Comics that Shockingly have no Video Game: Hellsing
By TGB 3 Comments
Hellsing is a little manga that was created by Kouta Hirano is published for Young King Ours magazine and began in 1997. The most important thing you need to know about this series is that its about Dracula fighting genetically engineered German Nazi Vampires. The sheer awesomeness of the premise can not be understated, there is a seriously large amount of Nazi Vampires and Warewolves getting their cummuffons. I don't really think its to big a spoiler to come out and that Alucard is Dracula in Hellsing, I mean its Dracula spelled backwards and thats an old ploy Symphony of the Night used, but it makes sense that a comic about vampires would feature the Grand Daddy of all vampires center stage as the main character.
It should also be stated that the comic and the anime are well known for being extremely graphic, having disturbing imagery and for playing essentially mad libs with the Bible, making it kind of a cross-breed between Ninja Gaiden 2 and Xenogears. But again, I think that the truly great thing that Hirano did with the comic was creating the perfect enemy to kill. Who could object to the mass slaughter of terrible montrous Vampire Nazi's that eat people? This series is seriously a Devil May Cry game waiting to happen. I don't think theres anything that could be more satisfying then mowing down legions of Nazi Vampire Super Men. Did I mention that these Vampire Nazi's are depicted eating babies in the comic. Babies! I don't think there has ever been an enemy created in a game that I would have less sympathy in killing then a Nazi Vampire. Much more satisfying than those silly puppets you tore to shreds in the first Devil May Cry, to be sure.
The other shocking revelation is that Kouta Hirano clearly has an interest in video games, or at least one of his editors does. It appears as though he spent so much time thinking of unique ways for me to enjoy Alucard and friends rip Nazi Vampires apart that he simply could not be bothered to come up with original titles for his chapters. So he naturally just took the names of various popular video games that sounded like they could fit with the story and slapped them on. Final Fantasy, Ogre Battle, Wizardry, Castlevania and even lesser known titles like D are all referenced in various chapter titles throughout the series. It seems almost scandalous to me that a popular comic that has multiple dark and violent super human characters, the perfect enemy to kill, major battles that could easily translate over to Boss fights, an author who appears to be a gamer and is a series that is relatively popular outside of Japan hasn't had its day in a video game developers hands. It even makes sense for the property to just outright copy already established series like Castlevania or Devil May Cry, which both draw heavily upon the same well of reference material. And thats if the developers were just lazy, the action in the series would supply a solid base for a good developer to be creative and come up with something new and awesome.
