I see most of you have already read the article by now, but I got this from the actual author (He's over at HG101) so I thought I'd share this with y'all!
"The CV1, CV2, and CV3 team were the same group - they also did Snake's Revenge, which I think is amazing.
The CV4 team, headed by Mitch, was entirely separate, though according to Mitch there was definite overlap in the development periods. CV4 began development prior to CV3 coming out. It must have started just as Nintendo was informing companies about the SFC, since they only had design specs, not actual dev hardware at first.
As for the creators of the original CV, that's very interesting. The Famicom Disk System release was first, and predates the MSX2 version, which was by an entirely different team (Konami kept the FC, MSX and arcade divisions all separate in those days).
I interviewed the creator of Haunted Castle (it's unpublished), and he said that the head of CV1 was Hitoshi Akamatsu, the same as the sequels.
Now, Derboo on HG101 did some digging, and found that Hitoshi Akamatsu at Konami also worked on Time Pilot, and filed a patent regarding this, which listed his home address. It was missing the postal code, so I checked it against the city and found 5 possible codes. I sent 5 letters to Japan, with slightly different addresses.
I recently received the last one back - all were marked undeliverable. It seems he doesn't live there any more.
Will we ever get hold of the true mind behind the original? I have no idea.
Also, someone spoke about MegaMan's creator. If I'm not mistaken it's not Keiji Inafune, but rather Akira Kitamura.
Glad everyone enjoyed the article. It's my last one until I've finished my book.
Best regards
John S"