Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

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Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby S4Blade » Mon Mar 17, '14, 7:16 pm

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2014/03/17/longt ... es-konami/

This guy was the assistant director for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Apparently he wants to work on his own projects, and is working on a new Metroidvania game. Good news IMO, I guess he's not happy with the direction that Castlevania is going. I don't blame him really.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby myau56 » Mon Mar 17, '14, 8:16 pm

Very sad news... :( BUT if he's going to have other projects with other people, is this news sad at all ? I'm not sure about it ! :)
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby Snorb » Mon Mar 17, '14, 8:44 pm

I've seen Castlevania: Lords of Shadow/Mirror of Fate/Lords of Shadows 2's plots synopsized, and... yeah. Castlevania went freaking downhill since the DS games.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby S4Blade » Mon Mar 17, '14, 11:31 pm

The DS Castlevania games were the last games I enjoyed. Hopefully Koji Igarashi goes on to make a game similar to Castlevania, but is not Castlevania in name. Kind of like how Keiji Inafune is now working on Mighty No. 9, as opposed to Mega Man, and Shinji Mikami is working on The Evil Within, as opposed to Resident Evil.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby Bragatyr » Tue Mar 18, '14, 12:27 am

No joke, we need some old school Castlevania action again.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby myau56 » Wed Mar 19, '14, 9:49 pm

Old School Castlevania's ? But "New school" Castlevania's are great too :)
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby S4Blade » Wed Mar 19, '14, 10:11 pm

Well myau56 I'll tell you where I stand on 2D Castlevania vs 3D Castlevania. The only 2D Castlevania game that I've been disappointed with was Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles on PSP. It was okay, but after playing the GBA and DS games it just wasn't as good. Even taking that into consideration, that's still only 1 2D Castlevania game I've been disappointed with.

The 3D Castlevania games I've played were Lament of Innocense and Curse of Darkness, both of which I thought were pretty bad. I still have yet to play the Lords of Shadow games though, so maybe those will surprise me.
Last edited by S4Blade on Wed Mar 19, '14, 10:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby Bragatyr » Thu Mar 20, '14, 12:28 am

VistaBlade, I'm not really familiar with Dracula X Chronicles, but isn't it basically a Rondo of Blood remake with the original included? I can't imagine that anyone who liked any Castlevania wouldn't like Rondo at least, it's pretty easily the best 2D Castlevania in existence, so if this is the case, it's boggling my mind!

Granted, I hear that the original Dracula X itself was kind of subpar, but still decent. But yeah, I definitely prefer 2D Castlevania, and I'm more partial to the 8-bit and 16-bit platformer games in the series, but I did really dig Castlevania 64 and Legacy of Darkness. Those were really spooky and atmospheric and had some incredible music.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby S4Blade » Thu Mar 20, '14, 2:44 am

Yes it was a Rondo of Blood remake, but it was not a very good port. It had 3D graphics on a 2D plane and it felt sluggish at times. It's a neat game for a few reasons. It's the first game in the series were you can actually see the Metroidvania style of gameplay taking form, and it has some of the first appearances of some of the now staple Castlevania enemies. If you are a fan I recommend checking it out, but don't expect to be floored by it.

It's more of the Castlevania 4 style like I said, but there are hints of the Metroidvania mindset, which makes it kind of an essential game if you are big on the history of the Castlevania games, and how they came to be.

By the way, here's an update on this story:
http://www.joystiq.com/2014/03/19/frust ... ave-konam/

Apparently he left because his non-casual friendly games kept getting denied by Konami. That's a pretty stupid reason to chase away a guy with so much talent.
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Re: Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi leaves Konami

Postby myau56 » Sat Mar 22, '14, 9:42 pm

I've never been a huge Castlevania fan and I've never finished any one of them ! (yes shhame on me !!!) even if I've tasted or played a lot of them ! I've particularly played the 3 DS games and they were great indeed :)
Honestly, I've never tested the N64 games but the "reviews" about them are often very negative : were they so bad at all ?
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