Topic: Is Koji Igarashi the greatest Castlevania producer?

[beingthehero]

ಠ_ಠ

I'll stick that baton up your bum.

S-stop it, freak-sama

Not so rough

I poop from there....

[Ahasverus]

I have a whip to spare for whoever says Dave Cox.
And I love you, Puwexil.

I'm not sure that IGA did everything as he say he was a programer first and then got promoted, he gave many good ideas to SOTN but I think Toru San was responsible for the design as you can see Symphony is the best level designed of the metroidvanas, you know which other game has amazing design? Rondo of BLood, Symphony oozes Rondo, they /feel/ same-y and I credit Toru san. The thing is, Puwexil is right, both IGA and Toru worked on it, probbly, but it was their joint efforts and talents what made the game a masterpiece, believe me if it was IGA alone it would had been topped by Harmony, and you might argue the best post SOTN metroidvania is Circle of the Moon funnily enough.

[The Silverlord]

He’ll forever be a legend.  He plugged away at it for years, and kept good stuff coming with a frequency which we may never see the likes of again.  He tried to inject charisma into proceedings with new storyline, characters, environments and even formats; you’ve got take your hat off to him for having passion, belief, and opening the series up to many new fans, even if you didn't completely share his vision at times.

He has helped taken Castlevania into the modern era of gaming, with longer quests, and more accessibility.  The way he handled himself in the media spotlight I've always thought was to be admired.

Also, for my money—and I know this isn't a popular view—he (and the team within Konami) surpassed Symphony of the Night with Aria of Sorrow, so he stands very tall indeed.

[olrox2]

I can understand your view about Aria given i spent a part of my holidays summer in collecting souls and got 100% at end(but had to have a look at a walkthrough at osmepoint cause i knew there was alternate ending but hadnt selected exactly the three good souls(i was close to find yet, having followed what was in books).

[beingthehero]

The notion that either Sorrow game topped or matched SotN is quite popular on other boards and isnt uncommon here o_O

[Lelygax]

ಠ_ಠ

I'll stick that baton up your bum.

I'm interested in this.

So you want a baton in your bum?

[TheouAegis]

The fact is Iga's games stagnated with each iteration. If your crowning achievement was the first in a series and then reviews plummeted after that, that's a sign of a bad director. The classicvanias improved over time. The Iga-vanias degraded over time. That right there disqualifies Iga. I can't say much about Akamatsu or Hagihara. Having actually studied what Akamatsu worked on, I have an appreciation for him and unde rhis direction the first Castlevania female protagonist was implemented. Also CV3 is one of the best-looking NES games I've played to date. Rondo has a charm that I feel no other CV has had, but as has been pointed out in these forums it has certain design cohesion errors. From what I've learned over the years about some game designers' methods, such cohesion errors are logical, but rather than having a stage redesigned he just told the coders to cut'n'paste things around.

So my vote is for Akamatsu.

[Pfil]

The way I see it, OoE was as much of a pinnacle as SotN was, but it lacked the innovation. Personal tastes aside (PoR is my favourite one), he improved the formula with each new game, with the only exception of DoS.
And reviews were always very positive all around the globe.
Now, MoF did bad in reviews. And sales.
That's a failure.

[Munchy]

To answer OP's question... well, he produced the greatest number of games in a row, so if we're going by sheer volume, yes. He was a machine. It was kind of scary at times.

[e105beta]

This is kind of a goofy question.

Producers handle budgeting, planning, scheduling, team management, and occasionally marketing. They're in charge of, you know, production. Any other duties they may have nothing to do with the producer role.

Seeing as Igarashi served as more of a director-producer, comparing him to the likes of Cox (and potentially the other producers) doesn't really make sense. In LoS, for example, Enric Alvarez makes the design decisions, Cox just gets to tell everyone how much time/money they have to do them.

[Beaumont_Belmont]

This is kind of a goofy question.

Producers handle budgeting, planning, scheduling, team management, and occasionally marketing. They're in charge of, you know, production. Any other duties they may have nothing to do with the producer role.

Seeing as Igarashi served as more of a director-producer, comparing him to the likes of Cox (and potentially the other producers) doesn't really make sense. In LoS, for example, Enric Alvarez makes the design decisions, Cox just gets to tell everyone how much time/money they have to do them.

Maybe it is a goofy question, but sometimes you can have a favorite producer. For example, my favorite producer for American Zoetrope films is Fred Fuchs. 

[Abnormal Freak]

A producer isn't always strictly one who manages money and so on; there are many creative producers, in games, movies, music, etc.

I'd say that a producer having a creative role is more likely than not. Now an executive producer, they serve to get the money flowin'. And on that front, no video game producer is better than Hiroshi Yamauchi. From my understanding, he didn't much understand or care for video games, but he threw his money at so many awesome projects and let the creative people have their way. Much as I still love Nintendo, a great deal was lost when he stepped down.

[uzo]

The producer is the guy who keeps everyone on time and on budget to the best of his ability. It's often labeled the "killer of creativity" since part of their job is to decide what ideas to use and not to use, which can lead to tough decisions having to be made for the better of the project.

I take this role, among many others, in my own company and I can personally attest to that title being accurate. There have been a lot of nice ideas I had to sadly deny because we just don't have the time or money to execute them. Though, the silver lining is perhaps that, if the game does well, we can always explore those ideas in the sequels.

It is, admittedly, often hard to be both the Creative Director and the Producer on a project. I've had many tough calls to make, and have had to really restrain myself from my own sense of what I wanted to do as well, to make sure I don't kill the project with feature creep. Feature creep defined as the process of adding 'just one more' feature all the time until the project derails and never gets done.

[e105beta]

The producer is the guy who keeps everyone on time and on budget to the best of his ability. It's often labeled the "killer of creativity" since part of their job is to decide what ideas to use and not to use, which can lead to tough decisions having to be made for the better of the project.

I take this role, among many others, in my own company and I can personally attest to that title being accurate. There have been a lot of nice ideas I had to sadly deny because we just don't have the time or money to execute them. Though, the silver lining is perhaps that, if the game does well, we can always explore those ideas in the sequels.

It is, admittedly, often hard to be both the Creative Director and the Producer on a project. I've had many tough calls to make, and have had to really restrain myself from my own sense of what I wanted to do as well, to make sure I don't kill the project with feature creep. Feature creep defined as the process of adding 'just one more' feature all the time until the project derails and never gets done.

I'm right with you there. It's always tough to be the guy that has to look at his team members and say, "Sorry guys, I know you wanted to put this in, but we just don't have time and/or money".

It's why, on most of my projects, aside from production, I tend to stick to work that doesn't put me in a role where I have to make a lot of creative decisions, because if I'm the one coming up with all these ideas, it becomes that much harder to cut them.

[RichterB]

Maybe? Depends on what you mean.

From a business perspective, he helped to give Castlevania a consistent public identity, and he put out titles on a regular basis. He put in a long tenure of keeping the series running, and made a lot of solid games (though few spectacular ones). Unfortunately, the decisions he'd make (or sign off on) in the long run would cripple the franchise, IMO.

If indeed he was involved to the extent that some argue, Symphony of the Night is likely his crowning achievement, Aria of Sorrow was a pretty creative follow-up in plot and gameplay, and The Adventure Rebirth was a nice try to turn things around in the spiritual sense.

But this insistence of keeping Metroidvania-style forever, with significant changes coming too late and coming in often unpolished or strange forms, really limited and hurt Castlevania. Also, the decision to completely abandon the legacy of the N64 games in favor of following contemporary trends like Devil May Cry for Lament of Innocence, and watering it down further with Curse of Darkness, destroyed any chance at public credibility Castlevania had in 3D. Cox's Lords of Shadow, for all its tweaks and graphical polish, is still following the tradition IGA set down for 3D Castlevania with Lament of Innocence. I'm not saying LoI and CoD were without their positives and/or charms, but their fundamental flaws set the public/fan opinion on CV in 3D in Medusa-made stone, and made designers look further and further outside of CV's history for inspiration.

So, you could make a case for both sides...but I'd probably only have one game he worked on in my top ten games. Personally, I would have hoped that Castlevania was passed around to others during that time; but perhaps no one else wanted to take a crack at it in the company. The interviews with the N64 team seems to suggest that they had a more rounded view of the franchise.