Koji Igarashi (Japanese: 五十嵐 孝司, Hepburn: Igarashi Kōji; born March 17, 1968) is a Japanese video game producer, programmer, writer, and creative director. In 2009, he was named one of the top 100 game creators of all time by IGN.

He is often called IGA. He started his career in 1990 as a programmer at Konami. Over the next ten years, he took on more important roles at the company. He worked on the game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as a programmer, writer, and assistant director. Later, he became the lead producer for the Castlevania series, starting with Castlevania Chronicles in 2001 and ending with Castlevania: Harmony of Despair in 2011. During his time at Konami, he also helped create other games, such as Nano Breaker and Tokimeki Memorial.

In 2014, Igarashi left Konami. He later co-founded a company called Artplay. In June 2019, Artplay released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a game inspired by the Castlevania series.

Early life

Koji Igarashi was born in Fukushima Prefecture on March 17, 1968. His father worked as a lumberjack. Igarashi was interested in becoming a carpenter and later wanted to be an artist. As a teenager, he visited Komine Castle nearby with a camcorder. He first played Atari's tennis game Pong when he was 10 years old. Two years later, he played an arcade game called Crazy Climber, which made him want to create games. He learned the computer programming languages BASIC and assembly language on his own and designed amateur games. While in college, he got a job offer from a company called Grafika, but he refused it because he didn't want to work there. He then accepted another job offer from Konami.

Career

After finishing college, Igarashi started working for Konami. His first job was as a programmer for a simulation game in the Educational Software department. The game was a business simulation, and the team took ideas from the Fire Emblem series. However, after one year, the game was cancelled. Igarashi then moved to the Consumer division and worked on enemy programming for the PC Engine version of Detana!! Twinbee. He also worked as a programmer and was responsible for writing the story of Tokimeki Memorial, a dating sim for the PC Engine's Super CD-ROM² System. At the time, his girlfriend, who later became his wife, worked at Konami on Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. She gave him advice about writing the story for Tokimeki Memorial, and he played Rondo of Blood during breaks. Igarashi told his boss he did not want to work on a sequel to Tokimeki Memorial and asked to transfer departments. Because the game sold well, his boss agreed, and Igarashi requested to join the Castlevania development team.

Igarashi worked on a Castlevania game for the 32X. However, the game was cancelled when Konami shifted its focus to the PlayStation instead of the 32X. His next project was the PlayStation game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, where he worked on story writing and programming. Halfway through the game's development, the director, Toru Hagihara, was promoted, and Igarashi became assistant director to complete the game. Symphony of the Night received good reviews and influenced the "Metroidvania" genre, but it did not sell strongly.

After Symphony of the Night was released, Igarashi became director of the 2000 PlayStation role-playing game Elder Gate. He said he wanted to create a game that could be played anytime and felt fresh each time. He aimed for each player to have a unique experience. The game received a score of 22 out of 40 from the magazine Famitsu.

Next, Igarashi was producer for Castlevania Chronicles, a PlayStation version of a 1993 X68000 game. Then, he was producer and writer for Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, the second Castlevania title for the Game Boy Advance. The goal was to make a game similar to Symphony of the Night. This included bringing back artist Ayami Kojima, who had worked on Symphony of the Night. Igarashi felt the previous Game Boy Advance title, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, was too dark, so he wanted to make this game brighter.

While working at Konami, Igarashi often wore a cowboy hat and carried a leather whip to media events like the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

In March 2007, writer Warren Ellis announced he was making a straight-to-DVD animated film based on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse with Koji Igarashi. Ellis explained how he worked with Igarashi to fit the film into the series timeline, including writing a new backstory. Igarashi required eight rewrites of pre-production material. After many delays, the film, titled Castlevania, was released on Netflix in 2017.

At the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, Igarashi showed a teaser for an upcoming game starring Alucard, planned for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. He later noted the project faced challenges and was not progressing smoothly. Meanwhile, MercurySteam created a prototype that looked better than his project. Konami cancelled Igarashi's project and chose MercurySteam's, which was released as Castlevania: Lords of Shadow in 2010. Igarashi had no input on the title and did not propose more 2D Castlevania games in the future.

By the end of 2011, Igarashi moved to Konami's Social division. There, he produced games like Otomedius Excellent, a side-scrolling shooting game for the Xbox 360, and worked on localizing the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts. Konami focused more on mobile games, but Igarashi struggled to create mobile games that felt like console games. He left Konami in March 2014.

Among the Castlevania games he worked on, Igarashi said his favorite is Symphony of the Night. He also likes Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse for its sound and world setting. His other favorite is Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow because of the changes it introduced to the series.

Igarashi tried but failed to find a publisher for a new console game. In September 2014, he became a founding member of ArtPlay, a company co-founded with Mr. Feng Gang, who is the CEO. Igarashi met his