Night Warriors: DarkStalkers' Revenge

"Do the monster SMASH!"

When I saw Darkstalkers at the arcade area the first time, my thoughts were ''Does Universal Studios know about this?'' Because most of the characters came from certain monster movie. There's Dracula (Demitri), Frankenstein's monster (Victor), the Wolfman (Talbain), the Mummy (Anakaris), the Creature from the Black Lagoon (Rikuo), the daughter of Dracula (Morrigan) and the Cat People (Felicia). There are other movies that other came from that were not made by Universal: Lord Raptor come Night of the Living Dead and other zombie movies. Sasquatch would come from a motion picture docmentry. Bishamon and Hsien-Ko would be in any foriegn horror movie. Pyron would appeared from any 1950 grade-B sci-fi flick and Donovan would fall under the category of Ghostbusters/Kochak, the Night Stalker/Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Don't ask me where they got Huitzil from, because I don't recall seeing a movie starring a robot made by the Aztecs that uses a freeze blaster. Anyway, they all come together to do the monster mash--Street Fighter style. It is worth it getting out of your coffin and shelling out your money that work for using your blood, sweat and tears to get this game? Let's see..

The graphics are a real feast to the eyes! From the intros to the background stages, they are generally gorgeous and have a lot of action. All the characters are well-animated, with no frmes missing like the X-men, that makes them colorful and full of life. 2D art at its best.

The music is pretty good. Some are from a bit pleasent, like Felicia and Hsien-Ko, to errie like Anakaris (my favorite). Unfortunely, you can't play them on audio CD alone. The sound is great and doesn't sound muffled at all.

The gameplay is like Street Fighter with a few diffences. One of them is that they added slapstick. Like when burn your opponent, they get all charcoaled and have goofy looks on their faces, or when you footsweep Victor, his eyes strech out when he falls. Humorous. They also added chain combos, auto gaurd, Especial, and Extra Special moves. For the latter two, you'll need to have your energy bars at level 1 or higher to pull it off. This is great for both novice and expert players and add more variety and challenge to the action.

The only negative thing I could find is that there are no hidden characters in this game (Akuma would fit in very nicely). This would add to the replay value. Another thing is that because it is a Street Fighter take-off, it's sequels have newer moves and games such as X-men are more popular, this game tends to be overlook. Which is a shame, really, because this would a great addition to your collection, especially if you are a monster fighting fan.
One final note: Dracula in a spandex costume, Now THAT'S scary!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/00, Updated 03/17/00