Castlevania Development History, Part 5: Two Codes on One Row, and the One Hit That Is the Wrong Machine

In Part 4, every Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS code in the catalog had to be cut short before a shop would answer it. The disc era does not have that problem. All three product codes the Kataban catalog holds for Castlevania on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 return HTTP 200 and real listings exactly as they are written. What goes wrong here is different, and quieter: each code reaches one edition and stops, the field holds two codes where only the first one works, and the Japanese title stored on the PlayStation 3 row returns exactly one listing — a disc for another region, on another console.

• The catalog holds 12 Castlevania rows on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3; 3 carry a product code, and all 3 work at Suruga-ya as stored — the first era in this series where that is true
• Each of those rows stores two codes joined by a semicolon, BLJM60284;VT033-J1; the first half returns listings and the second returns HTTP 404 and zero
• BLJM60284 returns exactly one listing, the PlayStation 3 [通常版]; the [限定版] sits on the same shelf and the code does not reach it
• Searching that row's own Japanese title, Castlevania Lords of Shadow, returns exactly one listing: an Asia-region Xbox 360 disc
• The katakana form returns five listings across three consoles — two PlayStation 3, two Xbox 360, one Nintendo 3DS — all carrying some spelling of the same six words
• 闇の呪印 is held on two rows: the 2007 row's code returns only the [ベスト版], the 2005 row's JAN returns only the original, and the two results do not overlap

What Does the Catalog Hold for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 Era?

Twelve rows carry a Castlevania title on PlayStation 2 or PlayStation 3, six on each. Three carry a product code: SLPM65444;VW148-J1 (キャッスルヴァニア, the 2003 PlayStation 2 game released in the West as Lament of Innocence), SLPM66668;VW295-J2 (悪魔城ドラキュラ 闇の呪印, on the row dated 2007) and BLJM60284;VT033-J1 (Castlevania Lords of Shadow). The remaining nine carry an empty product code field.

Three of the twelve are not discs at all. The Media Arts Database records them with the carrier type オンライン資料 — online distribution — and the catalog carries that flag through: キャッスルヴァニア Lords of Shadow 宿命の魔鏡 HD EDITION (2013), 悪魔城ドラキュラ Harmony of Despair (2012), and one of the two 悪魔城ドラキュラ Lords of Shadow 2 rows (2014). There is no physical copy of those to search for, whatever a shop returns.

The catalog holds no Castlevania row on Xbox 360, although it holds 144 Xbox 360 rows in total. Suruga-ya has two Xbox 360 copies of Lords of Shadow on the shelf right now, under the same Japanese name as the PlayStation 3 copies and with the same release date. That gap between the catalog and the shelf is the whole subject of the next two sections.

The two Lords of Shadow rows split their fields the way Part 4's handheld rows did, and one step further. Row M720598 carries the product code, the JAN 4988602154269, the publisher コナミデジタルエンタテインメント — and no year at all. Row M737910 carries the year 2010, no code, no JAN, and in its publisher field a copyright line rather than a company name: ©2010 Konami Digital Entertainment Developed by Mercury Steam Entertainment. The 2005 闇の呪印 row does the same thing, with ©1986 2005 KONAMI where a publisher should be.

Do the Disc-Era Product Codes Actually Work?

All three do, as written, with no editing. BLJM60284 returns HTTP 200 and one listing. SLPM66668 returns 200 and one. SLPM65444 returns 200 and three. Part 4's rule — cut the code at the hyphen before JPN — has nothing to do here, because these codes carry no such suffix.

The semicolon is the thing to edit instead. Every one of the three rows stores two values in the product code field, and only the first is a shop query. VT033-J1, VW295-J2 and VW148-J1 each return HTTP 404 and zero listings at Suruga-ya. This article makes no claim about what those second values are; what is measured is that the shop does not answer them. Pasting the field as stored, semicolon and all, is the failure mode to avoid, and it is the same one this site has recorded before on a Saturn row (670-7238;GS-9041, where only GS-9041 is a working query).

Writing the code with a hyphen changes nothing at this shop. BLJM-60284 returns the same single listing as BLJM60284, and SLPM-66668 the same single listing as SLPM66668. The hyphen is optional here; the semicolon is not.

A code that returns 200 is still not a code that returns everything. BLJM60284 returns the PlayStation 3 [通常版] and nothing else, and the PlayStation 3 [限定版] is in the same shop under the same query family. The limited edition is not a cosmetic difference: it shipped with an art book and a soundtrack CD, and with a download code — on PlayStation 3 for 悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲 on Game Archives, on Xbox 360 for 悪魔城ドラキュラ ハーモニー オブ ディスペアー. A buyer searching the stored code will never see it listed.

What Happens if You Paste the Catalog's Own Title Into a Shop?

Row M720598 writes the Japanese title in Latin letters: Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Searching Suruga-ya for exactly that returns HTTP 200 and exactly one listing: アジア版 CASTLEVANIA： Lords of Shadow(国内版本体動作可), filed under XBOX360ソフト. It is an Asia-region release, on a console the catalog holds no Castlevania row for, and the listing states it runs on a Japanese system. One hit, no error message, nothing on the results page to say the search missed.

The other Lords of Shadow row writes the title as Castlevania -Lords of Shadow-. That string returns 27 listings, most of them North American releases of other Castlevania games and a run of Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania boxes. Neither of the two title fields the catalog holds for this game returns the Japanese PlayStation 3 disc.

The field that does work is on the same row. Its reading field holds キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ, and that returns five listings, four of which are the game on two consoles. Part 4 recorded this failure on Game Boy Advance, where the Latin-letter title returned four listings of a current compilation; Part 3 recorded it on LEGEND OF CORNELL, where it returned nothing. Here it returns one plausible item, which is the version of the failure that is hardest to catch.

Latin letters are not the problem by themselves. The two Lords of Shadow 2 rows store 悪魔城ドラキュラ Lords of Shadow 2 — kanji and Latin in one string — and that returns two listings, both of them the right game, one PlayStation 3 and one Xbox 360. What fails is the string with no Japanese characters in it at all, because the shop indexes this game's name in katakana.

Why Do Five Listings Share One Japanese Name?

Searching キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ returns five listings, and they are three different machines. Adding the console name splits them: キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ プレイステーション3 returns two, the [通常版] and the [限定版], both PlayStation 3. キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ Xbox360 returns two, the same two editions on Xbox 360. All four carry the release date 2010/12/16 on their listings.

The fifth is a Nintendo 3DS cartridge. Suruga-ya lists it as キャッスルヴァニア ロード・オブ・シャドウ, dated 2013/03/20 — the shop's product name drops 宿命の魔鏡, which is the part of the title that says it is a different game. That game is Mirror of Fate, released in Japan on 20 March 2013 for Nintendo 3DS. Searching Suruga-ya for 宿命の魔鏡 returns HTTP 404 and zero listings: the words that would tell the two games apart are not in the shop's product name, so the only query that finds the 3DS cartridge is the one that also returns the PlayStation 3 disc.

The catalog holds that 3DS game twice, once as a cartridge row and once as an online row, and it holds the PlayStation 3 HD Edition of it as an online row dated 2013. The HD edition was distributed on 4 December 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as a download. So a PlayStation 3 owner searching for 宿命の魔鏡 on a disc is searching for something that was never pressed.

The shop is not consistent about the middle dots either. One PlayStation 3 listing reads キャッスルヴァニア ～ロード オブ シャドウ～[通常版] with spaces, and the other three read ロード・オブ・シャドウ with ・. Searching with spaces returns both spellings, so this one does not cost you anything — but it is why the same game appears under two strings in a single result page.

What About 闇の呪印 on the PlayStation 2?

悪魔城ドラキュラ 闇の呪印 shipped for the PlayStation 2 in North America on 5 November 2005, in Japan on 24 November 2005, and in Europe on 17 February 2006. It was developed and published by Konami Digital Entertainment, produced by Koji Igarashi, with character designs by Ayami Kojima and music by Michiru Yamane. Famitsu Game White Paper 2006 records 42,926 copies sold in Japan.

The catalog holds it on two rows, and they divide the identifiers between them. Row M759621 carries the year 2005 and the JAN 4988602124637, with no product code. Row M720782 carries the year 2007 and the product code SLPM66668;VW295-J2, with no JAN.

Each identifier returns exactly one listing, and they are different listings. The JAN 4988602124637 returns 悪魔城ドラキュラ 闇の呪印, which the shop dates 2005/11/24. The code SLPM66668 returns 悪魔城ドラキュラ ～闇の呪印～ [ベスト版], which the shop dates 2007/02/15. Searching the Japanese title 悪魔城ドラキュラ 闇の呪印 returns both, and adding プレイステーション2 still returns both, because no other console carries this title.

This is the same split Part 4 found inside one row, arranged more tidily: here the catalog puts the JAN on the row dated for the original and the code on the row dated for the reissue, and each one reaches its own edition. Whether the code was ever printed only on the reissue's spine is not something this article can tell you — and the reissue is where the sourcing stops. No dated source for a Japanese budget edition of this game was found. The Japanese Wikipedia article lists the soundtrack CD, the guide book and the manga, and no reissue. The catalog's year 2007 and the shop's 2007/02/15 agree with each other; agreement is not a citation, and this article does not convert it into one.

[ベスト版] is the label to read before buying. It marks a later budget printing, which is the copy the code returns and the only copy the code returns.

Which Query Should You Actually Use?

These are measured results. Suruga-ya was measured with raw search URLs and the counts read from the page's own 該当件数 figure; 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 disagree about the two codes, in opposite directions. At Suruga-ya both work. At Buyee, SLPM66668 returns one item and it is the right one — 中古PS2ソフト 悪魔城ドラキュラ ～闇の呪印～ [ベスト版] — while BLJM60284 returns no hit count and no result grid at all. The pattern this series has recorded holds: a Buyee code search depends on whether sellers happened to type the code into their own listing text, and there is no way to know but to try it.

What Buyee answers reliably is the Japanese title with the console name appended. キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ プレイステーション3 returns 53 hits with a sealed PlayStation 3 [通常版] at the top. Dropping the console name returns 113, and the third listing is already an Xbox 360 copy. 悪魔城ドラキュラ 闇の呪印 プレイステーション2 returns 23; dropping the console name returns 42, and the top two are a soundtrack CD and volume 2 of the manga — both real products, released 30 November 2005 and 22 April 2006, and neither of them a game.

One difference between the two shops matters for how long these numbers last. Suruga-ya is a stock database, so its counts are reproducible until the stock changes. Buyee is auction listings, so its counts are true at the moment of measurement and not after.

For Lords of Shadow on PlayStation 3: use BLJM60284 at Suruga-ya for the [通常版], or キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ プレイステーション3 to see the [限定版] as well. Do not paste BLJM60284;VT033-J1, and do not paste Castlevania Lords of Shadow. As measured on 9 September 2026, Suruga-ya's own stock of the [通常版] is 品切れ — sold out — with used copies from other sellers listed on the same page.

For 闇の呪印 on PlayStation 2: use 悪魔城ドラキュラ 闇の呪印 to see both editions, SLPM66668 for the [ベスト版] alone, or the JAN 4988602124637 for the 2005 original alone.

The rule the disc era adds to this series is two edits, not one. When the product code field holds a semicolon, search the first value only. And when a code does return listings, check whether it returns all of them before making it your only query — on this era's rows, a working code reached one edition every time.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow · キャッスルヴァニア ロード オブ シャドウ · PlayStation 3 · 2010 · Konami Digital Entertainment · product code BLJM60284

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

This is Part 5, the last part of a five-part series on Castlevania's development history, published on the day the new game arrives. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 cover the Famicom and Game Boy era, the PC Engine and Super Famicom, the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, and the handhelds. The series ends here.