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Jason Lee Elliott

CastleVania: Resurrection

Developer: Konami  Release Date: UNRELEASED  Platforms: Sega Dreamcast  Role: 2D/3D Artist 

A Look Back

Castlevania Resurrection was a game doomed from the start. When Konami first moved to San Francisco, this was one of the first projects started at the studio. I spent most of a year working on Bottom of the 9th 99 and this game was still in the early stages of pre-production. When I switched over to work on Spawn, the studio let go most of the team working on Castlevania and replaced it with the Bot9 team. A year later when I wrapped up Spawn and had taken a month long vacation I was brought onto the team and there had been much more advancement.

The team itself had a lot of troubles when I came on board. Most of the team had only ever worked on sports games so they had no idea how to make a 3D action platformer. The art team wasn’t very cohesive and couldn’t agree on a direction. The game had been in development for almost two years and had little to show. Personally, I discovered that my 3d skills had stagnated from lack of use and I was struggling to hit the quality the others were achieving. I had been at the office almost everyday for almost 3 years at this point and was suffering from severe burn out which didn’t help.

After only a few months on this team I decided I had to quit. I wasn’t having fun making games and I missed Canada. In my resignation letter I stated I would never work in games again. Just goes to show that young people in their 20’s really don’t know anything. A few months after leaving, the game was cancelled and entire studio was closed down.