Topic: What "lacked" to make Castlevania a mainstream ip?

[Flame]

I would seriously love a new "spooky" Castlevania game, rather than a "horror"-ish one. You know, maybe a Mega Man: Powered Up-esque remake of CV1 or CV3.

ewww, no. leave cutesy to Kid Dracula.

[Ratty]

I'd still hope they are careful not to go too dark though...just personal preference.  The bloodier/darker games get, I just don't like them.  They just become stupid somehow...sorry to those who like that kind of thing.  Although, I do love Eternal Darnkess, which seems fairly dark to me, so maybe it just has to be done "just right" or something?

I would seriously love a new "spooky" Castlevania game, rather than a "horror"-ish one. You know, maybe a Mega Man: Powered Up-esque remake of CV1 or CV3.

I agree with these above. And to me it seems that Castlevania was at it's absolute best when it was the classic horror, campy Halloween-esque series we grew up with. Personally it should have stayed there.

I'm not familiar with Mega Man: Powered Up but yeah. I like Castlevania when it doesn't take the horror elements too seriously and just tries to be fun. With refrences to cheesy old monster movies etc. I mean I don't think most of them even tried to be scary, or they had a few scary elements overshadowed by lots of goofy (or, in the IGA era, gothic and moody but not feally frightening) ones. Castlevania is an action franchise with a (cheesy and/or Gothic) horror theme, not the other way around.

[theANdROId]

Yeah.  I've always liked the gothic/horror/mythology references found in the games and enemies, but I never needed it to be creepy in any way.  As must as I like a good story in a game, I found CV more fun when they were less focused on some huge dramatic story and were more just games, or a little campy even.

[DoctaMario]

Castlevania's always been mainstream, but it's been on the outskirts of mainstream. It was the mainstream game that people who liked GOOD games wouldn't be ashamed to play. A game hipsters could enjoy but that also had mainstream appeal. All the people I knew who were REALLY into games with maybe one exception owned at least ONE CV game.

The classic games were a good barometer of what was going on with the home console market. CV1 was arcade-based while CV2 and 3 made the games longer, more adventure-like. CV4 made full use of the SNES' Mode7 and pushed the console's capabilities as did Bloodlines on the Genesis. Rondo made excellent use of the Turbo Duo's CD drive and boasted graphics that looked like a full on anime cartoon.

The series took a lot of chances too. They'd establish something then obliterate it. The classic games gave way to SoTN and the exploration games, something that wasn't welcomed by some of the CV fans I knew. Making Alucard the main character in SoTN wasn't a popular move with a lot of the people I knew who were fans from the beginning. But SoTN went on to be one of the series' highlights. Some of the chances they took were rather ill advised (Judgment, but that's more a symptom of Konami going from state-of-the-art publisher to me-too company) but they did a lot more chance-taking than series' like Mario, Zelda, or Sonic did.

Having at least one CV game on most systems definitely didn't do them any favors, but years later it means we have more games to enjoy. But CV was all the rage back in the day. You definitely heard more about CV than you did about Metal Gear, at least until MGS came out.

The games stopped being cool probably around Aria. HoD was probably the last "cool" CV game IMO because even though in places it seemed like they were trying to remind people of SoTn, it was weird, jaunty, and in some ways, supposed to make you go O_o. I didn't like that game as much when I first played it, but it's really grown on me over the years. They watered the subsequent games down a good bit, and as much as I like the LoS series (especially the 1st game) they aren't cool in the same way that the Transformers movies aren't cool.

TL;DR Castlevania has always been sort of mainstream, but it also kept its cred for a long time too.

[Shiroi Koumori]

It's the long history of the series that spawned a lot of fans with differing opinions on how it should be made. And most of the time fans don't agree with each other.

[Claimh Solais]

I'm not familiar with Mega Man: Powered Up but yeah. I like Castlevania when it doesn't take the horror elements too seriously and just tries to be fun. With refrences to cheesy old monster movies etc. I mean I don't think most of them even tried to be scary, or they had a few scary elements overshadowed by lots of goofy (or, in the IGA era, gothic and moody but not feally frightening) ones. Castlevania is an action franchise with a (cheesy and/or Gothic) horror theme, not the other way around.

MM:PU was a PSP remake, or reimagining, of the first Mega Man. It featured a cartoony graphical style that really helped it feel light-hearted and just fun, and was, according to Keiji Inafune, how Mega Man was supposed to look in the first place. Now, I don't mean Castlevania should look outright cartoony, but be what Powered Up was to Mega Man. Embrace the fun of the game, be more about fun of the game rather than making an edgy and visceral vampire flick.

Granted, that doesn't necessarily help the image of vampires in this day and age, but whatever.

[X]

Yeah, Twilight kinda f**ked vampires over for everyone.

[Shiroi Koumori]

Yeah, Twilight kinda f**ked vampires over for everyone.

Not just vampires. It killed literature and ComicCon too.