Footage of Cancelled Castlevania on Dreamcast Surfaces

Video footage of the cancelled Castlevania on Dreamcast has appeared. It shows a playable demo build of the game that was made for press showings at E3 1999. The game was being made by an American development team, instead of the usual Japanese studio.

Footage of Cancelled Castlevania on Dreamcast Surfaces Cover

A video has surfaced of a playable demo build of the cancelled Castlevania: Resurrection. The game was originally meant to release on the Sega Dreamcast. This comes from the work of Swiss games preservation site Sega Dreamcast Info, and reported by Polygon. The video shows footage from a playable build of the game that was shown at E3 1999 to media outlets.

The demo consists of five separate linear stages, each with a boss at the end. This differs from the non-linear interconnected level design that the series is famous for. But being from 1999, at this point the series was still in the early stages of exploring that style of design. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night only launched two years prior in 1997, with that entry being the first to use this more expansive type of level design.

Castlevania: Resurrection was developed by an American branch of Konami, rather than the usual Japanese development team. Polygon cites an interview with the original art director Greg Orduyan giving the reason why the game was cancelled. While there were rumours that there was conflict within Konami between the American and Japanese sides of the company, Orduyan said the imminent launch of the PlayStation 2 was the real reason it was shelved.

While the demo footage shows the player controlling Sonia Belmont, the game was also meant to be the debut of another player character, Victor Belmont. Many years later a different version of Victor Belmont did finally appear in 2014’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. Coincidentally, while Resurrection would have been the first western-developed entry in the series if it had released, the original Lords of Shadow was instead the one to take that title in 2010, being developed by the Spanish studio MercurySteam.

What do you think of Castlevania: Resurrection surfacing? Do you think it would have been a success if it did launch as planned? Let me know in the comments.

(Video by cvr exists.)

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