. Part 2 found a correct Super Famicom code the shop does not index at all, and Part 3 found the same on Nintendo 64. This is the case in between: the code is indexed, under a shorter form than the one written on the row.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow · キャッスルヴァニア 暁月の円舞曲 · Game Boy Advance · 2003 · Konami · product code AGB-A2CJ

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp (by product code) · Suruga-ya.jp (by Japanese title) · Buyee

This is Part 4 of a five-part series on Castlevania's development history, running through the release of the new game on October 15. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 are already up. Part 5 arrives on 15 October 2026.