Koji Igarashi is a video game producer, writer and creative director best known for his involvement with the Castlevania series.  Often credited and referred to as IGA, Igarashi began his career in the video game industry in 1990 when he joined Konami as a programmer.

Joining Konami as a programmer shortly after completing University he was assigned to a project as both a programmer and lead writer, tasked with the creation of the game’s story.  Igarashi became exposed to the development of the Castlevania series when he began dating an employee at Konami who was working on Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and would later become his wife.   Igarashi was still relatively new to the video game industry and was working as the lead writer on Tokimeki Memorial, a dating simulation game for the PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM² System.  His girlfriend was giving him advise on how to write the story to Tokimeki Memorial and during his breaks he would play the game she was developing, Rondo of Blood.

Igarashi developed a passion for the series and informed his boss that he had no desire to work on a sequel to Tokimeki Memorial and requested to be transferred to join the Castlevania development team.  Igarashi’s involvement with the Castlevania series began when he was assigned to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where he was involved with the story-writing and programming.  During mid-production of the game Toru Hagihara was promoted to the head of the division and asked Igarashi to finish the game as the assistant director.  From the beginning of the development the game was intended to represent a new direction for the franchise as linear games such as the previous installments of Castlevania offered very little replay value, something Konami was trying to address in order to keep their games out of bargain bins throughout Japan. 

The development team was successful in their goal to create a new formula for the Castlevania franchise and even established a subgenre of action-adventure known as Metroidvania.  Symphony of the Night became a critical and financial success over time, establishing that there was a desire by players for Metroidvania style games.  From that point forward Igarashi would continue working on the Castlevania franchise for the next 10 years before being reassigned to Konami’s Social division.  Over the course of the decade he produced and wrote Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, Castlevania: Order of Shadows and Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles.  By 2010 Igarashi’s name became synonymous with Castlevania, however Konami’s corporate vision was shifting, and Igarashi would be reassigned to their Social division in 2011 to focus on more casual games, a change that would eventually result in Igarashi’s departure from Konami in March 2014.

In September 2014 Igarashi and Feng Gang founded ArtPlay an independent studio in Tokyo, Japan with a branch office in China that would focus on the development of mobile games.  Igarashi is the representative director of the company’s Japanese main branch which handles the creation of console games.  Inspired by Keji Inafune’s recent crowd sourcing project Mighty No. 9 he decided to launch his own Kickstarter campaign for his new project. He launched the Kickstarter campaign in May 2015 for a spiritual successor to Castlevania known as Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. 

The release of Bloodstain: Ritual of the Night was a great success for Igarashi and ArtPlay selling over 1 million units by June 2020.  Igarashi is continuing to build upon the Bloodstain series with the sequel to, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon while working on other projects such as the Sega published Revolve8 while holding the positions of President & Executive Producer of ArtPlay.