Castlevania celebrated its fortieth anniversary this week–an spectacular milestone in video video games and a terrifying pair of numbers for anybody who was born in 1987. Konami marked the event with a brand new video paying tribute to the unique whip-slinging hero of the 1986 Famicom recreation, in addition to all the different influential entries within the Castlevania collection over the past 4 a long time. It is a cute little retrospective, and it may also be teasing one thing else from Konami, if our tinfoil-hat-speculation is true.
Proper close to the top of the video, Castlevania’s first protagonist, Simon Belmont, takes a fast stroll previous a collection of non-ruined portraits in Dracula’s citadel. Eagle-eyed observers will notice that these function cowl artwork from three of the 3D-era games–Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness, and Lords of Shadow. The fourth one is for Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, which launches in October 2026. Might Konami be teeing up a brand new compilation that bundles collectively the PS2 and Xbox 360/PS3-era 3D Castlevania video games?
The corporate is not saying something, and there is a good likelihood that the video games have been chosen purely as a result of they nonetheless have a few of the finest cowl artwork within the franchise. They’re fairly neat, artistically! However a Castlevania assortment is not unusual, as Konami has launched just a few of those previously. The Castlevania Anniversary Assortment from 2019 collected eight video games spanning the primary 10 years of the collection, and the Castlevania: Dominus Assortment bundled all three DS-era video games alongside the 1988 Haunted Citadel arcade recreation.
What Konami did verify is that it’ll maintain gross sales for choose Castlevania titles, new vinyl file soundtracks for traditional video games can be found to preorder, and Castlevania on cellular can be free for a restricted time by the iOS and Android shops.
For Castlevania followers, subsequent month’s launch of Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse marks a serious second for the collection. Following the discharge of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 in 2014, the online game collection went on hiatus, except for the 2 compilations launched. The Castlevania animated diversifications launched for Netflix proved that there was nonetheless an urge for food for the IP, and final yr, it was introduced that the developer of The Rogue Prince of Persia–Evil Empire–was reviving castlevania for PC and console.
Thus far, Belmont’s Curse appears like a return to the collection’ roots, because it follows Rose Belmont by the ruined streets of Paris on her quest to cease Dracula. The sport will allow you to flip robust bosses into highly effective allies, and a demo for it’s going to go reside on October 1 forward of its October 15 launch date. Past that, there’s hope that we may see extra Castlevania sooner or later, as Konami’s resolution to outsource growth to studios like Bloober Crew and Display screen Burn has led to a number of glorious new entries which have redefined what Silent Hill could be.
It appears prefer it’s repeating this strategy with Castlevania, and a compilation of the cult-classic 3D video games sandwiched between new releases can be a enjoyable solution to kickstart a Castlevania renaissance.
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