Yeah, I know he's a good spriter, his maxim and J new sprites were decent.
If the rom extending part fails, I'd guess the "castlevania double pack" could work better for it. t's a 16 mb rom unlike the hod one which is only 8. Perhaps it'd be possible to dummy out the first menu and autoredirect it to harmony of dissonance, then remove all of aria's stuff.
However that would probably take too much time, since everything would have to be ported again, not to mention the code could be different.