Vampire Savior review

It wouldn’t be unfair to say that we’re more than partial to a bit of Street Fighter in its various incarnations. Time and again Capcom have proven themselves to be arguably without equal in the beat ‘em up department, and not just with Street Fighter either; their various games from the Marvel license and the legendary Vs series have left a legacy of great fighting games that cater to all tastes, pulling off a superb balance between accessibility and depth time after time.

Even with all these great games though, we’ve always held a soft spot for the horror-themed Darkstalkers series; while they’re not entirely ignored (characters from the games have appeared in the Vs series, after all), we find that they have become very underrated. After re-discovering the Saturn version of the third game, we thought it was time to bring the series back into the public eye.

Darkstalkers 3, aka Vampire Savior, was one of a number of Capcom fighting games on the Saturn made to take advantage of a special 4MB RAM cartridge which improved the performance of their games on the system exponentially. X-Men Vs Street Fighter was the first game to use it, but (in yet another classic case of Sega shooting themselves in the foot) it was eventually denied a release outside of Japan, and as a result the rest of the games made to use the cartridge were similarly Japan-only.

The result is that so many people ended up missing out on what may well have been the best versions of Capcom’s fighters, and Vampire Savior is no different. The extra RAM means that the conversion is truly arcade-perfect; every single frame of animation is present, there are zero loading times and there is absolutely no slowdown no matter how busy things get on the screen. The conversion is, for lack of a better word, perfect.

The fighting in the game is very well-balanced, with every one of the characters offering something for everyone’s taste; slow, powerful heavy-hitters, quick combo specialists and more unusual and technical styles, with the game never feeling unfair. The game is perfectly accessible for less-skilled players, but offers a suitable amount of depth for fighting game veterans, with counterattacks and chain combos requiring some expert timing to pull off and feeling very satisfying when you get them to work.

Special meters also appear, and are used to power various abilities which are devastating in the right hands. Upgraded versions of standard moves can be performed by using two buttons to activate the move instead of one, and the screen-filling EX Specials are absolutely spectacular (and sometimes hilarious) to watch. There’s also the Dark Force mode, which gives your character a special power for a short amount of time. Again, none of it feels cheap, with even the most potentially game-breaking moves having balancing agents, such as lasting a very short amount of time or being easily dodged if the opponent is careful.

One notable difference in the game is that fights take place over one long round, as opposed to the usual “best of three” system in most games. Players are given a certain amount of bat icons; losing all of your health costs you one icon (obviously losing them all means you lose the fight), but the fight continues with any health losses to the victorious player still in effect. It’s also possible to recuperate some of your health if given enough time. While this system may seem a little unfair to new players, it makes the fights very tense indeed.

The fighting system is helped by the excellent control, which uses the classic Capcom system of light, medium and heavy moves. Outside of arcade sticks, the Saturn controller is often regarded as the best one that has ever existed for Capcom fighting games, to the point where peripheral manufacturers still use it as a template for making fighting game controllers! Everything is tight and responsive.

The graphics are absolutely outstanding, with the characters, backgrounds and completely ludicrous special moves being beautifully-animated. Every aspect of the classic horror icons is riffed on in the fantastic character designs, and there’s a wonderfully wicked sense of humour throughout. One of our personal favourites is Bulleta (aka Baby Bonnie Hood), the Red Riding Hood look-alike who carries a small country’s worth of weaponry in her picnic basket! The roster also includes characters that weren’t present until the arcade “sequel” Vampire Savior 2, so Donovan, Huitzil/Phobos and Pyron are restored for the Saturn version. This is one of the few fighters were we can say that playing as any of the characters, no matter what your preferred style may be, is so much fun.

The icing on the cake comes when the hidden EX Option menu is discovered. Capcom must have been aware that European and American gamers would be importing their fighting games, for there’s an option to translate all of the text into English. It wasn’t necessary, as all of the essential options are in English anyway, but it’s a nice thing to have nonetheless.

There really wasn’t much we could find to complain about with Vampire Savior, aside from the fact that it’s another 2D Capcom beat-‘em-up. Even then, however, we still feel that this one is well worth checking out on its own terms. While it’s not likely to win over anyone who isn’t a fan of the genre, the tremendous graphics, sense of humour and well thought-out fighting mechanics mean that this ranks pretty high on our list of all-time great fighting games.