Castlevania is celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2022, and fans have been gearing up for exciting new announcements regarding the future of the gothic action-adventure series. A new game, a new Netflix series, a remaster of one of the better titles–any of these could be on the way. Instead, Konami has decided to announce its first batch of Castlevania-themed NFTs to a predictably irritated fanbase. The “Konami Memorial NFT collection,” featuring 14 unique pieces of digital artwork from the series, will go to auction on the OpenSea crypto marketplace starting January 12, 2022.
Those who feel compelled to actually purchase one of these non-fungible tokens will be listed on Konami’s website from February to the end of the year. The official site currently lists instructions on how to prepare for the auction, from how to create a cryptocurrency account to a Q&A tackling the big questions, like “what is blockchain?” and “what is an NFT?” Curiously, the terms of use on the marketplace state that “the purchaser will not, by purchasing the NFT, obtain intellectual property rights (e.g. copyrights, trademark rights) in relation to the data linked to the NFT.” Basically, this means that the buyers won’t really “own” them in any actionable sense.
Some of the pieces of art going up for sale are clips of various Castlevania games, including the original title and Simon’s Quest, while another shows a pixel map of Dracula’s castle. While Konami has stated that it will never sell these exact NFTs again, the company did say that it might sell similar ones in the future.
As anticipated, the announcement was met with anger on social media. Some people redirected this anger towards meme-making, leading to gems like this:
If NFTs aren’t your thing, we’d recommend picking up the eight-game Castlevania Anniversary Collection on the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, or PC. Konami fans are already bracing themselves for Metal Gear NFTs, as the series is about to celebrate its 35th anniversary as well.