Well, given the amount of responses I got, this is gonna be a short one. I guess no one really cares about Castlevania: Resurrection. Not that I can really blame them.

Video games are just like the careers of movie stars. They get famous, land a few great roles - then all of sudden, they star in a bad movie or two, and all of a sudden, their career is in the proverbial crapper. I never quite understood this - just because an actor or actress has a lapse in judgement and stars in a subpar movie (or one that simply doesn't appear to mass tastes), they fall out of public view and are forgotten. Still, resurrections are possible (John Travolta and Pulp Fiction all those years back - though the poor guy's sunk back into the sewers as of recently.)

Maybe that was a tangent, but after seeing poor Eddie Murphy in The Adventures of Pluto Nash (STAY AWAY), it made a good connection to today's column.

Howdy folks. I think I'll keep this short and sweet. Early reports say the controls sucked? Well, that's a pretty common problem. Most games, as most of you well know, experience some technical problems when they are first showcased to reporters or to a small helping of the public. Even games that are about 85% complete still go through tech problems, sometimes even a few short months before release. Many times, this problem is fixed. HOWEVER, Konami could run into a road block here. Let's face it, Konami isn't really known for its work in 3-D. It is and was a 2-D powerhouse. I know they've done 3-D, but I don't think they have sufficient experience in the field. That being said, perhaps its better to have cancelled Resurrection, or at least indefinately delay it. I say Konami should keep experimenting with 3-D. Learn the tricks of the trade, so to speak. We all saw what killed CV64: not a bad all around game, story, and such, but the game was absolutely killed by problems that went along with the transistion to 3-D, such as bad controls and cameras. If early reports indicated that Resurrection was on the same track, then good, it should be cancelled, and Konami should learn better how to harness 3-D. In short: No 3-D CV's until Konami gets the controls for it right. Xcalibur

Well, the reporters who said the controls on Resurrection sucked were playing a 33% complete build of the game. Most likely, stuff like that would've been fixed. On the more pessimistic side, sometimes the early playable stages of a game are indicators to what the final might turn out like - either because there wasn't enough time to fix it, or the developers simply didn't care.

I remember hearing about a Castlevania for the Dreamcast and was interested. Being a long time fan of the game series was interested to see what was going down. Upon learning the Konami USA was doing this, i had some doubts, last time Konami USA had creative control of something Konami Japan did there was trouble, which reminded me what happened to Contra anyway. Well then the axe fell, a small section of EGM announced the halting of a Gameboy Resident Evil, Macross VF-X 2 wasn't coming stateside (Bandai must DIE) and the Castlevania for the Dreamcast was killed off. Nevered learned much about the Castlevania game after that until coming to this site. I much say it looks better then the N64 attempts (i thought a N64 castlevania was cool, until i tried playing it and watched my friends played it, i really thought that was the death of Castlevania). I must say Konami USA made a sound decision unlike the decisions made about Contra. The N64 versions of Castlevania were some sound nails in Castlevania's coffin, luckily the GBA versions have shoved those nails out. If the Dreamcast game came out with control problems talked about, we may only know Castlevania in passing. Look at what happened to Contra, Konami is just starting to revive Contra after how many years? We don't want a similiar waiting time for Castlevania. When it comes down to what we want as fans, game companies walk a fine line, give them what they want and they may hate it, not giving them what they want can produce the same hatered. When a game is realesed it ultimately comes down to fan outcry, we saw this for N64 Castlevania, it was bad, so when the Dreamcast version started having problems that weren't going to go away or were too expensive to fix, it comes down to killing or leaving it up to the fans. Leaving it up to fans may be dangerous, look at Gundam: Journey to Jaboru, Gundam fans (60% of anime otaku) loved it (put Gundam on anything and they'll like it, trust me), people who had a mind hated the sucking controls and lack of being able to do anything including saving your own ass (the true reason Gundam fans put up with that crap is because of the new animation packed into the game). Now that i have confused you all enough, lets end this. I want to a Castlevania that i can enjoy and actually play. If you can't play the game whats the point (better yet, if i'm saying this, why am i still playing the Evil Dead game?), you can't do much if you can't move three feet without the game derezzing of having the controls get stuck (had that happen once in a game, character walked right off a cliff)? It always come downs to playability, if you can't play the game and have fun, then there's no point. Even back in the 8 bit days the games we wanted to chuck into the garbage disposal we enjoyed playing, but if we didn't we stopped playing. I may of had my booty handed to me in a sack in a Castlevania game, i went back for more cause i enjoyed it. If the playability went down it was a smart move to eliminate this Castlevania before the Castlevania name was blown apart. That's all this angel has to say. Cruel Angel's Thesis

I have to wonder about the fate of Contra. Back in the NES and SNES days, it shared the same amount of fame, if not moreso, than Castlevania. Then came Legacy of War, which came out a bit before Symphony of the Night did. Now, I'm guessing a lot of people should've bought the game on name recognition alone, but apparently, they didn't. Maybe they realized that it sucked. Who knows.

Maybe Castlevania will be a series that, like Mega Man, fans will flock to simply because. Then again, I'd debate that there are no real BAD Mega Man games - nothing Legacy of War disastrous.

~Interesting topic here, Castlevania Resurrection. IGA had little to say about this game except that he wasn't in any way involved with this project, which could be a somewhat good or a very terrible thing. ~Anyway I can see why Konami was hesitant to release this game after giving it to a new developer. Apoloosa really nearly destroyed the Contra series with it's raw experimentation, and poor controls. And KCE Kobe, (whom I discovered also worked on the sorry Dracula X for the SNES) should be glad that they still have jobs for trying to turn the series into Resident Evil or something. Also the downfall of Sega's hardware department might have gotten to the company as well. It seems Konami doesn't want their popular franchises to become out of date because of poor judgement such as what happened with Double Dragon. ~But I've gone off topic. I think Castlevania Resurrection should have been given a chance. Sonia Belmont needs a game that's a little more than 4-bit distraction with some nice artwork. It did look like the game was going full 3-D, and I'd be fine with that. If that was the case what it would require would be a camera that always follows the player, (except for situations which do not call for that) a lock on system which is easy to use and reliable, and tight and responsive controls. I wasn't too thrilled about the six stages only idea, but I've seen screenshots with huge menacing bosses, item crashes, and a very short skirt with knee high boots... what more do you need? ~Well here's something that I'd want... why not just reconfigure the gameboy story with much more detail and sexual tension between Alucard and Sonia? Sort of like the repose that The Slayers Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev have. I mean without that and without Alucard, having a Tom Green look-alike taking his place in the mid-1800's negates an interesting story. Well at least in my opinion. Still I could fully see this game on a next gen system. Why not Xbox? And if it sucks then nothing is lost lol. ~Btw, I like Star Ocean as well as many other Enix fans (whom are currently disgruntled by the cancellation of Dragon Warrior 4 for Playstation). But as I remember, you could barely control what your party members did in Secret of Mana either, and still it's considered one of the best Action/RPGs ever. Along with Seiken Denstsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2) in which things got so out of control that you forgot which character was yours. And before you know it the 2 others characters were dead and you were left with 1 HP and no Candy left grrrr!

I know the premise of Legend was one of its biggest sellings points, and it's a shame was as mediocre as it was. A retelling would be nice (and giving us Castlevania's first starring heroine.)

I sympathize out of principle with all Dragon Warrior fans over the cancellation of the fourth installment - my love-hate relationship with Konami deepened when they cancelled Gradius Gaiden for US release - though I can't say I'd mourn it much myself. Dragon Warrior 7 damn near put me to sleep.

And the reasons you cite are why I dislike Secret of Mana - multiplayer is great fun (even with the sluggish controls and the hideous "charge up your weapon as long as possible" concept) but when controlled by the computer, they either end up useless or dead.

Hi, Kurt. I've always seen the abandoning of Resurrection as a good thing. Not because I myself didn't think it would be good but because Konami must have thought it wouldn't be good. Ever since the N64 games, Konami is going to be much more careful as to what direction Castlevania takes in the future. Obviously, this is what caused Resurrection's demise. I doubt that Konami would have killed off a Castlevania title if it was something that would have been good. For them to abandon the project the way they did it could only have been due to two things. Either the money wasn't there or the project was so lousy it couldn't even be salvaged and the former is definately not an issue for Konami. Tony T. Tiger

Well, it's also possible that it was trashed simply because it was taking too long - and despite my love for the Dreamcast, maybe Konami realized they probably just would've lost more money had they released it too late.

Or it could be that they realized it was awful. Just offering up more possibilities, I guess.

Short and sweet. Well, take away the sweet. Anyway, for next column - it seems that Konami has almost all but confirmed that the next Castlevania Chronicles will be Dracula X. (I hate to fuel speculation, but I'm being a giant hypocrite now anyway and I realize it. Leave me be.) The October PSM lists it as a very plausible rumor; IGA himself has said that that's high on the list for a remake; and recently Konami reprinted the Dracula X soundtrack, which can be found at Game Music Online. So let's say this dream of ours comes true. What would you do to make Dracula X an even better game? Complete graphical overhaul? Animated cutscenes? Rebalanced difficulty? Name your game. Again. I'm sorry - I'm hoping this next column will have a better turnout.

Kurt, not sure if Vin Diesel will truly be the next Action Hero.