JBoc924
September 26, 1986. Does that date mean anything to you? Well, if you’re a Castlevania fan then it damn well should. That’s the year the original Castlevania title hit the Famicom in Japan, thus creating one of gaming’s most treasured franchises. Now let’s flashforward to present time, it’s 2011 and you know what that means! We’ve been extinguishing Dracula and his fellow creatures of the night for 25 years. This doesn’t just call for a celebration among fans, this also calls for a new game to be, hopefully, released this year. How does Castlevania 5 sound to you?
Not counting the European port of Dracula X, we still haven’t received a true sequel to Super Castlevania IV, numerically speaking. Instead, after Super Castlevania IV the series seemed to take a step back-wards, in terms of game-play. Whether you like it or hate it, the mechanics in Castlevania IV were really intuitive and it served to make one of the best SNES games of all time. I’m not complaining about the series sequels post- IV though, because Rondo of Blood is just bloody amazing, but they all seemed to ignore all the “new” that was introduced in the SNES classic. So yeah, I think we’re due for a visit back to this style, 16-bit and all.
We’ve already seen many iconic franchise revivals throughout the last couple of years, with Mega Man sticking out from the crowd. The reason being, it’s revival coming in 8-bit form with the release of Mega Man 9 which was later followed by Mega Man 10. This brings up something interesting in regards to how Castlevania could follow a similar route and offer a revival that links back to its early roots, preferably in 16-bit so it could differentiate itself from the Mega Man 8-bit revivals, and possibly lead to Mega Man going the 16-bit route, oh how the world works.
Back when the Wii-exclusive fighter Castlevania: Judgement was inching closer to release, Wired held an interview with Castlevania mastermind Koji Igarashi. In it, he spoke about many things with the topic of note being that of Mega Man 9’s initial release. The following is what he had to say over Capcom’s revival of their classic blue bomber:
I’m watching that very closely to see how it does. Myself, I’m a big retro gaming fan, so if it is successful that definitely opens up doors for what I can do.
And as we all know, Mega Man 9 (and it’s sequel) turned out to be successful digital titles on Wiiware, XBLA, and PSN. So this should be an indication to Konami, and Iga-san, that people do in fact want to play these retro games. And what better year to give Castlevania the classic treatment than this year, a year that marks the franchise’s 25th anniversary. While I’ve been enjoying Castlevania: Harmony of Despair and Lords of Shadow immensely, I’m all up for some 8/16-bit Castlevania, are you?
Make sure to leave comments below telling us how badly you want Konami to release Castlevania 5 this year and if you would want an 8-bit or 16-bit game.Think of this as a petition of sorts, with this being sent to Konami to hopefully make them take notice of how bad fans want Castlevania 5.
