In a mysterious new video (h / t Polygon, an off-camera player navigates through what appears to be a prototype of Castlevania: Resurrection, a canceled Sega Dreamcast game from the early 2000s. If legitimate, this is the first time that gameplay footage has been made public.
The short video appeared on a newly created YouTube channel and lacks a description. The disc is marked “11 ‘5 ’99” and looks like a typical rewritable GD-ROM of the kind Sega commonly uses internally for development and distributed to the Dreamcast era press. It is unclear where the person in the video obtained the disc.
The player loads different areas of a debugging menu, but only moves the character with one hand, so it’s unclear if combat or other features are implemented. And while the protagonist takes damage from a few enemies, she also wanders through a lava pit with no apparent ill effect, suggesting that much remains unfinished.
According to Unseen 64 Castlevania: Resurrection would have followed Castlevania Legends protagonist Sonia Belmont and a new character named Victor Belmont as they traveled to the past to interact with Dracula before the events of the first game. While the game did appear on a private show at E3 1999 and in the September 1999 issue of the United Kingdom Dreamcast Magazine, Konami quietly canceled it in March 2000.
Castlevania: Resurrection was a game doomed from the start, ”former Konami artist Jason Lee Elliott writes on his personal website“The team itself had a lot of problems when I got on board. Most of the team had only worked on sports games, so they had no idea how to make a 3D action platformer. The art team was not very cohesive and could not agree on a direction. The game had been in development for almost two years and had little to show. “
Since the cancellation, different Castlevania: Resurrection assets have appeared online, including concept art and music– thanks to people who have had a hand in the development of the game.
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I don’t think the world missed anything amazing when Konami sent it Castlevania: Resurrection out to pasture, but that doesn’t mean such archiving efforts are still not critical to preserving video game history. We lose so much more than a few hours of gameplay when a major studio cancels a project. Kudos to the fans who keep clamoring for information; it is only through their efforts that we continue to learn about these games.