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" and began his career in 1990 as a programmer at Konami. Over the next ten years, he advanced to a senior position at the company. During this time, he worked on 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. While at Konami, he also contributed to other games, such as Nano Breaker and Tokimeki Memorial.

In 2014, Igarashi left Konami and became a co-founder of Artplay. In June 2019, Artplay released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a game inspired by the Castlevania series.

Early life

Koji Igarashi was born on March 17, 1968, in Fukushima Prefecture. His father worked as a lumberjack. Igarashi wanted to become a carpenter and later an artist. As a teenager, he visited Komine Castle nearby and used a camcorder to record his experiences. His first experience with video games was playing Atari's Pong at age 10. Two years later, he played an arcade game called Crazy Climber, which made him want to create games. He taught himself to use the computer languages BASIC and assembly language and designed games for fun. While in college, he received a job offer from a company called Grafika but refused it because he did not want to work there. He later accepted a job offer from Konami.

Career

After finishing college, Igarashi started working at 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 used ideas from the Fire Emblem series. However, the game was cancelled after one year. 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 for 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 make 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 began working on a Castlevania game for the 32X. However, the game was cancelled when Konami focused on the PlayStation instead of the 32X. His next project was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the PlayStation, 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 finish the game. The game was praised by critics and influenced the "Metroidvania" genre, but it did not sell strongly.

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

Next, Igarashi was the producer for Castlevania Chronicles, a PlayStation version of a 1993 X68000 game. He then worked as the producer and writer for Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, the second Castlevania title for the Game Boy Advance. The goal was to create 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 made the new game brighter.

During his time 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 working on a movie adaptation of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse with Koji Igarashi. Ellis explained that he and Igarashi worked together to fit the movie into the series timeline and that Igarashi required eight rewrites of pre-production material. After years of delays, the movie, titled Castlevania, was released on Netflix in 2017.

At the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, Igarashi showed a teaser for an upcoming game featuring Alucard, planned for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Later, he noted that despite significant time and money spent, the project faced challenges. Meanwhile, MercurySteam created a prototype that looked better than his project. Konami chose MercurySteam’s version, which became Castlevania: Lords of Shadow in 2010. Igarashi had no input on the game and did not propose more 2D Castlevania titles 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 shooter for the Xbox 360, and worked on localizing the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts. Konami focused more on mobile games, and Igarashi tried to make mobile games that felt like console games but failed to release any. He left Konami in March 2014.

Among the Castlevania games he worked on, Igarashi said Symphony of the Night was his favorite. He also liked Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse for its sound quality and world setting, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for 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 previously met his partner while working on mobile games at Konami, but that project did not result in a finished game. ArtPlay has branches in China and Japan, and Igarashi works in Japan. The company’s goal is to use profits from mobile games to fund console game development, with console games inspiring mobile spinoffs. ArtPlay’s website lists 2.3 billion yen in capital. In 2015, Igarashi spoke at the ChinaJoy Game Developer Conference in China.

Inspired by Keiji Inafune, who left Capcom to create Mighty No. 9 through crowdfunding, Igarashi launched a Kickstarter campaign for his new project. A month before the campaign, he filmed a pitch at Castello di Amorosa in California with 2 Player Productions. Launched in May 2015, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night—a game inspired by the Metroidvania style of Castlevania—asked for US$500,000 and was fully funded within hours. It raised US$5.5 million, making it the most successful Kickstarter video game until Shenmue III surpassed it. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was released in June 2019 and received positive reviews. ArtPlay also announced the mobile game Code S Plan in 2015.

In October 2018, Igarashi was announced as a collaborator on a game titled Revolve8 with Sega. Revolve8: Episodic Duelling, a real-time strategy mobile game, was released in February 2019 on iOS and Android.