Topic: Operation Akumajo

[cecil-kain]

Any plans on getting over the "Forget what you think you know about Castlevania" comment that was obviously made in regards to Lords of Shadow not being a part of the main series?

Of all the things to latch onto and be offended about..

Dave Cox used his talking points to make a sale, and so shall I.

Seriously, the constant shit slinging towards Lords of Shadow and David Cox (admittedly sometimes he does need to keep his mouth shut) is getting old.

Then you're really not going to like this...
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Nah...  I'll save it for later.   

I wonder though...  Did you even bother reading the last 3 pages?  There's a higher calling here, I don't want this topic derailed by yet another LoS debate --so you can keep it.

How is it that IGAs team can make games like Dracula X Chronicles and Lament of Innocence, have his team redraw a fuck ton of sprites in OoE, and up until the end of 2008 make a game every year and still be seen as having budget and timeframe issues?

Well you passed yourself off as an insider the last time we talked, so maybe you have more information than I do.  Lament certainly appeared to be a fair shake for IGA, in a lot of ways...  But there's no way you're gonna convince anyone here that he had the same kind of financing or the experienced professionals that Kojima enjoyed while developing of Metal Gear Solid 2 just a couple years earlier.  Also releasing the GBA and DS games back to back to back gets into the quantity vs quality cookie-cutter paradigm discussed earlier in this thread.  At least the code was good enough to recycle and keep selling, but that's hardly a sign of any serious investment on Konami's part.

The serious investment didn't come until someone at Konami decided to let Mercury Steam do the job.  What's shocking to me is how callously they snubbed IGA and his team --their own people-- who obviously loved working on the series.

I highly, highly doubt that Konami was breathing down IGAs neck forcing him to complete a new Castlevania title for the DS every year, with games for the PS2, PSP and Wii in between. This isn't Sonic. None of the games hes released have felt incomplete, feel like they're missing something or sprites aside, feel rushed.

I still want to know how the sprite budget argument explains the transition from HoD to AoS, and OoE. IGA himself even said that the Castlevania DS titles have a higher budget than most DS games out there. Even if it was a budget issue, can you explain the same system being used over and over for the handheld titles? His team is lazy about them, period. Thats why its frustrating because you look at games like Dracula X Chronicles, Lament of Innocence and to a point OoE and you know his team is capable of so much more than having Peewee Herman and his anime girlfriend go through haunted carnivals with sprites from 1994.

Of course HD had a smaller budget, thats not even worth mentioning.

I love the guy, hes made some of my favorite games ever but some of the excuses for his mistakes are ridiculous.

The most obvious mistake I can think of was condemning 2D Castlevania to handhelds for the last 14 years --and something tells me that decision was made at a higher level and IGA had to live with it.  Obviously more exciting things happened when Castlevania moved onto the much more powerful PSP --at least in part because it broke the cookie-cutter.  It's a sad, sad thing that game never realized its full potential on a home console...   

[meanguyjones]

Dave Cox used his talking points to make a sale, and so shall I.

Then you're really not going to like this...
....
[img]...
....
Nah...  I'll save it for later.   

I wonder though...  Did you even bother reading the last 3 pages?  There's a higher calling here, I don't want this topic derailed by yet another LoS debate --so you can keep it.

Well you passed yourself off as an insider the last time we talked, so maybe you have more information than I do.  Lament certainly appeared to be a fair shake for IGA, in a lot of ways...  But there's no way you're gonna convince anyone here that he had the same kind of financing or the experienced professionals that Kojima enjoyed while developing of Metal Gear Solid 2 just a couple years earlier.  Also releasing the GBA and DS games back to back to back gets into the quantity vs quality cookie-cutter paradigm discussed earlier in this thread.  At least the code was good enough to recycle and keep selling, but that's hardly a sign of any serious investment on Konami's part.

The serious investment didn't come until someone at Konami decided to let Mercury Steam do the job.  What's shocking to me is how callously they snubbed IGA and his team --their own people-- who obviously loved working on the series.

The most obvious mistake I can think of was condemning 2D Castlevania to handhelds for the last 14 years --and something tells me that decision was made at a higher level and IGA had to live with it.  Obviously more exciting things happened when Castlevania moved onto the much more powerful PSP --at least in part because it broke the cookie-cutter.  It's a sad, sad thing that game never realized its full potential on a home console...   

I don't want to turn it into a LoS debate. I'm pretty much on board with you about Konami not giving a shit about the series. It goes beyond IGA. Can you remember any LoS promotion going on after the game was released, or even before?

No one is going to disagree with you on Kojima having a way larger budget than IGA. Kojima is Konami period, and has been for quite some time, as horrible as that is.

The only thing Konami did for Mercurysteam was letting them put Kojimas name on the cover. Lords of Shadow did not have that big of a budget that you're thinking of, nor did it have a huge team.

Konami snubbing IGA for Lords of Shadow is the only quality control that they've shown the series in quite a while. IGA essentially oversaturated the series to the point where the general public didn't care anymore. Konami is a business. IGA was losing them money by doing things his way.  I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but games like Curse of Darkness and Castlevania Judgment somehow making it past testing and even existing is proof enough to me that IGA has had free reign on the series and Konami just didn't give a shit until someone else stepped in and said Hey, let me give it a try.

But now, its back to them not caring.


Good luck with this, hope something comes of it.

p.s. puzzled by the insider comment, wat?

[Munchy]

Hmm so according to you Castlevania is dead. I don't agree. The 2D games are good, and they could have been better if IGA's team had   enough time and budget to develop their games. I think it's worth it to try to save the franchise.I don't know about you, but I'm sure a lot of people agree with me.Plus I didn't like Konami's attitude towards the fanbase. May I remind you that they completely ignored the 25th anniversary, or at least that's how i see it because what they gave us isn't exactly what you expect for an anniversary.

I meant their current game line up, actually. The recent 2D games were fun (can't comment on HD), and LoS, while flawed, had a lot of worthwhile ideas.

Most of Konami's other stuff right now looks pretty bad though, and it's made even more sad when some of the most appealing titles are collections of old games.

(Except NeverDead. I'm looking forward to that.)

[Inccubus]

At least they haven't pulled a "Legends 3" on us. But they really are slacking on CV these days.

[Munchy]

At least they haven't pulled a "Legends 3" on us. But they really are slacking on CV these days.

This is true. LoS might not have been the perfect 3D Castlevania (and really, what is?), but MS was clearly passionate about the game.

[DragonSlayr81]

At least they haven't pulled a "Legends 3" on us. But they really are slacking on CV these days.

For Konami to pull a "Legends 3", they'd have to, at least, ANNOUNCE a new CV game. Of course, no way in hell would Konami ask for the amount of fan input Capcom was asking for MML3. No way in HELL!

[DoctaMario]

I "liked" the FB page and I could see this possibly going somewhere if Konami grows a pair of balls and decides not to let CV rot. But Konami has gone from a market leader to a follower over the years. It's hard to believe that this is the same company that came up with some of the IPs they're known for.

That said, if the series is going to continue, it's going to have to be in 3d. The general consensus is that 2d is retro and that's why IGA's games were confined to handhelds. Great as 2d is, there's no way Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft will allow a purely 2d game to hit their precious consoles no matter how beautiful it is. It's been said a million times but if they could somehow marry LoI and CV64, we'd have a perfect 3d CV game, but until that happens, there will be arguments and cries of "that's not Castlevania" while Konami throws everything they have against the wall to see what sticks. The series has lost its sense of direction since Judgment. It seems like Konami itself doesn't know where to take it, and while I'd love to see more games, I'd almost rather see them make a final game and let the series go rather than aimlessly make game after game that doesn't seem to have any thought behind it.

I'd almost rather have some of the talented members of the community do remakes of the games because at least that way we'd know they're done out of love and not obligation.

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

That said, if the series is going to continue, it's going to have to be in 3d. The general consensus is that 2d is retro and that's why IGA's games were confined to handhelds. Great as 2d is, there's no way Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft will allow a purely 2d game to hit their precious consoles no matter how beautiful it is.

I take it you've never heard of Dragon's Crown. Or Muramasa for that matter. The former is for both PS3 and Vita and the latter was for Wii.

[C Belmont]

I take it you've never heard of Dragon's Crown. Or Muramasa for that matter. The former is for both PS3 and Vita and the latter was for Wii

Rayman Origins, Kirby: Mass attack, Mario & Luigi: Partners in time, Mario & Luigi: Bowsers inside story, Toki Remix, Elysian Tail, Monster Tale, Skullgirls, Magical drop V, A boy & his blob, Hard Corp Uprising, Batman the Brave & the Bold: the videgame, Bloodrayne Betrayal & Dust an elysian Tail are a few more modern 2D games. Also the ESRB recently rated a Alien video game for DS that is a side scrolling shooter developed by Wayforward.

But who am I kidding 2D video games are just to old a concept to be marketable
...Konami is just too damn lazy to put the appropriate amount of effort into a great 2D game that's all!!!

[Dremn]

Forget it guys. Castlevania is fucked.

[narkolepsi]

Forget it guys. Castlevania is fucked.

Welp, that's discouraging. Didn't think I could get in a worse mood after Borders announced it's liquidation.

On the other hand:

"The only way evil can triumph is for good men to do nothing."

So it's well worth the effort. I just liked the page. Best of luck guys, and thank you Cecil for being our whistleblower.

[DragonSlayr81]

"The only way evil can triumph is for good men to do nothing."

People tend to forget the FULL quote:

"The only way evil can triump is for good men to do nothing, unless we are talking about corporate producers and suits, which crush good men's hopes despite effort!"

[KaZudra]

well, the way I'm seeing it Konami hasn't ruined anything like Square Enix an Capcom, but their focus is way off...
We need to reach out to konami but not hurt em....

[Trebor777]

People tends to forget that LoS wasn't a Castlevania at the start; Konami thought: we need to reboot the series (because that's what everyone else is doing; and it seems to sell) and then found out about mercury steam.... It's not only Konami; it's also Capcom and other japanese companies to start to produce some of the their franchise with external studios. ( Look at the new DMC.. it scares the hell out of me.. ). That's basically what's happening since the "recession" of 2009.

if you look at the sales worldwide... LoS sells maaaany times more than any other episodes from the series; ever. I think it reached the million copies. That's probably due to the marketing. So for Konami, doing the reboot was the right decision, it worked!

Iga is just a employee... and the business side always had the control. That's just the way the game industry is since 2000 basically... Mostly big corporations. Then you got the random indie studio making huge sells on phones or pc because it's cheap to publish. (yeah.. consoles devkit... are stupidely expensive, 3ds devkit is like 3000$ and you need to be approved first by Nintendo).

Anyway. Point is: it was cheaper to develop on handled, then due to technical limitation at the time they probably couldnt put as much content they could.
Konami thinks 2d is dead... because it's still regarded by pretty much every customer as less cool than 3D... I mean it's just the way of progress. People would laugh if a game with the graphism of the PSX or even SNES was released as a boxed game "new franchise" for 60$. People would say "fuck you whatever developper!"

Most of the HD 2D titles announced or released recently... are only DL content... and don't get as much attention anyway.
2D is cheaper to produce so small studios who want to come out tends to use it if they have talented guys on their team. ( it's easier to make pretty 2d than 3d, thank you 500y of painting history, while being super easy to code )...
then console manufacturers dont want to see their HighTech cutting edge of the death 3D of hell machines to be used for 2D for a new franchise sold on box. So "ok you can release it but only as Downloadable Title". Because a price of the game sold on box; goes back to the manufacturer ( that's how they get back their investements on the console on long terms after the actual console sales decrease and console prices drops)

Finally... I'm probably sure.. that the number of hardcore fans of CV are probably less a lot less than the number of people happy or who simply doesn't care with the current state of castlevania. That can be said of any "extremist" group compared to a moderated group... In the end konami will look at the numbers and say " shall we care about 100000 (if we can even reach that number) people that like the series that way; or about 900000 people who don't complain and still buy it ?"

About Nintendo... that's just the way nintendo is... they've never cared about public opinion... Else the wii and gamecube would have had a lot more interesting games....Hardcore gamers are a minority compared to the "casual" ones...
They said they're going to change thing with the Wii-U... but they said the same thing when the gamecube came out...

So I salute the effort and I'm gonna like the page... but I fear it will probably be all for nothing.

[Mr.Bushido]

About Nintendo... that's just the way nintendo is... they've never cared about public opinion... Else the wii and gamecube would have had a lot more interesting games....Hardcore gamers are a minority compared to the "casual" ones...
They said they're going to change thing with the Wii-U... but they said the same thing when the gamecube came out...

Why put nintendo into this?, they are still a great company when it comes to their games. the 3D mario games are amazing , and we also have a brand new 2d main series with NSMB which is very good, the Zelda games are all incredible. Metroid prime and Donkey Kong country returns are simply amazing. Well, Metroid Other M wasn't a good move but is only one game and that kinda stuff always happens