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Castlevania is one of the longest-“lived” and most beloved video game series of all time, and thanks to a smash-hit animated Netflix show, even non-gamers are well familiar with it. Over thirty titles bearing the iconic Castlevania logo have released on various systems over the course of nearly four decades since the series’ 1986 debut.
All of which leads one to ask: who created Castlevania? The question is not so easily answered thanks to Konami’s old practice of obligating key development staff to use pseudonyms in end-game credits. As with other Japanese game publishers at the time, Konami did this to avoid talent poaching by rival companies. Hence the gag credits in the original Castlevania, which include various tongue in cheek allusions to classic horror cinema such as “Christopher Bee,” “Belo Lugosi” among others.
It is the general consensus that a man named Hitoshi Akamatsu is responsible for the creative direction of the first Castlevania title as well as its two Famicom/NES sequels. At some point after helming one of the greatest NES trilogies ever, he vanished from the gaming industry.
Almost everything we know of Akamatsu comes to us second-hand. There are only a few known interviews to his credit, and only a couple of photographs. Various attempts to track him down over the years have met with disappointment, and no one thus far has really even been able to verify Akamatsu’s existence outside the industry. It’s fair to say that Hitoshi Akamatsu is one of the gaming industry’s biggest enigmas.
Akamatsu’s career
Needless to say, the details of Akamatsu’s career in video games are sketchy at best. He is known to have worked as a programmer on the Japanese arcade game Finalizer – Super Transformation, which released in 1985 and is believed to be the first game project Akamatsu’s worked on.
Following his work directing Castlevania, he again served as director on Goonies II before moving on to Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. Among several other releases he is thought to have worked on in a senior role during his tenure at Konami, Akamatsu’s last NES games were Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and Snake’s Revenge, both released in 1990. He was demoted back to Konami’s arcade division after that, where he co-directed games like Surprise Attack and Astérix.
Akamatsu left Konami sometime after 1993, though the circumstances of his departure are unclear. In 1997 he directed Tsuridō: Umitsurihen (The Way of Fishing: Sea Fishing Edition) at Vingt-et-un Systems. Akamatsu appears to have left the video game industry completely after that.
So…Whatever Happened to Hitoshi Akamatsu?
The answer to that question is a painfully unsatisfying one: no one knows. Given the dearth of info on him even back then, it seems Akamatsu was content to stay out of the spotlight; perhaps he is simply a man who values his privacy.
Nevertheless it seems a cosmic injustice that he has never really gotten the credit that is he is due (and don’t expect Konami to acknowledge it anytime soon) as the creator of one of the most iconic and enduring series the medium ever produced. Hopefully, he is fulfilled with the knowledge of what he accomplished. While the names of game design mavens who came after—most notably Toru Hagihara and Koji Igarsahi—have become synonymous with Castlevania, none of us would have ever brandished a whip against the undead were it not for a 25-year-old cinema buff with a unique vision. And for that, Castlevania fans everywhere owe Hitoshi Akamatsu their undying gratitude.
