Topic: was IGA robbed?

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

Long-time, no-see Charlotte-nyo:3. 

You don't necessarily need a big budget to get a real great game out. The history of gaming has proven this before. There were some amazing games that came out for very little cost. All the creator needs is to be inventive. It's only partially true that the more money you have that greater the chances of developing a great game. But there is also the case where you have such a large budget and yet the product you make tanks right from the get-go. We've all seen that before as well. IGA could have made the 1999 game and make it work with the amount that Konami had given him. But instead he kept on passing it up and by then it was too late to even try. Rather then making LoI or CoD for that matter, the budget for either of those two titles could have been used for the 1999 game. And now it's too late for him. 1999 is just too big in everyone's minds.

That depends on what people think of as a great game. A very fun game can surely be made on a low budget. That's what the GBA and DS games were--very fun. But an expansive, epic and grandiose game is extremely difficult to do under such conditions in the modern era, and that is what the "hype" around the 1999 game caused people to think of it as. There are many complaints about the DS games people have offered in the past (which I am far more lenient on, but I acknowledge they exist). These are things like "copy paste" level design and reused enemies--things like this can only be solved with larger team sizes and/or longer dev times--i.e. a bigger budget.

And on the 3D side, what if he was intending 1999 to be a 3D game? Would people have accepted something like the copy pasted hallways of LoI for their grandiose vision of what the 1999 game would be? I don't really think so. They would be let down and disillusioned, just as some would be let down if the 1999 game was "just another handheld entry."

Perhaps people are correct that if Iga had more foresight he could've headed this "hype train" off and made the 1999 game quickly after AoS instead of Curse of Darkness or DoS. But would it really have been the game he wanted it to be with their budgets? I'm not so sure.

I don't see why the 1999 game couldn't have been on the DS or 3DS. The Sorrow games were handheld entries, and rather than not make the game at all it would have been better to make it for them as a 2d entry which would have well suited a young Julius' style of gameplay. In any event Iga's next 3d title would have been based on Alucard (going by the trailers at the time) which means 1999 would not have been made.

I think people who have previously commented are correct, he simply passed up too many opportunities in the past.

It could have been made as a DS or 3DS entry, but do you remember posts around CV communities in the past of people saying "why can't we have bigger castles? Why can't we have the 2D games as a console release like SotN? Why does it have to be on a small screen handheld?" etc. I'd wager there are a decent amount of people who would be disappointed by the 1999 game having just the production values of CoD or DoS only with greater plot significance.

[zangetsu468]

That depends on what people think of as a great game. A very fun game can surely be made on a low budget. That's what the GBA and DS games were--very fun. But an expansive, epic and grandiose game is extremely difficult to do under such conditions in the modern era, and that is what the "hype" around the 1999 game caused people to think of it as. There are many complaints about the DS games people have offered in the past (which I am far more lenient on, but I acknowledge they exist). These are things like "copy paste" level design and reused enemies--things like this can only be solved with larger team sizes and/or longer dev times--i.e. a bigger budget.

And on the 3D side, what if he was intending 1999 to be a 3D game? Would people have accepted something like the copy pasted hallways of LoI for their grandiose vision of what the 1999 game would be? I don't really think so. They would be let down and disillusioned, just as some would be let down if the 1999 game was "just another handheld entry."

Well firstly LOI wasn't really hallways, it was more like a series of boxes, I digress...
COD despite its lack of platforming still showed us the closest CV game with interconnected areas which was as close to 3D SOTN that we've ever had.
I'm not exactly sure why people would be letdown at a handheld entry, the handhelds were keeping the series alive at that point and on a whole they by far outshone the 3d games..

Perhaps people are correct that if Iga had more foresight he could've headed this "hype train" off and made the 1999 game quickly after AoS instead of Curse of Darkness or DoS. But would it really have been the game he wanted it to be with their budgets? I'm not so sure.

It could have been made as a DS or 3DS entry, but do you remember posts around CV communities in the past of people saying "why can't we have bigger castles? Why can't we have the 2D games as a console release like SotN? Why does it have to be on a small screen handheld?" etc. I'd wager there are a decent amount of people who would be disappointed by the 1999 game having just the production values of CoD or DoS only with greater plot significance.

That maybe so and I don't deride the notion of a bigger budget. However, realistically no matter how big the budget is games are generally a certain length of time. Bigger Castles are one thing, but more well designed, never done before castles (with new sprites, animations etc) would be more expensive as the devs have to do everything from scratch.

Let's say it was made as a DS/3DS game, realistically it wouldn't be a longer playthrough than about 8-10 hours, if it was a 3D console game it wouldn't play for longer than around 15-20 hours, that's just how long action platformers generally are... So the bigger Castle and longer playtime is kind of a dead argument, because developers generally won't make a game that's longer than it has to be. If they would, why not use those ideas and make another game? (Which is exactly what they did with the handheld series, which carried CV for years)

Based on what I've seen Konami also don't listen to their fans really, it's also really unlikely 2d CV was ever going to get a console release at that time, since the metroidvanias were aimed at a niche audience.
Judging from COD's ending I would say Iga was foreseeing a 3d game out of 1999, which I do agree couldn't have been made with an LOI or COD budget. However, did it have to be that epic? Sure it was the final showdown, but it could have been made into a decent 2d game. I think Iga was just awaiting a budget he'd never get to see. I often wonder why he haven't seen a SOTN reimagined in 3D, and in truth, I doubt konami would ever be able to make that game because the budget would never be high enough to sustain production.

[Kamirine]

I feel the fans were robbed, but not IGA.  He should have made the 1999 game after AoS or DoS, since it was so important.

[X]

I feel the fans were robbed, but not IGA.  He should have made the 1999 game after AoS or DoS, since it was so important.

It definitely should have come after AoS. Because by the time DoS came about IGA had already produced several other CV games and by that time the 1999 battle was too big.

[Shinobi]

My first comment ^_^ and here's my thoughts:

IMO I think IGA was not robbed, more like opposite like he's trying to own Castlevania as a whole, even going too far like removing the Castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness, Legends and Circle of the Moon from the original/canonical timeline. Unlike Hideo Kojima, he's not the real creator of Castlevania series so anyone can be handled by different teams or even 3rd party companies, speaking of that I want the original creator of Castlevania to return and handle the whole series like Kojima did, I know it's highly impossible but it might be interesting

For the 1999 Demon Castle War, I'm with Flame's opinion, it might be more interesting to be released in a different media(like a comic or a novel) and it's not really a closure to the Castlevania saga since we still have the events after that(Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow plus a novel after those games), the castle is just sealed so it's still exist not totally destroyed plus Dracula is still alive or reincarnated in form of Soma and there's a chance that he can be returned to the dark side as evidenced in bad endings of Sorrow games.

[beingthehero]

The KCEK games weren't even part of the timeline to begin with. CotM doesn't even take place in Transylvania.

[Dremn]

I feel the fans were robbed, but not IGA.  He should have made the 1999 game after AoS or DoS, since it was so important.

I would have preferred the 1999 game being the premiere Castlevania title for the DS instead of Dawn of Sorrow.

[Flame]

CotM doesn't even take place in Transylvania.

neither do aria or dawn

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

Well firstly LOI wasn't really hallways, it was more like a series of boxes, I digress...

I'm thinking mainly of the chapel areas, but there are definitely halls between the boxes in some areas. Take, http://www.castlevaniacrypt.com/games/loi/images/maps/pagodaofmistymoon.png

I think that's just kind of a tangent though as you seem to be indicating; the main thing is just that it was a lot of reused texturing and models for rooms and people could tell.

I'm not exactly sure why people would be letdown at a handheld entry, the handhelds were keeping the series alive at that point and on a whole they by far outshone the 3d games..

Perhaps you weren't in the places I was to see it, but I would always see people pop up and show some unhappiness about the games being on handhelds, at least before there were a decent amount of them out and it had set in that there was simply not going to be another full retail 2D CV as SotN was. I hesitate to speak for them, but they didn't seem to me to be concerned about mere subsistence, but far beyond it; they wanted a flourishing of the 2D games as full price retail console releases like in the old days. Perhaps they were a bit lacking in understanding of the business end of the video game industry and why that wasn't happening, but they were consumers of the series who would probably be disappointed in a handheld 1999 game nonetheless.

That maybe so and I don't deride the notion of a bigger budget. However, realistically no matter how big the budget is games are generally a certain length of time. Bigger Castles are one thing, but more well designed, never done before castles (with new sprites, animations etc) would be more expensive as the devs have to do everything from scratch.

Let's say it was made as a DS/3DS game, realistically it wouldn't be a longer playthrough than about 8-10 hours, if it was a 3D console game it wouldn't play for longer than around 15-20 hours, that's just how long action platformers generally are... So the bigger Castle and longer playtime is kind of a dead argument, because developers generally won't make a game that's longer than it has to be. If they would, why not use those ideas and make another game? (Which is exactly what they did with the handheld series, which carried CV for years)

To some extent I agree that people's expectations for more content (larger castle, longer play time) were kind of unrealistic from a deep down design perspective, but I think it was just an expression of their desire to have an epic, grandiose game.

Based on what I've seen Konami also don't listen to their fans really, it's also really unlikely 2d CV was ever going to get a console release at that time, since the metroidvanias were aimed at a niche audience.
Judging from COD's ending I would say Iga was foreseeing a 3d game out of 1999, which I do agree couldn't have been made with an LOI or COD budget. However, did it have to be that epic? Sure it was the final showdown, but it could have been made into a decent 2d game.

I don't think there's a question that it could have been made as a 2D game, but the question is just what percentage of the fanbase would be disappointed by that. For the most part, I'm in CV for the gameplay, so I wouldn't really have been so disappointed, but my impression is that a not-insignificant percentage of the fanbase would be disappointed if the 1999 game had been "just another entry" given what its plot was.

I think Iga was just awaiting a budget he'd never get to see. I often wonder why he haven't seen a SOTN reimagined in 3D, and in truth, I doubt konami would ever be able to make that game because the budget would never be high enough to sustain production.

A major problem with reimagining SotN in 3D I think is that so many of the things people love about SotN just don't lend themselves as well to typical 3D game design. Designers just don't quite seem comfortable with using the more surrealist aspects of 2D games (who would create buildings where you had to jump from platform to platform to get anywhere with stairs only intermittently interspersed?) in 3D games despite the fact that those aspects often either directly or indirectly increase the fun the game inspires. When people design 3D games, they often seem to naturally lean more towards 'realistic'-styled flat level design which leads to a different style of game with different vectors for fun than a 2D platformer.

[beingthehero]

neither do aria or dawn

Yet they feature Belmonts, the vampire killer, Dracula's Castle (or a copy built on top of the remains) and actually reference why they're not in Romania any more. CotM on the other hand is just 'here's the baldwins and the morrises, they fight dracula and always have, who now lives in Austria, also here's the Hunter's Whip, and this ain't dracula's crib it's now carmilla's castle bitchez'

It makes zero sense when placed in the context of all Castlevania titles before and after, and KCEK's producer, KO-G, who was part of IGA's team to begin with, already told IGA they were just gaiden titles (as per the OoE Nintendo Power interview).

Plus IGA also said in the same interview that he has a boner for CotM and considers it his as well though he didn't work on it, where he was producing Castlevania Chronicles shortly before CotM was released.

It's 2014 and we're still having these same arguments, hot damn

[Flame]

I'm not arguing. Wa sjust sayin'. "not in transylvania" isn't the best reason since a few games dont take place there.

[beingthehero]

NOPE FLAME WE'RE GONNA ARGUE RIGHT NOW

CHOCOLATE > VANILLA

I've just thrown down the gauntlet, son.

[crisis]

@beingthehero

u need more sexual innuendo in your posts. why do u have that award if u dont use it

[Shinobi]

@Flame/beingthehero:

Don't forget Castlevania Bloodlines, the games sets in different european countries and the battle with Dracula occurred in england yet still part of the canonical timeline.

[zangetsu468]

@Flame/beingthehero:

Don't forget Castlevania Bloodlines, the games sets in different european countries and the battle with Dracula occurred in england yet still part of the canonical timeline.

I believe the plot of Bloodlines and the protagonist are dependant upon the canon of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the plot which also begins in Transylvania and heavily deviates to England (until the end)
In the novel, Dracula buys up land/ real estate in England so it's probably following on from that.

I agree with the posters who say that it doesn't make sense COTM is based in Austria.. It's not the same thing as AOS/ DOS. In AOS you're in an eclipse for starters, and DOS is a replica of the Castle (how do you replicate a Castle which changes with every incarnation???)