TOKYO — A group of longtime Konami employees behind the iconic video game series Castlevania caused a commotion at a press conference today after admitting they didn’t realize the character Alucard’s name actually spelled “Dracula” backwards.
Hitoshi Akamatsu, director of the first three Castlevania games, somberly addressed reporters during his first public appearance in decades with the revelation outside of Konami’s U.S. headquarters in El Segundo, California.
“The name of Dracula’s son was a complete coincidence,” Akamatsu said with deep embarrassment, referring to the character who was first introduced in 1989’s Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. “After the public made the connection between the names of Dracula and Alucard, we held an emergency meeting and decided to pretend that we intended to do that all along.”
When pressed about the fact that the character Alucard had already been established more than 40 years earlier in the 1943 film Son of Dracula, Castlevania character designer Ayami Kojima was visibly confused.
“There’s a movie about Alucard?” Kojima asked the crowd, brow furrowed.
Reporters who were present continued to press the Castlevania team until the conference was abruptly ended following a question about whether any of them had even read Bram Stoker’s Dracula before.
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