If there is one thing I can honestly say it's that Capcom
almost always finds a way to make me retract any and all praise I have for them.
Talk about the many cool new IPs they liked to throw out and give a shot at and
they will release "SUPER ACRADE HYPER STREET FIGHTER 2013 EDITION: GOOD
GOD PLEASE BUY THIS ONE!" (Coming to Xbox 360 Projector and WiiU in 2015
and on Steam late 2025), talk about their good content and there's an article
confirming that 85% of the game is locked on the disc for DLC and talk about
respect for their old IP and you will hear stories of a betrayal of a game
reboot and the cancellation of 2 new games for another IP which is fading from
existence.
Unsurprisingly, such a company is noticing
that they are not printing as much money as they use to because their fans are
complaining…about having too many GOOD THINGS. Yes, fans moaned about Resident
Evil 6, seeing it as having too much stuff in it…too much content. They told a
game company that practically MARRIED the idea of “Disc-Locked Content” and
said, “There’s too much content available from the game itself”. In light of
this Capcom decided to switch out the old. now no longer reliable IPs. for
forgotten IPs to see if they can catch some interest in the old-school retro
arcade junkies crowd, in this article we’ll talk about Darkstalkers!
The Punchline with the above poster? The centremost person is not even
the main character.
Darkstalkers is an arcade fighting game series by Capcom in
their fighter golden age of the early 90s to the…well, late 90s. The concept
was that the Darkstalkers were a collection of characters that represented
various monsters of popular media, Demitri Maximoff representing vampires, Joe
Talbain representing the Wolf man and Felicia representing…errr…the Cat People?
Unlike its more popular and conventional Cousin Street
Fighter, Darkstalkers was a lot more…mature. It had blood and mature themes as
well as the occasional horror piece, but the game haf a LOT more emphasis on
the Fanservice and rather dark comedy (want someone to turn their opponent into
a basketball and slam dunk them through hoops? Done! Want to see a vampire
transform his enemies into presumably virgin women and drain them of their blood?
Wish granted!).
So if Capcom is planning on bringing back the Darkstalkers,
what’s their strategy? Well rather than just release Darkstalkers 4 and hope
for the best, they chose to test the waters with “Darkstalkers Resurrection”, a
download title that bundles together Darkstalkers 1 and 3 (what is it with
fighting game bundles and forgetting the second instalment? First Dragonball Z
Budokai HD collection now Darkstalkers Resurrection? What, did a number 2 kill
their parents or something? Did the number two transform the Fighting game
communities’ families into virgin women and drain them of their blood?), gives
them a new coat of HD paint and brings online play to both titles. Of course,
those who are familiar with Capcom know this strategy is not new as they have
done the same thing with Marvel vs Capcom 2 in order to gauge the reception
before releasing Marvel vs Capcom 3.
Ok, so Capcom is re-releasing Darkstalkers 1 and 3 for
download, where’s the need for an article, surely the broadcast team will bring
it up in their meetings right? Well seeing as I am currently not on the
broadcast team and they failed to bring up the very important news of Steam now
being available on Linux for some insignificant probably indie company’s
conference, (what was the company called again? Sonny, was it? Eh who cares?) I
felt I must bring it up instead, that and I intend to do more than just say
“it’s coming and here’s why”. Mainly because unlike what they did with Marvel
vs. Capcom 3, Capcom has made some:
CH-CH-CH-CHANGES!!!!!
Yes, Capco- oh, hold
on.
Ahem, better. Yes, Capcom has indeed made changes to the
game beyond slapping on the ability to go online and swap between the two
games. So far, the only change I can find was in the roster. In Darkstalkers 3,
Jedah, Q.Bee, Lillith and Baby Bonnie Hood (think Little Red Riding Hood only
secretly evil and armed to the teeth) were added to the character roster making
them exclusive to Darkstalkers 3 since they didn’t appear in Darkstalkers 1 as
playable characters from my knowledge whilst Donovan, Huitzul and Pyron (the
DarkstalkersM.Bison essentially) were removed from Darkstalkers 3’s character
roster, making them exclusive to Darkstalkers 1.
Ok so Capcom wants players to play both games and wanted to
add in some fan favourites to the game who were left out due to not appearing
in either of the above titles, that sounds fair. The two games do have some
interesting quirks to them that makes the experience between them varied
enough, with Darkstalkers 1 being slower and more traditional fighter styled
versus Darkstalkers 3’s more fast paced “get back up from K.O and immediately
start the next round” action. I am concerned however about Capcom’s idea,
mainly 3 things, two within Resurrection and 1 overall.
1. Roster changes
Yeah, I know I said I was fine with it but
the thing is, the removal of certain characters from Darkstalkers 3 might
alienate players who “mained” those characters, how sad must they feel that
they can’t duke it out with their elite Donovan skills against their rival’s
Jedah just because of some exclusives concept. I am aware that this is a minor
change that one could easily just get over, but it does leave Capcom vulnerable
to the next issue.
2. Move differences between titles
Back in the day of Darkstalkers 1, to use
Felicia’s Delta Kick players had to input Back, Down, Back-Down and Kick.
Darkstalkers 3 changed this to Forward, Down, Down-Forward and Kick. And this
isn’t and isolated case as Felicia not only has changed inputs on some moves,
but also some moves that are unique to said game (Darkstalkers 1 can let
Felicia kick sand at the opponent, Felicia in Darkstalkers 3 clings to walls
and to people’s heads….I don’t get it either) and this also effects other
characters in both cases. Now my complaint here is if Capcom felt it was ok to
compromise the roster essentially opening up further changes, why didn’t Capcom
sort the controls so that inputs were at least consistent? Imagine if I
suddenly gave you Street Fighter What-have-you and it changed Ryu’s Hadouken
from Down, Down-Forward, Forward and Punch into Down, Down-Back, Back and
Punch? That would be hellish to the muscle memory, essentially changing how
people just the character.
3. Fearful of “Do the same with 3D models!”
for Darkstalkers 4
As someone who played Marvel vs. Capcom 2
and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, I have seen Capcom merely take the exact same approach
with the rereleased game and just used 3D model characters in their place and
said “There’s your sequel!” But it was…lightweight. Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 had
little to offer even if you were the poor sap who tried to download the Shadow
Battles and the later added Event Mode, both of which were severed entirely in
Ultimate for another late to the party hardly fleshed out Heroes and Heralds
(seriously, there isn’t even a local multiplayer for it, what the hell?). In a
generation where there are fighting games that have in built tournament modes,
character customisation modes, what-if battles, 1v2, 1v3, 2v3 and so on, their
just is not enough meat on modern Capcom fighters to keep my interest. I won’t
lie, I am not the dude who goes online hunting for intense fights, I don’t
carry an arcade stick to local battles running through my head 15,000
calculations to counter some dude’s hadouken. I am just a guy, who likes to
play as a punk rock zombie who turned a vampire into a basketball and slam
dunked him as revenge for turning me into a virgin zombie chick and draining
out my blood…IS IT A CRIME FOR ME TO ASK FOR MORE NOT-ONLINE OR COMPETITIVE
FOCUSED GAMEPLAY?
Come on Capcom, do it for the Society of Punk Rock Zombies who Slam
Dunk Vampires as Revenge for Gender Bending Blood Drinking. Do it for
SPRZSDVRGBBD! I might need to work on that acronym.
Still, all I can say is that it is nice that Capcom is
giving an older IP a chance, who knows I may just be able to play a new Rival
Schools game where I spend 500 hours of my life on the “Create a Student” page
of their School Life Story mode in future.
EDIT: Yes, I am aware the proper title for Darkstalkers 1 is
Night Warriors; it is just easier saying Darkstalkers 1.
Greg
Amber Glass Broadcast
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