Darkstalkers

• 1. Introduction

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  Darkstalkers is a Japanese fighting game series and media franchise built by Capcom around monsters pulled from folklore across the world. In 2007, producer Yoshinori Ono told an interviewer he hoped to bring the series back one day. He said he wanted to "shock Hollywood with how good the graphics would look." By then the series had already ended, its last main game released years earlier. Yet the people who made it kept talking about resurrecting it. Why would a producer spend years publicly campaigning for a game that already had its ending? Why did Capcom build an entire fighting roster out of vampires, mummies, and werewolves instead of the usual cast of martial artists? And how did one wordless transformation move become one of the most discussed attacks in fighting game history?

• 2. Arcade Roots And Ports

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  Five arcade cabinets make up the entire main line of Darkstalkers games. The first, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, reached arcades and PlayStation in 1994. In Japan it was called Vampire: The Night Warriors. A sequel, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, followed in 1995 for arcades and the Saturn, titled Vampire Hunter: Darkstalkers' Revenge in Japan. The series introduced gameplay concepts that Capcom later reused in the Street Fighter Alpha and Marvel vs. Capcom games.

  Vampire Savior arrived in 1997 as the third and final main game. It was released under different names depending on region, including The Lord of Vampire, World of Darkness, and Darkstalkers 3 on PlayStation. Two Japan-only arcade variants followed the same year. Vampire Hunter 2 swapped in the earlier game's character roster. Vampire Savior 2 dropped J. Talbain, Sasquatch, and Rikuo in favor of Donovan, Huitzil, and Pyron. The Sega Saturn port of Vampire Savior added characters from Vampire Savior 2. The PlayStation port folded in every character from across all three games.

  A 2000 Dreamcast and PSP release, Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower, let players pick game-specific versions of each fighter. That system echoed the character-version selection in Hyper Street Fighter II. The Dreamcast version added online play, and the PSP port added extra game modes. A 2005 PlayStation 2 compilation, Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection, gathered all five arcade releases. IGN's Anoop Gantayat called it "one of the finest compilations ever" and "true, wait-free arcade perfection." Siliconera countered that "the fighting engine has aged considerably." In 2013, Darkstalkers Resurrection brought a high-definition update of Vampire Hunter and Vampire Savior to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with online play added. The 2022 Capcom Fighting Collection finally released Vampire Hunter 2 and Vampire Savior 2 outside Japan for the first time. It left out their secret endings, though. Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium later bundled the first three Darkstalkers games among 32 total Capcom arcade titles.

• 3. A World Merging With Makai

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  Earth itself is merging with a realm called Makai across the Darkstalkers story. That collision is what pulls the supernatural into the human world in the first place. The reason for the merger changes from game to game. The outcome stays constant, though. The greatest of these monsters, and the greatest of those who hunt them, meet in battle to decide who rules the night. In the first game and its sequel, an alien overlord named Pyron returns to Earth after a long absence. He tries to conquer the planet with an army of robots, forcing the Darkstalkers out of hiding to stop him.

  Vampire Savior introduces Jedah, once one of Makai's own nobles. He concludes that the only way to save his crumbling realm is to seize it by force. He lures the other Darkstalkers into a trap so he can harvest their souls and remake Makai under his control. Every character in the cast is drawn either from famous literary and cinematic monsters or from international mythology and fairy tales. A 1997 anime miniseries based on the first two games stayed faithful to how those characters behaved in the games. The American cartoon that arrived in 1995 took a different path. It threw out the games' backstory entirely for a plainer good-versus-evil plot, reshaping several characters' arcs along the way.

• 4. The Rival Vampires

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  Demitri Maximoff organized the very first fighting tournament between the Darkstalkers and is often considered the series' protagonist. A vampire lord once banished from Makai after attempting a coup, he defeats and consumes Pyron. He then turns his attention to subjugating his rival, Morrigan. Demitri was also planned to appear in the cancelled game Capcom Fighting All-Stars. Morrigan Aensland is considered the most popular character in the franchise. A powerful succubus, she is the adopted daughter of Belial Aensland, ruler of Makai. She shows little interest in the responsibilities of her position, living instead as a carefree layabout. At the end of Vampire Savior, she merges with a fragment of her own soul that had been separated from her.

  That fragment is Lilith, split from Morrigan in infancy to keep her power in check. Jedah later finds Lilith and gives her a form resembling a younger Morrigan, with pink hair. He sends her to lure worthy souls into his domain. Secretly, though, Lilith wants to reunite with Morrigan's body and control it herself. She was originally designed to be androgynous, with her gender officially listed as "Unknown." Jedah himself is a nobleman demon of Makai who was destroyed and later resurrected, and he serves as the main antagonist of Vampire Savior. His body can shapeshift and recover from self-inflicted wounds, letting him weaponize his own blood. Early drafts of the game had originally written him as Morrigan's brother.

• 5. Curiosities In The Cast

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  Felicia dreams of becoming a famous singer and dancer in Las Vegas. She eventually gives that up to run an orphanage as a nun instead. Designer Alex Jimenez originally envisioned the catgirl as a woman from Africa, with short hair, who could transform into a panther. Rikuo believes he is the sole survivor of his merfolk race after an earthquake in the Amazon, caused by Pyron, destroys his kingdom. His name comes from actor Ricou Browning, who played the creature in The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Hsien-Ko is a jiangshi whose sister, Mei-Ling, acts as a seal to keep her powers in check. Together they set out to free their mother's soul from a curse. Hsien-Ko later got her own mobile game, Magical Hammer, later remade in Japan as Line Drop: Spirit Hunter Lei-Lei. She was also planned as a playable character in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, but was dropped for time constraints. Anakaris, once the pharaoh of a powerful empire, is revived as a mummy by Pyron. He eventually transports his entire kingdom into a new dimension after learning its destruction can't be prevented.

  Victor, a large German humanoid modeled on Frankenstein's Monster, returns home hoping to prove himself the strongest fighter alive. Instead, his "sister," a homunculus named Emily, tells him their creator is already dead. When Emily begins to malfunction in Vampire Savior, Victor sacrifices himself to revive her. Q-Bee, short for Queen Bee, belongs to a race of humanoid insects called Soul Bees who once served Jedah. Driven to near extinction after his death, they now seek to consume and breed rapidly. Dee, a corrupted version of Donovan wearing an outfit resembling Demitri's, suffers from short-term memory loss so severe he forgets events as they happen. In his own ending, Anita, the young girl who once traveled with Donovan, finally puts him to rest as an adult.

• 6. Beyond The Arcade

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  UDON built a Canadian comic book series around Darkstalkers, originally published through Devil's Due Publishing. In Japan, Run Ishida authored a manga adaptation published by ASCII in 1996. Viz Media later adapted it into a six-issue American comic, Night Warriors: The Comic Series, in 1998, since collected into a single trade paperback. Mami Itou wrote a separate one-shot crossover manga, Darkstalkers / Red Earth: Maleficarum, in 1997. UDON Comics released it in English in 2010.

  UDON also published art collections tied to the games. The Darkstalkers Graphic File gathered screenshots, storyboards, and concept art in 2008. A 15th anniversary book, Darkstalkers Tribute, followed in 2009, featuring fan submissions alongside work from UDON, Capcom artists, and manga artist Yasuhiro Nightow. A 20th anniversary volume, Darkstalkers Official Complete Works, arrived in 2014, gathering artwork from every game plus new interviews with the series' creators. On screen, Madhouse produced a four-episode anime OVA, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, directed by Masashi Ikeda and released in 1997 and 1998. Graz Entertainment separately produced an American cartoon that aired in broadcast syndication from September to December 1995, for a single 13-episode season.

  Japanese labels including Sony Records, Suleputer, and Victor Entertainment released soundtrack CDs for the games. Sumthing Distribution later issued a digital collection of tracks, previously packaged in Japan as Vampire Sound Box, in 2014. Capcom subsidiary Enterrise also licensed the characters for a pachislo machine, simply called Vampire. It was announced on the 12th of May 2009 and released on the 6th of July 2009, using the original Night Warriors cast.

• 7. The Campaign For A Comeback

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  In August 2010, while promoting Street Fighter X Tekken, Ono called a new Darkstalkers installment his "ultimate dream." He added that only fan demand would make Capcom act. He said it would take one million requests before Keiji Inafune, then Capcom's head of research and development, would agree to it. At that point, the company had received 5,000. By March 2011, Ono reported that figure had grown past 100,000. At a Nintendo 3DS launch event in London, he said reaching half a million might make Capcom "raise its eyebrow." He compared the moment to when he announced Street Fighter's own comeback in London years before.

  At the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, Ono told fans during a Street Fighter X Tekken panel that no new Darkstalkers title had been approved. Still, he insisted "Darkstalkers is not dead." He then photographed the crowd holding up money to send to Capcom's decision makers. The following June, a line reading "Darkstalkers are not dead" surfaced in a trailer for the PlayStation Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken. Asked about it on Twitter, Ono wrote only, "I can't announce about Darkstalkers yet." At a Street Fighter 25th Anniversary panel that July, he skipped the money photo entirely. He told the crowd, "This year, you don't have to do that, and it's not necessarily bad news!"

  Darkstalkers Resurrection was announced with a concept trailer at October 2012's New York Comic Con. Producer Derek Neal called the re-release a test of audience interest in a full new installment. By April 2013, Capcom senior vice president Christian Svensson admitted disappointment with its opening sales. "We've not given up," he wrote, while calling it "the most fully featured and probably best project of this type we've done." He added he was thankful to the fans who bought it, but felt he had misread the demand. There was no "not dead" line at San Diego Comic-Con that year. Fighting game manager Matt Dahlgren later said Resurrection "did not perform as well as we would have liked," with nothing Darkstalkers-related "on the immediate horizon."

• 8. Cult Status And Midnight Bliss

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  Destructoid's Kyle Mac Gregor called the series simply "beloved." IGN's Richard George described it as both "obscure and beloved," a pairing that sums up how critics have treated Darkstalkers despite its modest sales. GamesRadar US placed it in a list of franchises "founded on boobs." It ranked the series "second only to Final Fantasy as an object of Japanophilic cosplay figurine collector worship." The outlet also noted some of the fan art it inspires is "downright disturbing." The Guardian's Keith Stuart ranked the series fourth on his 2012 list of vampiric video games, praising its "beautiful visuals and superb animation." Hardcore Gaming 101 credited its gallery of monsters, rather than a conventional cast of martial artists, with earning it a cult following despite limited recognition.

  GamesRadar's Lucas Sullivan put Darkstalkers first on his 2012 list of obscure fighting games deserving an HD remake. Complex ranked the franchise 40th on its 2012 list of the best video game franchises. It listed a hypothetical Darkstalkers 4 among 15 games it wished would be announced at E3 2011. Complex writer Andrew Hayward separately ranked it first on his 2011 list of the most missed fighting franchises. He noted that fans get "whipped up" every time Capcom announces a new fighter.

  One single move carries much of that reputation on its own. "Midnight Bliss" lets Demitri charge forward and temporarily turn an opponent into a girl before draining their blood. GamesRadar+'s Chris Hoffman called it one of Capcom's greatest contributions to gaming history. Writer Zoran Iovanovici, in Game Developer, traced how the move spawned its own "gender swap" mini-genre. Fan artists, crossplayers, and custom fighting game communities such as M.U.G.E.N all took up the idea. The King of Fighters character Goenitz, transformed into a nun, was nicknamed "Goeniko" by that same fan scene. The fan version proved so popular that Goenitz later appeared officially under a new name. Lady Goenitz then showed up in two mobile games, The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Battle OL and The King of Fighters All Star. Her design there was different from the fan-made version.