Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, known in Japan as , is the first title in the Darkstalkers fighting game series, developed and released by Capcom in 1994, originally for the CPS II arcade hardware. It was ported to the PlayStation by Psygnosis in 1996 and was followed by Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge in 1995. Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors was ported as a part of Capcom Fighting Collection on June 24, 2022 to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.
Gameplay
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors features ten playable monsters: Demitri Maximoff, Jon Talbain, Victor von Gerdenheim, Lord Raptor, Morrigan Aensland, Anakaris, Felicia, Bishamon, Rikuo, and Sasquatch. In single-player mode, the player chooses one character and must fight each of the other nine in a series of one-on-one matches. Each round is timed, and each fighter has a health meter. In order to win a round, the player must either completely drain the opponent's health meter, or have more health remaining when time runs out; the first fighter to win two rounds wins the match. After defeating the other nine monsters, the player faces two boss characters, the robot Huitzil and the alien Pyron.
A second player may join the game at any time, at which point the two players select characters and fight each other under the above rules; they may choose the same character if desired. The winner of this fight continues the game in single-player mode.
The game uses the gameplay system Capcom developed for the Street Fighter II series, but with several new gameplay features such as Air Blocking, Crouch Walking and Chain Combos. The game featured a Special meter similar to the Super Combo gauge from Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which the player could fill up to perform either a unique "combo"-type move much like the previous Super Turbo (called "ES" in the Darkstalkers series), or a powered-up version of one of their specials (called "EX", and a concept which would appear in later Darkstalkers games as well as Street Fighter III). Unlike the Super Combo gauge in Super Turbo, the Special in Darkstalkers gradually drains unless the player performs their super move, preventing players from preserving their super moves for later use.
Plot
The powerful alien demon Pyron invades Earth to add to his collection of planets that he has devoured. The world's most fearsome monsters are the last defense of mankind.
Development
The game originally began development when Capcom decided to make another fighting game using their Street Fighter II engine. There are conflicting accounts regarding its origins. According to art director Akira Yasuda, a colleague of his named Akitomo was the one who came up with the idea of a monster fighting game, and it was given form by planner Junichi Ohno (who Yasuda had worked together with on Captain Commando). According to Ohno, the concept of a monster fighting game was suggested by someone during a Capcom brainstorming session, after which he became the main planner for the game, which initially focused on Japanese yokai monsters before incorporating more monsters from across the world. According to producer Alex Jimenez, the title started out as a Universal Monsters game, as he was a big fan of the monsters, but Universal refused to license the characters out, prompting Jimenez to create their own characters; Jimenez claims he did it in about an hour.
At the time, Yasuda and several team members were working on an unrelated side-scroller game based on a manga, but the content itself did not follow the manga at all and when Yasuda realized the side-scroller would not succeed he canceled the game. As a result, the entire team was reassigned for the Darkstalkers project. Yasuda had them keep his name out of the ending credits in the game. Capcom planner Haruo Murata, who was one of the members responsible for designing the characters and the world, joined the development team at the request of Noritaka Funamizu. By the time he joined, the game's system was pretty much finished. Each designer was assigned a character or characters for which they would create a personality and story. The background designs were also left up to each designer's discretion. Murata was the first person tasked with bringing all of the separately designed elements together to see how they fit in the big picture.