Kotaku
A trio of supposed screen shots from an unreleased Castlevania game for the Nintendo DS have made their way online, ones that could possibly reveal Koji Igarashi and team's follow up to Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Are they real? They certainly look real enough, with a timestamp that would indicate a December 25, 2007 build of the game, one that would appear to feature a female protagonist and yet another "Metroid-vania" style adventure. Igarashi has gone on record as saying that Konami is working on a third Castlevania title for the DS, but we can't say for sure whether this is it.
Hit the jump for the full sized pic and more info.
What we do find interesting about another potential slog through Dracula's castle is the Wii menu item in the leaked title screen. What could Iga and crew have planned for Wii connectivity? Could it have something to do with the long-rumored Wii version of the venerable franchise or could WiiWare capabilities come to the DS? We can only speculate that, if these screens are real, third parties may be looking to take advantage of both machines' Wi-fi capabilities. Portrait of Ruin made good use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for its online shop trading service, so we wonder if Konami has something similar planned.
It's worth noting that these alleged screens have a very different art style than the previous two titles, which had a strong anime influence, something that wasn't necessarily well received by fans. If these screens are an indication of the direction of the next game in the series, we hope it means that long time character designer Ayami Kojima has a hand in it.
Take it as rumor for now or, at the very least, some damn good fakes. Thanks, Mike!
