In less than 48 hours, one of the greatest first person shooter franchises will make its return. So what better time than the present to take a look at one of the other types of shooters? Before FPS games, 2-d side scrollers (and their cousins the vertical scrolling shooters) ruled over gaming. They came at a dime a dozen, but three series stood out amongst the rest: Darius, R-Type, and Konami’s Gradius. Gradius had some awesome levels, cool music, challenging gameplay, and a unique power-up system. There have been several classic entries in the series, including the spin-off series Parodius, and the two-play cooperative Life Force/Salamander. Lets take a look at this classic series, becuase its as gamers, it’s imperative that we don’t forget where we came from, particularly in this age of Unreal Engine 3 graphics, Havok Physics, and Emotion engines.
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PSP Metal Gear Fans have a reason to rejoice, for now there is an actual factual Metal Gear Solid game set within the series’s canon. The two MGS Acid games were nice, but their card game style can’t replace the stealth action that the series is known for. With the PSP’s control scheme, some big changes had to be made to the actual gameplay. Even so, it’s the same style of Metal Gear that we know and love.

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August has proved to be quite good to survival horror fans. With new information being leaked on a near-constant basis for games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and even some not-so-streamlined info, it’s no surprise that fans of the genre are biting their nails as to any visuals released. Thankfully, those seem to be in steady supply as well.
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Fast on the heels of Dracula X Chronicles, that has a scheduled release date of November 13th, series producer Koji Igarashi seems to feel the need to pump out even more Castlevania for fans to digest in the coming months. Two new games have been announced as in production, one for the Nintendo DS, and another exclusive to cellphone gaming.

Castlevania: Order of Shadows has been announced to be a cellphone-exclusive title to the series and will be released in September to most of the major service providers, including AT&T and Verizon. The game is to be a side-story in the series, and will feature the protagonist stylings of Desmond Belmont, and his sisters Zoe and Delores. (where they though these would be good names for Belmont’s is anyone’s guess….narcotics may have been involved) One can only attribute this Konami’s sudden change from consoles and handhelds to cellphone-exclusive gaming to other games of it’s ilk, such as God of War: Betrayal. Whether or not this game will be inducted into the series storyline as canon has yet to be determined.

The other Castlevania game in production has been confirmed by Iga as being again for the DS handheld system, and promises it “will not be a remake like Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles and will be all new“. Any other information as of right now is shoddy at best, and any other solid leads as to what kind of game this will be will most likely be unveiled at Konami’s Spring Gamer’s Day. So, we have a good deal of time before anything substantial is released.

A final note is Iga’s mentioning of a future Castlevania title being released for the Xbox 360, and possibly the PS3 (if it’s sales pick up). Nothing other than this teaser has been mentioned, and won’t probably until after the release of the future DS game. We all can only hope that this long-awaited jump into the next-gen consoles means either a high-quality 3D game in planning, or a grandscale 2D game that would hopefully be the next Symphony of the Night. One can only dream.

Here is 26 minutes of Hideo Kojima, Shinji Mikami, and Suda 51 talking. Why is that important? Because they’re the creators of Metal Gear, Resident Evil, and Killer 7; respectively. Arguably the most influential minds of the playstation generation. Next year’s biggest games will no doubt be Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 5, and No More Heroes, so these guys will only get more influential.

Finally, the triumphant return of the Grandpappy of action/shooter/platformers, (and more importantly, a return to sweet, sweet 2-D). Set to be released sometime in 2007, players will take control of one of four characters, (including the unfortunately named Lance Bean), and blast their way through horizontally side scrolling levels as well as vertically between the DS’s duel screens. Check out the official press release after the jump.

With E3 a scant few weeks away, we can expect to see the game in motion soon.

One more thing…grappling hook!
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For your regular dosage from the resident Castlevaniac, we’ve got clips from the upcoming PSP game, Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles. This preview delves a bit deeper than a previous trailer, in that it actually shows Dracula’s ressurrection by the dark Priest Shaft. This scene mimics the opener for the PC Engine Duo version of the game, Rondo of Blood. (except for the fact it’s not in a cheesey anime style, and Dracula doesn’t look like Trunks from Dragon Ball Z)

Here’s the original opening –

It would appear that someone’s prayers were answered. Paul S. Anderson has announced that he is stepping down from directing the live-action Castlevania movie, in favor of making the movie Death Race instead. Anderson hands control of directing over Sylvain White, and has said that the two will collaborate on rewriting the script for the film. Sylvain Wright is known for such movies as Stomp the Yard, and hopes to do a film adaption of Frank Miller’s Ronin in the future.

Oh happy day!

Of course this will still rub some Castlevania fanboys the wrong way, and cries of ‘it’ll be some melodramatic dance movie’ have already been sounded. Of course this is despite the fact these same fans complained that Anderson would make Castlevania another Resident Evil or Alien vs. Predator disaster. What does this CV fangirl say to all that? At least it’s not Uwe Boll people.

Castlevania now has a slated release of late 2008.