Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors is a gothic horror themed fighting game developed and released by Capcom in 1994 for the arcades. The first game in the Darkstalkers series, it features ten playable characters and two non-playable boss characters, all of which are based on well-known mythological monsters. The game became a revolutionary success in the gaming community, for its graphics, its dark fantasy settning, the colorful character sprites and many other achievements. It was very successful in Japan but while it did very well overseas, it did arguably not achieve the same level of popularity as Street Fighter II, gaining a cult status instead.
Darkstalkers The Night Warriors Win Quotes
Win Quotes
This game was ported to the Sony PlayStation. Character art and illustrations were done by Bengus.
Characters
Art by Bengus.
| Fighters |
|---|
| Anakaris |
| Bishamon |
| Demitri |
| Felicia |
| Jon Talbain |
| Lord Raptor |
| Morrigan |
| Rikuo |
| Sasquatch |
| Victor |
| Huitzil (Sub-boss, non-playable) |
| Pyron (Final boss, non-playable) |
Story
Demitri Maximoff decides to hold a tournament on planet Earth to see which of the Darkstalkers is worthy to rule the Demon World. Pyron, who believes he should rule the Darkstalkers, decides to enter the tournament.
Gameplay
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors has the same gameplay system Capcom developed for the Street Fighter II series, but with several new gameplay features such as Air Blocking, Crouch Walking, EX moves, and Chain Combos.
The game featured a Special meter similar to the Super Combo in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which the player could fill up to perform a super-powered special attack. Unlike the Super Combo meter in Super Turbo, the Special meter in Darkstalkers gradually drains until the player performs their super move, preventing players from preserving them for later use.
Regional differences
Character select screen (from Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection).
The original arcade release saw several changes between regions. The original Japanese game, titled Vampire: The Night Warriors was changed outside of Japan to Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors. Several characters names were also changed; Aulbath, Gallon, Phobos, Zabel Zarock had their names changed to Rikuo, Jon Talbain, Huitzil and Lord Raptor respectively. The original Japanese version had several win quotes for each character as well as a border around the win quotes. Versions of the game outside of Japan only featured one win quote for each character and were left without borders.
Ports
Arcade version of Vampire (left) compared to Darkstalkers (right)
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors was ported to PlayStation in 1996, the same year Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge was released to the Sega Saturn. The Japanese version, Vampire: The Night Warriors, featured a new opening song "The Trouble Man" as well as a new ending song "The Rain", both by Eikichi Yazawa. The former was later used as the ending theme for the Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge OVA but doesn't appear in the English ports of the game. The game features an Arcade Mode, a 2P Versus mode and an Option mode. The only thing the PlayStation version lack is saving users files such as high score.
In 2005, Vampire: The Night Warriors was re-released on the Playstation 2 along with its sequels as Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection.
Development
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors originally began development when Capcom decided to make another fighting game using their Street Fighter II engine.
According to producer Alex Jimenez, the game started out as a Universal Monsters game, but Universal refused to license the monsters out, prompting Jimenez to create their own characters; Jimenez claims he did it in about an hour.[1]
A cancelled Sega 32X version was planned at one point.[2]
Credits
Planning: Junichi Ohno, Gyo, Jun Koike
Program: Atsushi Ohuchi, Akiyoshi Eshiro, Toshihiko Tsuji, Morimichi Suzuki, Hiroshi Inaba
Object: Kurisan, Hiroshi Shibata, Keiko Kitayama, Mizuho Kageyama, Takashi Hayashi, Q, Toshikazu Matsumoto, Kimo Kimo, Who, Tohru Takaoka, Mizupyon
Scroll: Yuki Kyotani, Kaori Matsumoto, Hiroyuki Imahori, Akemi Isoe, Tamayo Takeo, Miyuki Hongoh, Saru
Sound Design: Toshio Kajino (1970.2.25) B, Tomoyuki "T.K,NY" Kawakami (1971.8.31) A
Music Compose: Anachey "Takapon" (1969.11.19) A, Hideki O.K (1970.3.28) A
References
Box Art
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