Somewhere on Earth, monks are chanting in an abandoned castle. Their mantra calls into the darkness. It is a prayer to resurrect the demon Konami.
The ancient ritual has worked. We have resurrected one of history’s greatest bloodsuckers! That’s right — Konami is back. It even brought Dracula with it. The publisher seems like it is working on a collection of Castlevania games for PlayStation 4 and potentially other consoles as well. This new package includes the PlayStation classic Symphony of the Night and the beloved PC Engine CD entry Rondo of Blood, according to the South Korean ratings board ( via PushSquare).
Konami is pairing together the games in a package called Castlevania Requiem. I’ve reached out to the publisher for more information, and I’ll update this post with any new information. For now, we don’t have a confirmation, release date, or price. But with Castlevania hero Simon Belmont headed to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Switch later this year, expect this to come soon.
Castlevania is one of gaming’s longest-running franchises. It started with Castlevania in 1986 on Nintendo’s 8-bit console in Japan. That game came to North America in 1987 and Europe in 1988. Since then, Konami has released more than three dozen games in this series.
But after the NES and Super Nintendo sequel, Konami gave the series a fresh take in 1997 with Symphony of the Night on PlayStation. Instead of sending players through one stage after another, Symphony had players exploring one massive, connected map. Konami borrowed from Nintendo’s Super Metroid for the basic design. Symphony of the Night also featured character leveling and other mechanics from role-playing games to flesh out the adventure.
Symphony of the Night spawned a number of sequels that used its basic formula. And from 2001 to 2010, Konami launched a new Castlevania every year except for 2004.
In recent years, Konami has let the series go dormant. It produced two blockbuster 3D action adventures in 2010 and then in 2014 with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Lords of Shadow 2. But the publisher shifted away from traditional development in favor of focusing on gambling machines and mobile games in 2015. It even announced a new mobile Castlevania game earlier this year.
With the Castlevania collection, Konami could set the stage for the franchise’s return. I would expect to see this game his the Switch, which is hot for classic games like this right now. And gamers are hungry for adventures in the style of Symphony of the Night, as the Metroidvania genre shows. If this bundle sells well, maybe Konami will let another studio do something with the license.
