Konami Revisits Its Golden Age With Three Anniversary Collections

Konami’s 50th Anniversary is coming up, and it’s giving players of all ages a chance to revisit the past by releasing three Anniversary Collection compilations for modern platforms.

These compilations will cover Konami’s early arcade titles, as well as the Castlevania and Contra franchises, each coming out at different times throughout 2019. Each will come with a digital book that includes information like “interviews with the development staff, behind-the-scenes insights, as well as sketches and design documents never before revealed to the public.”

The first among these will be Konami Anniversary Collection: Arcade Classics, which features eight of the company’s arcade games from the 1980s. It will be released digitally on April 18 for $19.99 and will include the following titles:

• Haunted Castle
• A-Jax (Typhoon)
• Gradius
• Gradius 2
• Life Force
• Thunder Cross
• Scramble
• TwinBee

The second, Castlevania: Anniversary Collection, will be released digitally in the “early summer” and feature eight games as well. For the time being, however, only four of these games are currently known, which are:

• Castlevania
• Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
• Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
• Super Castlevania IV

Lastly, the Contra: Anniversary Collection is also set to be released digitally in the “early summer,” and is in a similar situation as the Castlevania: Anniversary Collection, in that it will ultimately have a lineup of eight games, with only four being known currently. These are:

• Contra
• Super Contra
• Contra C
• Contra III: The Alien Wars

All in all, this looks like its shaping up to be a pretty decent lineup, and with the presence of Belmont’s Revenge here we can only hope that other titles that have gone under the radar (such as Castlevania: Bloodlines) also gets a chance to enter the limelight. Even if they don’t, though, the mere presence of bonus content, such as developer interviews, will likely put them in a higher stratum of Collection than the uninspired Castlevania Requiem.