He's a Woman, She's a Man

If there ever was a most accidental prone award in video games then it would have to be Eike from Shadow of Destiny, an obscure playstation2 game by konami that was recently revived on the Sony PSP. I remember playing the game on my playstation2 a long time ago, it was one of the very first game i played and if it wasn't for the horrible ending i got i would have probably played it a few more times again.

The game looks pretty good on the Sony PSP with bold but simple character models despite the bland environment in fact if you never played the original you probably couldn't tell it was a ps2 port. The death scenes which Eike must avoid looks laughable now but i will give the game the benefit of the doubt in order to see it through to the big picture at the end. Hopefully this time i will get an explanation as to why Eike is so prone to accidents but i'm willing to wager that the most memorable thing about this game is still the sexually-ambiguous time traveling sorcerer who aides Eike. Not even Koji Igarashi name listed as producer can top that as i feel like an Austin Powers moment coming up trying to figure out his/her gender.

is that a man or a woman?

Dark Secret

The secret is out....well, it has been speculated for some time now that Castlevania was heading for the Wii console when leaked pictures of the new Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia game menu featured a link-up with the Wii console. During then, Order of Ecclesia wasn't officially announced yet so no one had a chance to grill IGA on this but now that he is currently promoting the new Castlevania DS, he still denies any truth about Castlevania heading to the Wii.

Apparently comic book specialist, Preview were the ones to leak the news in their preview of the upcoming Curse of Darkness comic adaption so i'm not sure how credible this rumour may be. The thought of two Castlevania games been released before the end of 2008 does seem too good to be true but seeing how disappointed i'm over Captivate 08, this certainly is good news rumour or not.

Devil At Work

Castlevania fans are pretty divided when it comes to their opinion on koji igarashi, the man currently at the helm of all things castlevania. Some think he is the best thing to happened to Castlevania, since he was responsible for the most popular Castlevania game Symphony of the the Night while others just think he's the devil at work. For myself, i don't have much of an opinion on igarashi-san since i was a castlevania fan before the Symphony of the Night-era where the baton was officially handed to igarashi and he became responsible for the direction of the series and every Castlevania game to be released. From what i can tell, the guy seems to have a real passion for Castlevania and is trying his level best to keep Castlevania relevant and successful, what with the series having been around for 20 years now. Sometimes it's nice that the people responsible are as much of a fan as everyone else but we all know that passion can't be accounted for talent. His Castlevania are often criticised for having bad level design and poor attempt at storytelling though to his credit, i must say writing a good dracula story is never easy, just look at Van Helsing. Perhaps for those very same reasons Circle of the Moon, one of the few Castlevania games released after Symphony which did not feature iragashi was so highly regarded.

One of the last few Castlevania game to come out of Konami Kobe, the studio responsible for the Castleavania installments on the NES, Circle of the Moon was released as a launch game for the first Gameboy Advance in US, it's initial success was slightly marred by the fact that it was designed to be played with a backlight, something the original Gameboy Advance lacked. It was and still is the highest rated GBA game on Gamespot and has gone down as one of favourite of the series. Well playing for the first time, i must say it is harder than most recent Castlevania with the exception of Rondo of Blood, which was actually a remake of an old Castlevania game. Apart from that, it's quite hard to tell it apart from the other Castlevania games by Igarashi but isn't that the beauty of Castlevania? It never strays too far from it's winning formula and after two attempts to make the transition to 3D, i'm not sure if i would like see a third. However i get the feeling that people have under-estimated igarashi talents and that he will be recognised for his other contribution to Castlevania apart from Symphony. Of course, we are still waiting for this to happen.....