How do the Japanese Castlevania strategy guides differ from the American ones?

For Symphony of the Night (Gekka no Yasokyoku), three Japanese publishers each released an official guide: NTT Publishing, Futabasha, and Shinkigensha. The pattern repeated for Castlevania 64, and NTT's Castlevania line continued across the later games, through Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow and the PlayStation 2 Castlevania. Konami itself later published official guides, including one for the Dracula X Chronicles that also covers the original Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night.

The official American guide is the BradyGames Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Official Guide, by Christine Cain, ISBN 978-1-56686-760-3, 112 pages, 1997: complete castle maps, walkthroughs for both the normal and the inverted castle, a bestiary, and item and weapon lists. Prima answered with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: Unauthorized Secrets and Solutions, with the word unauthorized printed in the title. One licensed guide plus unofficial competition is a different market shape from three licensed guides at once.

For the three NES games, American players never got standalone guides at all. The Official Nintendo Player's Guide of 1987 covered the first Castlevania among many games, and the NES Game Atlas (1991) gave all three a Castles of Horror chapter with full maps and boss strategy. Nintendo Power put Simon's Quest on the cover of its second issue in 1988, a costumed Simon holding Dracula's severed head, famous partly because parents complained. Japan had per-game books even then, including a Perfect guide for the first game.

The sharpest single difference is not a guide at all. The Japanese PlayStation release of Symphony of the Night was packaged with a small art book, Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight Art Works, containing Ayami Kojima's artwork and a short prelude manga by Kojima, plus a series soundtrack CD. The American release had no equivalent. So the richest official art publication of the era came bundled with the Japanese game, while American buyers got a strategy guide.

An honest limit: this page documents which guides exist, who published them, and what the American guides contain. We have not opened the Japanese guides page by page, so claims about their interiors wait for a future pass with the books in hand.