Konami Wants To Bring Back Their Best Franchise After A Decade
Fan enthusiasm for the Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania DLC reportedly has Konami interested in rebooting the franchise.
This week, the indie roguelike Dead Cells got a massive Castlevania-themed DLC, which is unsurprisingly successful. However, what is surprising is that the success of the DLC resonated well with Konami—the maker of Castlevania—so much that a comeback might be in the books.
According to IGN, Dead Cells’ most recent DLC really turned the gaming community’s attention toward the Castlevania franchise. This is especially true for Dead Cell’s younger fans, whose parents were young adults when the original Castlevania launched in 1986. Thanks to Dead Cells, the gaming community is now actively looking into the whole Castlevania narrative, which might prompt the dormant Konami to revive one of its iconic gaming franchises—and perhaps offer a remake, or at least a remaster of the original Castlevania.
Tsutomu Taniguchi, Konami’s supervisor for Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, stated that Konami is “proud” that their iconic franchise had such a massive impact on Dead Cells, referring to the latter as one of the greatest indie titles of the past decade. He also stated that Konami wasn’t surprised when Evil Empire and Motion Twin came up with a full-DLC proposition for Dead Cells and Castlevania crossover. Instead, those Konami employees connected to Castlevania were actually hoping that a crossover with the Dead Cells would happen one day.
However, Taniguchi refrained from commenting on what Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania means for the Castlevania franchise as a whole, which unfortunately hasn’t seen a gaming release since 2014’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadows 2. This obviously excludes the massively successful anime adaptation produced by Netflix. With that said, Taniguchi acknowledged that the fandom’s excitement and enthusiasm regarding the crossover with Dead Cells had been really motivating for Konami, which was mostly dormant for the past two years.
It’s no secret that Konami underwent an internal restructuring, and with so much news regarding the company two years ago, the fandom widely speculated about possible remakes and remasters of some of Konami’s most prominent franchises. This included the early releases of Metal Gear Solid, as well as Castlevania and Silent Hill. The company released over a dozen gaming titles in the past three years, but most of them were low-profile titles aimed primarily at Asian markets. It would seem that the restructuring took its toll on the company.
Konami is a really long way from its glory days when franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania towered over the rest of the gaming industry. Unfortunately, things weren’t the same ever since Hideo Kojima split from the company to start its own games productions firm, which released massive hits such as Death Stranding, whose sequel is highly anticipated among gamers. However, there are some signs of a comeback. The announced and highly-anticipated full-blown remake of Silent Hill 2 is a sign of a gaming giant’s awakening.
We’re living in an era of remakes and remasters. This is especially true when you factor in that most of Capcom’s earnings come from remakes and remasters of the company’s popular games, such as the highly anticipated Resident Evil 4 remake. Considering Konami’s hefty library of prominent gaming franchises, this could be a good time to start working on a Castlevania remake or perhaps a full-blown, 3D reboot of the franchise.
