Topic: The story behind the story?

[LionelMandrake]

Hello all,

A few weeks ago I dug out my old'n'gold NES (which had been sitting in closet for about 10 years) and had a go at a playthrough of the three Castlevania games available on it. And they were as amazing as I remembered. So I got curious - who is the man behind these? Who had the first idea, wrote the first story, made the first game? There's mixed information around (Wiki says Akihiko Nagata, but there's not much to back that up), other sites state that the creator is unknown. And there's almost no information around about Akihiko Nagata, other than some links to Konami.

Could somebody help me with this?

[Nagumo]

Nobody knows! It's a secret. The reason Castlevania had such a weird credit sequence (James Banana, Boris Karloffice, etc) was because the developers wished to remain anonymous. Akihiko Nagata was part of the Vampire Killer team, but I believe it was confirmed that team was not the one that made Castlevania.   

[JR]

Did the developers push the fake name thing, or was it Konami?? This interview with Kinuyo Yamashita makes it sound like they simply weren't allowed to use their real names (although it also says that the developers were the ones who actually chose the names to put on the credits).

[LionelMandrake]

Thanks for the answers! And isn't that just mysterious. Has anybody ever had a go at finding out? Seems like such a waste - maybe the greatest game series ever created and nobody (outside of Konami?) knows who started it all.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I'll ask Ms. Yamashita to see if I can learn anything else.

[crisis]

Excerpt from a 2005 interview with IGA & former members of the CVD that have since disappeared:




debate over, jorge lock this thread plz, aarghh?

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Just because IGA doesn't know, doesn't mean the mystery is over.  It actually means quite the opposite.
There's no harm in talking about it and seeing if there hasn't been some new information.  A long time has passed since 2005 and any information, no matter how tiny, could be useful and worth talking about...

I'd also thank you to not tell me to come lock threads.  Junior-Moderating is not cool (I think there's something in the rules thread about it, actually).  I expect that kind of crap from a n00b but not from someone who's been around as long as you have.

I will not lock.  If there's nothing else to be said, then the thread will die peacefully.  Otherwise, carry on.

[crisis]

I thought I was making an inside joke Jorge, but obviously not 


I can post the entire interview with the other questions that were asked, if you guys want

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Joke went over my head, I'm afraid.
Post the interview for the inquiring OP, please.

[Las]

Wow this story is amazing. One of the longest running(and imo one of the best) franchises in video game history and the creator and team is pretty much kept hidden. Wow. The girl that did the soundtrack for cv1 people know about her by now. She does other video games too, but started their. I read an article online with her commenting to someone on a forum i believe. But yeah i dunno who created it either. Man kudos to the man or woman who had the concept, sure is kick ass,huh?

[crisis]

Some points of interest:

• IGA kinda-sorta foresees Harmony of Despair
• IGA kinda-sorta confirms Vampire Hunter D as being an inspiration
• IGA kinda-sorta confirms his interest in a 1999 game

[Puwexil]

Official acknowledgement aside, you'd have to be blind not to notice all the Vampire Hunter D -derived design elements and references throughout the series. It's certainly not something isolated to Igarashi's games, either, although the D/Alucard relation might be the most obvious and prominent. None of it has proven intrusive to the series' identity or character, fortunately enough, shameless as though in parts it may be. It's just rather appropriate pop culture osmosis at work.

[Ahasverus]

Not even Cox knows it, and he's an administrative. I think we'll never know.

[LionelMandrake]

Seems like the mystery just keeps getting deeper. I'm trying to rack my brain as to why Konami decided to keep their identitys secret? It wasn't common practice back then, was it? And no other Konami game got the same treatment?

EDIT: And thanks for the links to the interviews, interesting stuff!

Some points of interest:

Can I ask from what magazine/book is that a scan of?

[X]

It's also not just Castlevania that has no mention of credits in it. Both Castlevania II and Castlevania III seem to lack credits too. The only two games at around that same time that had any mention of a development team were Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. Why did the Gameboy titles and not the NES titles recieve credits? Who knows... But the first Castlevania title on a console to recieve full-on credits was Super Castlevania IV. From that point-on the rest of the CV series would also have credits at the end.