In games like SF or VF, all of the movements and inputs are extremely precise, and timing is crucial. I wanted to appeal to a broader audience than the general fighting-game crowd. There's also the issue of the Wii controller. It's difficult to do those sorts of precise movements when you're waving something around. That's why we opted to do more of a competitive action game.

Waggle, waggle, punch. Elsewhere in the interview, Igarashi declares his undying love for the Nintendo DS platform, but points out that making only DS games might not be the best business plan. It may be. You really can't be 100 percent about things like that.

Interview: Konami's Koji Igarashi [Kikizo] [Pic]

There is just nothing right about this game. Nothing. As a Castlevania game, it’s…well, as a fighter, it’s not a Castlevania game at all. And as a fighter, it’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s as though Konami looked at 3D fighters, saw what worked, what didn’t work, and just for shits and giggles, threw in everything that didn’t work.

So what, exactly, doesn’t work? Like I said, everything. It’s like a daisy-chain of failures. Let’s kick things off with the arena. The arena doesn’t work. It’s too large. So instead of fighting for 90 seconds, you end up chasing each other around for 90 seconds. Which is bad enough, but then, the camera doesn’t work. Because it’s fixed, one player will often end up running at the camera, losing all sight of where it is they’re going.

But that’s OK, because you lose sight of where you’re going most of the time anyway, thanks to the woeful controls. The players are locked into only eight directional movements, and also move too quickly, meaning you lose all sense of timing and precision. Which are kinda important in a fighter. But that's OK, since most attacks – activated by furious waggling, no less – are so broad that you don’t even need to be facing your opponent to get a shot in. You just need to waggle and get lucky.

And when you do get lucky…boy. The game has special attacks. You charge them through regular combat. And when you set one off…you get a Final Fantasy-esque cutscene. All the ones we saw (I was playing 2P with Crecente) ran for over twenty seconds. Twenty. Seconds. Interrupting the middle of a fighting game. Oh, and they also take off around 1/3 of your damage, which for a fighter, is potentially game-breaking.

Want to know the good parts? Couldn’t see any. Sorry. It really was that bad. I'd say Konami have a job on their hands trying to get this one fixed in time for release, but with the game due out in the US next month, things aren't looking good.

When you have a franchise like this, that’s become popular in a certain type of game style and you change that so drastically, I understand the responses is going to be negative... I also felt a lot of the response was, I guess, unjustified in the sense that they based their [response] on just hearing about it or maybe seeing a couple of screen shots and making a whole assumption.

Insert Igarashi sad face.

Koji Igarashi Calls ‘Castlevania Judgment’ Fan Criticism ‘Unjustified’ [Multiplayer] [Pic]