UltimateOtaku: Konami

Sunday, 12 February 2017

Netflix is working on a Castlevania series

Will debut later this year

Netflix is working on a new original series based on Konami’s Castlevania franchise, the company announced today.

The news was buried within a press release sent out after an event for the network’s upcoming slate of new series, which was held in New York City. Although Netflix didn’t announce who would executive produce the Castlevania series, but Adi Shankar (producer on Dredd) confirmed on Facebook he would be co-running the series. The first part of the first season is expected to be released this year. Acclaimed writer Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Iron Man) has reportedly written the first season.

Prior to the announcement animator Michael Hirsh told the Globe and Mail that his new studio, Wow Unlimited Media, would be teaming with Netflix to create the animated series. According to Hirsh, the show will be targeted towards a younger audience, which is interesting considering Shankar described the show as dark and satirical, with the intention to “flip the vampire sub-genre on its head.”

In December, Adventure Time executive producer Fred Seibert hinted on a podcast that he was working on a TV series about a popular video game (his studio, Frederator, owns the rights to Castlevania) but nothing was confirmed by Seibert or Netflix at the time.

The first Castlevania game was released in 1986, but it’s unclear if the series will focus on the events of that specific title or later installments in the franchise. The last game in the Castlevania series, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, was released in 2014.

More information is expected to be announced in the coming months.

Konami’s going full anime with new Bomberman spinoff Bombergirl

Super Bomberman R for Nintendo Switch isn’t the only Bomberman game in the works at Konami. This week, at the annual Japan Amusement Expo, the publisher revealed a new game in the franchise with a decidedly different take. It’s called Bombergirl, and it’s like regular Bomberman, but with a twist: What if Bomberman was ... horny?

Bombergirl is currently an arcade-only game in which players can control — for the time being — one of four characters: Shiro, the bomber; Momoko, the blocker; Oren, the high-speed attacker; and Emera, the long-range shooter. Each character has their own skills and as they level up during a match, will get special attacks like a beam weapon or a flaming sword. Based on footage of the game, it appears Konami has around 15 characters planned.

Matches are 4v4, and losing a match causes your Bombergirl’s clothes to shred, naturally, meaning the losing team can take solace in seeing some anime boob.

Konami has previously experimented with horny takes on its classic franchises with Otomedius, a side-scrolling shooter in the vein of Gradius, but the ships are anime girls.

Bombergirl does not currently have a release date for Japan.