Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service

Disclaimer: I am not a fighting game master. While I'd consider myself pretty good at some of them, I don't play competitively or know any serious level of strategy when it comes to the genre. These reviews are from the perspective of a beginner to intermediate level player, and thus I can't analyze them to the particular depth many fighting game fans would need.

The Short


Pros
- The definitive collection of Darkstalkers games
- Allows you to play as any character and in any playstyle in the Darkstalkers series
- Wide roster of characters that are both weird and fantastic
- Surprisingly newcomer accessible, especially when compared to the Street Fighter games
- Characters are well animated and have lots of delightful quirks that make them fun
- Seriously, there's just a ton of content here

Cons
- Was never released in the United States, and in Japan in very limited quantities
- Sprites look like they were up-converted for the Dreamcast, and not very well
- While having a ton of options is nice, it can be overwhelming to know what to pick for what game
- The "Auto" block option is the cheapest thing ever on VS.

Ah, Darkstalkers. What happened to you? 

The Long


I absolutely love Darkstalkers. Created by Capcom after the success of their Street Fighter franchise, it was that "other" Capcom fighting game with all the movie monsters and weird characters. It's also the game the voluptuous Morrigan is from (though I bet most people know her from the Marvel vs Capcom games at this point), so it's got a bit of star cred that way.

Back during my freshman year of college, we really got into arcade emulators, and with that fighting games. We had tons of tournaments, mostly playing Marvel vs Capcom and Darkstalkers. I would like to say I got pretty good at the game, except it was against people who never play fighting games (myself included), so instead I'll just say I got really good at beating other noobs. Regardless, Darkstalkers is a fighting games series you should absolutely look at, especially if you are a modern fan of the Street Fighter IV resurgence.

A Queen Bee vs Little Red...Blue Riding Hood? Sure, why not. 

Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service, despite having a stupid name, is the absolute best collection of Darkstalkers games available. By this point in the game there had been around five Darkstalkers games (though one of them was just a re-release of a previous one with old characters...this is really starting to sound like a Capcom fighting game joint, isn't it?), with four having distinct changes in style (Darkstalkers/Vampire, Night Warriors/Vampire Hunter, Darkstalkers 3/Vampire Savior, and Vampire Savior 2). What makes Vampire Chronicle cool is the fact that you can actively interchange the fighting/playstyles between these four games on the fly (assuming the character you selected was in those games), allowing for an absolutely insane amount of customization. Was Demitri your favorite character, but you only liked the way he played in Night Warriors? Well, now you can play with him in that mode! Prefer Bulleta in her Savior 2 iteration? Well, that means you lived in Japan since Savior 2 only came out in arcades there, but hey...you can do that too! 

It's kind of nuts it lets you do this...can you imagine if you bought a Street Fighter collection and could pick if Ryu played like in Street Fighter II vs Street Fighter III Third Strike or something? It would be bananas! If anything, it shows (to what might be a negative degree) how little the Darkstalkers games have changed that older styles can still compete with newer ones. Regardless, it's usually just movesets; before any match you can pick which of the three games (Vampire, Hunter, Savior) the game will be custom-tailored too, while characters only change ever so slightly. Regardless, it's a cool thing, and has never been seen again. Even the collection released in Japan on the PS2 in 2005 is just straight ports of the three games separate; none of this inter-weaving madness we got on the Dreamcast. Dreamcast: 1, PS2: 0. 

Minus the whole "quit the console business" thing...

So how does Vampire Chronicle play? Well...like Darkstalkers, which is to say if you like Capcom fighting games you'll feel right at home here. Darkstalkers has a heavy emphasis on "Chain Combos," which is essentially the idea that normal attacks can chain together just as well as ones that chain into specials. If that just flew over your head that's ok: the point is that this game does lots of chains (though not nearly as bad as the insane Killer Instinct). Expect a lot of flashy, crazy moves that flow together well and can also be reversed/countered. Button mashers, rejoice. 

Because of this, I found Vampire Chronicle to be very friendly for beginners in terms of control. While the initial option of what playstyle to choose can be overwhelming (especially since the game is in Japanese), anyone with even a basic understanding of how fighting games work can easily start chaining together moves, throwing projectiles, and just generally doing well at the game. Similar to Guilty Gear X, this is a good game for getting your friends into fighting games, as it's weirdness and ease to pick up makes it very inviting.

You've got options is what I'm sayin'. 

Speaking of the weirdness, Vampire Chronicle has it and in spades. Going with a "monster movie" motif, it rivals the Guilty Gear series in terms of sheer oddness. You have your typical assortment of vampires (sexy or otherwise), as well as zombies, frankenstein monsters, a yeti, a werewolf, and a...robot? Little Red Riding Hood? What? 

So yeah, it's out there, but that's what makes the game fun. Attacks are flashy and absurd and make the fights almost hilarious to watch. This is matched with some really funky jazz tracks that play as you pummel each other into submission, which somehow works despite the fact that it absolutely shouldn't. 

If there's anything I can complain about the presentation it's that the game is horribly low-res. Unlike Guilty Gear X, where they bumped up all the sprites and backgrounds to match the increased output of the Dreamcast, Vampire Chronicle is pretty much a straight port from the older arcade games, and thus the game looks really fuzzy. It doesn't detract (much) from the silly animations and great character designs, but it does look dated. 

Open season on vampires. 

It's really a shame this game is so hard to find (unless you are cool with downloading and burning import Dreamcast isos), and an even bigger one that this has never been released on XBLA or PSN. Darkstalkers has been left in the dark (hur hur) for a very long time, a casualty of when fighting games dropped in popularity in the early 2000s. With the recent resurgence of the genre, it would make sense to bring out another Darkstalkers game, or at least rerelease Vampire Chronicle. It's an extremely solid fighting game, and the multitude of options is just icing on the cake.

Regardless, if you have a Dreamcast that can play imports (or *coughburntgamescough*), Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service is absolutely worth trying to find. It was rare even in Japan so you might have some troubles, but it is the best compilation of one of the funnest forgotten fighting games. 

So gather some friends together and find out of Little Red Riding Hood really would win against the Big Bad Werewolf. 

Four out of five stars. 

You said it, Morrigan