Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire

"One of the Greatest Games to be released on the Saturn in a long while."

GAMEPLAY: What can I say, Capcom has done it again Vampire Savior is another one of Capcoms flawless ports to the Saturn. As with the last few games that they've ported over to the Saturn (Xmen vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes, and Marvel Super Heroes VS. Strett Fighter) That make use of the 4-Meg ram cart this one is Arcade perfect, from the graphics, to the sound, to the animation, its all flawless. Vampire Saviour is a one on one fighting game like the street fighter series, with a twist, Instead if fighting using human characters, you fight using monsters like Demitri, a vampire, Morigan & Lilith, Sucubusses (or succubi?), and Jon Talbain, a werewolf. The game features 18 characters, 15 from the arcade and 3 from Darkstalkers 2 which are only available on the home version, and on the special Vampire Savior 2 arcade game which only saw the light of day in japan. Gameplay takes place in one long round, instead of the multiple rounds of your traditional fighters. The matches are still best of three but instead of pausing to count scores after someone dies like in other fighters, the players just get up and keep playing….like in killer instinct 2. At the beginning of the round each player has 2 bat icons next to their name, everytime your life bar empties, one of your bat icons dissapears, the first to lose both icons is the loser. Unlike most fighting games the life bars in Vampire savior are burned away little by little by a flame in the middle of the screen everytime you get hit. You have your standard game modes in vampire savior, Arcade, Versus, and Options, sorry no training more in this version, but the PSX version has it though. Arcade mode is where you fight against the computer, 2player can join in at any time. Your selected character can fight a hidden sub boss by finishing the first three enemies with an EX, or ES special move (Super moves to the less informed) and most characters fight Jedah, as their boss, but a few, morrigan, lillith, demitri, etc fight other people as their boss. Versus mode, you fight a friend using the second player controller, standard fighting game fare. Options mode the ususal stuff is in here, sound, music volume levels, difficulty, time limit on or off, yada yada yada. After you beat the game once without continuing, you can hold down the L shoulder button, and hit start while options is highlighted, and you will receive new options that let you view each persons ending (after you beat the game with that person of course) set the screen size depending on whether you have a wide screen tv or not, Video out options RGB cable or S-Video, Number of super meter reserves you start off with, you can set it from 10 - 90, And possiblythe best option of all, Language, you can choose between japanese and english which is a god send because although all the menus, and the voices are english, all the win, lose, and ending story text is in japanese.

STORY: Well I dont really know the story for this game since I got the import japanese version, and the manual is all in japanese. But….from what I gather from looking at Kao Megura's Faq there were three lords of an ancient world called the dark real, and Jedah one of the three lords wants to make the earth over in his own evil image, so all the darkstalkers have to try and stop him, etc…etc. Not much of a story, but then again this isnt Street Fighter, or Tekken.

AUDIO/VIDEO: I only have 2 words to say about the audio and the graphics ARCADE PERFECT. With the addition of the 4-Meg ram cart, the saturns memory increases to like 6 megs alltogether compared to the 1 or 2 megs the playstaion has to work with so theres no reason for any game using the 4-meg ram cart to suck.

REPLAY: this game has good replay value, you wont be playing it everyday day and night or anything, but when you get some friends together you cant beat the amount of fun to be had with a stick.

BUY OR RENT: well you certainly cant rent it unless you have a PSX, or your local import store has rentals, but if you'd like a little looser version of Street Fighter, and if you like monsters, and you like the previous Darkstalkers (F.Y.I Vampire Saviour is Darkstalkers 3) then this is a must buy, especially if you alrealy have a 4meg ram cart, if not theres a package that comes with a 4 meg cart, but you hae to have a japanese, or a MODed Saturn. Best bet is to buy the game and a Pro Action Replay 5 in 1 cartridge.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 07/05/02