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IGN’s Mark Bozon has posted a retrospective of the Castlevania series that really turns out to be more of a timeline of US game releases in the series that has some quantity of omissions, inaccuracies and contradictions to go with its spelling errors. It ignores the original non-US releases, such as the MSX game Vampire Killer and the arcade game Haunted Castle, as well as the Japan-only remake that later showed up on the PS1 in the US as Castlevania Chronicles.

Oddly enough, Rondo of Blood, which was also a Japan-only PC Engine release, did make it into the article, if only as a side-mention to the SNES release Dracula X.

There’s even at least one mistake when mentioning the original Bram Stoker novel, when he refers to Quincey Morris as a legendary vampire hunter. Morris was just a cowboy who had been told he had to stab Dracula in the heart and behead him to kill him. And the book was from 1897, not 1879.

I enjoyed the writer’s use of “Street-Fighter-esk” when describing Alucard’s spells in Sympony of the Night. I give him credit for finally catching on that it’s called the Game Boy Advance, not Advanced. He incorrectly states that the games are all about fighting Dracula, when there are a number of games that don’t even have Dracula in them, even going so far as to say Soma’s in the castle to fight Dracula in Aria of Sorrow, when Soma is trapped in the castle against his will and in actuality IS Dracula.

One of the article’s biggest mistakes in my opinion is its dismissive take on the two PS2 entries in the series. I played through Lament of Innocence and found the game really, really good. I felt it did a great job of starting the story as the ultimate prequel to everything Castlevania, and managed to retain the “Castlevania feel” in a way the two N64 titles, which get more mention in IGN’s article, did not. I can’t speak to Curse of Darkness, because I haven’t had a PS2 since before that game came out.

It is not without value as an article goes, as it has some really good information I was interested to learn. Anyone who got the bonus art book as part of the preorder for Portrait of Ruin was disappointed in the poor quality of the early games’ artwork. This article provides an explanation for that: apparently most of that old art was destroyed in the 7-scale earthquake that hit Japan in January 1995. I feel like a jerk now for being upset about the art quality.

On the other hand, I reserve the right to complain about writing like this, because articles like this spread misinformation to those who read and trust them. I’m frustrated that resources were used to produce this lengthy article for IGN’s readers and it’s largely worthless because of all the errors.

A bright spot in the article is the inclusion of a kind of wish-list for the future of the series at the end. I’m big on wish lists, so maybe that’s just me. It comes out like a brainstorm, and while nothing earth shattering is presented here, we can all agree that we want every Castlevania title on the Virtual Console and XBLA, and that a new 2D console Castlevania could be a beautiful thing. One thing I have to disagree with is his view that one new 3D Castlevania should go on 360 and PS3 and a new 2D one on Wii. I’d like to see both on all three. Why exclude markets? Design them all at the Wii’s level and port them to all three. More CV goodness for everyone.

Via IGN.