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Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (Arcade)

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Title Screen

Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors

Also known as: Vampire: The Night Warriors (JP)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Arcade (CP System II)
Released in JP: July 1994[1]
Released in US: August 1994[2]
Released in EU: 1994
Released in AS: 1994


CharacterIcon.png This game has unused playable characters.
GraphicsIcon.png This game has unused graphics.
Sgf2-unusedicon1.png This game has unused abilities.
SoundIcon.png This game has unused sounds.
DebugIcon.png This game has debugging material.
RegionIcon.png This game has regional differences.
Carts.png This game has revisional differences.


BugsIcon.png This game has a bugs page

And you were just a scroll away from being fired too...
Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors.
This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment.
Such as: Succubus sideboob.
Hmmm...
To do:
In the release of Capcom Fighting Collection, add a prerelease subpage with variety of concept arts (characters, stages, etc.) and game documents from the said collection.

Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors was Capcom's next fighting game venture after the success of Street Fighter II and its hundreds of re-releases. Featuring a Hollywood monster theme, eye-popping animation, and gameplay mechanics that would eventually become genre standards, it can be considered a milestone in the history of Capcom fighters.

Hmmm...
To do:
  • Ground explosion sprite and associated Might Launcher behavior.
  • Split Debug Menu stuff into a sub-page and consolidate with Night Warriors.
  • Bugs such as:
    • An in-game bug where the first two digits of the high score would disappear.
    • Another in-game bug where KO-ing an opponent with Huitzil's Circuit Scrapper special move would sometimes not transition into a victory pose.

Sub-Pages

Read about notable bugs and errors in this game.
Bugs
DebugIcon.png
Debug

Debug Menu

Hmmm...
To do:
Further investigate and document these menus and their controls.

Debugstalkers
A developer menu primarily involved with character animation data can be accessed by setting RAM address FF8000 to 12BF while at the normal test menu. Submenus can be selected with the Player 1 joystick and entered by pressing Player 1 Start. Pressing Player 1 Start within a submenu will return to this menu.

Note: The character often starts offscreen and the controls for positioning them are seemingly buggy. To place them in the center of the grid, set RAM addresses FF8398 and FF839C to 0110 and 0148 respectively.


(Discovery: N.)

Move Chara

FIYAH! GRAB MY LEGS!
A simple character animation viewer.

Controls

  • P1 Joystick: Move character (buggy).
  • P1 Light Punch: Hold down to play back current animation sequence in real time.
  • P1 Medium Punch: Advance to the next frame of animation within the current sequence.
  • P1 Hard Punch: Reset current animation sequence to its beginning.
  • P1 Light Kick + P1 Joystick Left/Right: Increment animation sequence.
  • P1 Light Kick + P1 Joystick Up/Down: Increment character.
  • P1 Medium Kick: Toggle character sprite flip flags.

Displays

  • NAME: Character number and placeholder name.
  • KIND: Animation sequence number and label.
  • No.: Animation frame number out of total number of frames in sequence.
  • COUNT: Game time in frames (1/60 second) to display this animation frame.
  • POS-X, POS-Y: Position of character on the screen.
  • REL-X, REL-Y: Relative position of Player 2 character to Player 1 character.
  • H-FLIP, V-FLIP: Sprite flip flags.
  • CHAR TP: Behavior flags.
  • PRIO NO: Sprite drawing priority.
  • KAGE NO: ID of shadow sprite.
  • ST: Miscellaneous flags; A = Attack, S = Crouching, G = Blocking, D = Hitstun, B = Falling/Knocked down, d = Dash, T = Throw attempt

Nage Hosei

Vampire on vampire violence.
Checks sprite selection and positioning for characters grabbed by throw attacks. Controls are as follows:

  • P1 Joystick Left/Right: Increment animation sequence.
  • P1 Joystick Up/Down: Increment attacker character.
  • P1 Light Punch: Hold down to play back current animation sequence in real time.
  • P1 Medium Punch: Advance to the next frame of animation within the current sequence.
  • P1 Hard Punch: Reset current animation sequence to its beginning.
  • P2 Joystick: Move victim (buggy).
  • P2 Hard Punch: Toggle victim sprite flip flags.

Atari Edit

Presumably for viewing and editing hitboxes, but the game crashes and resets upon attempting to enter it.

Okuri Jikan

Timing is the thing, it's true. Good timing brought me to you.
An animation timing editor. Largely the same as the Move Chara menu, but with the ability to change the amount of time each particular frame of animation is displayed on screen via the P2 joystick. However, this actually has no effect, as the default timing values are always read straight from the ROM.

Serifu Disp

When you hear "QSound", think of that jingle.
The name indicates that at one point this might have pointed to a menu for checking win quotes and other such pieces of text, but it actually currently points to an advanced sound test.

Iro Kaeru

Green is not a creative color.
Changes the color of the backdrop grid. Controls are as follows:

  • P1 Light Punch/Medium Punch: Increment base color.
  • P1 Hard Punch: Toggle grid lines.
  • P1 Light Kick/Medium Kick: Increment brightness.
  • P1 Hard Kick: Reset color to default.

Playable Bosses

Boss Showdown.
The characters Huitzil and Pyron are unplayable bosses in this first iteration of the series. However, there is ample evidence that they were intended to be playable at some point in the game's development.

By setting character select addresses FF8729 (for Player 1) or FF8B29 (for Player 2) to either 0B (for Huitzil) or 0C (for Pyron), both characters can be selected. The game will reset after the opponent's win quote if you lose a battle as Huitzil - therefore not allowing you to continue - and will freeze when attempting to load the map demo prior to the Pyron boss fight if you are playing as Pyron, but aside from this they are nearly perfectly playable, with all moves able to be performed (albeit some with different commands than would be used in later games in the series).

With Capcom Fighting Collection, the two are now fully playable without external cheats. Simply scroll the cursor below Anarkaris to highlight Huitzil and press right for Pyron. While Pyron is able to fight the entire cast, including himself in 1P mode, Huitzil completely skips over his mirror match and goes straight to Pyron after defeating the eight normal characters.

P2 Huitzil P2 Pyron P2 Huitzil Portrait P2 Pyron Portrait

In-game Fixed
Glitched Palette Fixed Palette

Both characters also have functional Player 2 color schemes for same-character matches, despite this being impossible in the game proper. Huitzil's alternate color scheme accidentally loads the palette for his lower body while jumping and one of his effect palettes into each other's slots, causing a rather strange look. When he became legitimately playable in the PlayStation 2 Darkstalkers Collection, this palette issue was fixed.

Huitzil Ending. Pyron Ending.
Upon completing the Pyron boss fight, both characters even have endings that will play, the same ones that would be seen in the sequel Night Warriors, where they became playable characters. These endings lack music, and although the Japanese sets have the proper text, the international releases simply display garbage strings of "AAAAAAAAAA". In the Fighting Collection however, they go unused when beating the game with either of them. Instead, it's just Morrigan's animation from the intro played on a loop with the red moon backdrop and a generic Congratulations message.

Group Shot Pyron. Huitzil as part of the intro's backdrop tilemap.
Pyron has an unused graphic for the group shot of the game's attract mode intro. Interestingly, Huitzil is actually present in this shot. It's likely that he wasn't removed because he and Victor are actually drawn into the backdrop rather than being sprites as the rest of the characters in the shot are. Thus removing him would require actually redrawing the backdrop.

Demonic facepalm.
Pyron also has unused defeat graphics, as would be seen after a stage. As mentioned, he is not officially playable and the game goes directly to the ending sequence after he is beaten. However, using the described hack to play as him, this will appear after you lose a battle.

Unused Moves

Standing Light Kick
Despite the CPU never using it, a fully-functional standing light kick exists for Huitzil that can be performed while playing as him. It has a unique animation that would never resurface in any of the following games, although its slow startup and short range don't make it very useful. It can't be canceled into specials, nor does it have a rapid-fire capability. Upon the release of Capcom Fighting Collection which allowed Huitzil to be playable, his animator Shisui said that this move was "so embarrassing that he wished it had never seen the light of day."

Unfinished Huitzil EX.
When playing as Huitzil, it's possible to perform an unfinished EX move by pressing Down, Down-Forward, Forward, then all 3 Punch buttons simultaneously. In addition to having misaligned effects and incorrect colors, this move's incapable of actually hitting the opponent. The animation freezes after the beam is fired, meaning that Huitzil will become frozen in place, uncontrollable, until he is hit by the opponent.

Huiztil w/ Lighting. Swirling Electricity Effect.
Mockup.
Some further graphics exist for Huitzil's cut EX beam, including an electricity effect and a Huitzil sprite with lighting similar to that seen in his Plasma Beam special. Had the move been fully realized, it might have looked something like in the mockup seen here.

Unused Graphics

Player 3 Player 4 Player 5 Player 6 Player 7 Player 8
Player 3 Player 4 Player 5 Player 6 Player 7 Player 8
Labels for up to 8 players exist within the graphic data. This is highly reminiscent of the Tournament Battle variant of Super Street Fighter II, a special version that networked 4 cabinets together to allow for 8 player elimination tournaments. It's possible that a similar mode was planned for this game.

Effect 1 Effect 2 Effect 3
Three unused miscellaneous spark effects that seem to have no associated animation data.

Small Star Spark. Large Star Spark.
A pair of starburst-shaped hit sparks, in small and large varieties.

Cone Spark.
A conical hit spark that expands outwards.

Blood Pool.
A pool of blood spreading on the ground. Maybe it was intended for opponents who had been chopped in half on K.O.?

Small Splash 1 Small Splash 2
Large Splash 1 Large Splash 2
Ripple/Spray
Rikuo's stage places the fighters in a shallow rainforest stream and accordingly replaces the characters' standard ground shadow sprites with special water effect sprites. In the finished game, only two types are used: a ripple effect for characters on the ground and a wavy shadow for characters in the air. However, several other unused effects exist:

  • Small splashes, possibly for characters' footsteps.
  • Large splashes, possibly for when a character lands from a jump or is knocked down.
  • A dissipating ripple and upward spray, possibly for when a character jumps or otherwise leaves the ground.

Small Ground Spark 1 Medium Ground Spark 1 Large Ground Spark 1
Small Ground Spark 2 Medium Ground Spark 2 Large Ground Spark 2
Two types of ground spark effects, each with 3 different sizes. Possibly intended for characters landing from jumps and hitting the ground after being knocked down. The 3 sizes might correspond to the 3 weight classes the characters are divided into.

Small Dust Cloud. Medium GDust Cloud. Large Dust Cloud.
A set of dust clouds in 3 different sizes, similar to those used when characters are sliding back from a hit in many other Capcom fighters. Again it's possible that the 3 sizes were to correspond to the 3 character weight classes.

Dust Trail.
A dust trail animation that's similar to the two other dust trails actually used in the finished game, but smaller and less elaborate.

Orb
A strange flashing, undulating orb.

Unused Frames.
FIYAH! GRAB MY LEGS! From Gamest Vol. 129. Presumably drawn by Akemi Kurihara, Demitri's animator.
The effect sprites used around Demitri's hands when he fires a Chaos Flare disappear early, leaving these two spark-like frames unused. Also shown here is what it might have looked like if the effect animation was used in full. Interestingly, the original animatic for the move (seen on the right) seems to show a similar effect. The effect would eventually be used in full in a slightly edited form in Capcom Fighting Evolution.

Horizontal Projectile Horizontal Projectile Impact Diagonal Projectile Diagonal Projectile Impact
Pyron's sprite set contains a pair of spiraling projectiles, one horizontal and one diagonal, complete with impact animations. Their intended purpose is unknown.

Forward + Medium Punch Jumping Hard Punch
Two normal attack animations for Pyron seem almost finished and ready to use, but go unused for unknown reasons. They are what would come to be used for his standing forward medium punch and jumping hard punch in subsequent games. In this game, his forward medium punch uses the same animation as his forward light punch, and his jumping hard punch uses the same animation as his jumping medium punch.

Orbiter Blaze Effect.
Many of Pyron's attacks spawn graphics separate from his primary character sprite as he returns to his idle state, allowing the various flares and blasts he manifests to have a few extra frames of animated dissipation. One such graphic intended for his Orbiter Blaze special exists, but in the actual game, this special stays actively spinning indefinitely until Pyron reaches the ground.

Music Note 1 Music Note 2 Music Note 3 Music Note 4 Music Note 5 Music Note 6 Music Note 7 Music Note 8 Music Note 9 Music Note 10 Music Note 11
A set of stylized music symbols exists in Huitzil's sprite set, they're located near those for his one-man-band win pose (in which he produces several musical instruments and begins to play them in unison), so they were likely intended to be used with it.

The club can't even handle him.
Also stored near Huitzil's one-man-band win pose is a spotlight or floor light-like effect that presumably would have materialized under his feet during the win pose.

Catapult
This small object with 3 frames of animation exists among Huitzil's parts. No fully-assembled frame uses it. A developer interview in All About Vampire mentions a scrapped move involving a catapult on Huitzil's back, which seems to fit this object's appearance and range of motion.

Standing Hard Kick Wheel Rough Crouching Medium Punch Drill Rough Crouching Hard Punch Drill Rough Crouching Medium Kick Drill Rough
In this game, Huitzil is designed in such a way that he is made of many separate body parts that are layered together to create a whole sprite. However, a separate sprite index containing each of these separate parts as individual sprites exists, likely for developer reference purposes. Included within these are rough draft versions of a few of the weapons used in his attacks.

Leg Closer to Camera. Leg Farther from Camera.
These particular leg parts were intended for Huitzil's close standing medium kick.

Huitzil Crouching Light Punch w/ Spinning Drill.
Additional frames for the fully-extended pose of Huitzil's crouching light punch exist that allow the drill to spin.

In-game Fixed
Ds-huitzil-jmp1.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp2.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp3.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp4.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp1.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp2-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp3-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-jmp4.gif

A couple of frames of Huitzil's jumping medium punch are missing a spike on the ball his arm has transformed into. However, his raw tileset and index of separated parts contain a couple of unused spike sprites that seem to fill those gaps.

In-game Alternate
Ds-huitzil-cshp1.gif
Ds-huitzil-cshp2.gif
Ds-huitzil-cshp3.gif
Ds-huitzil-cshp1.gif
Ds-huitzil-cshp2-alt.gif
Ds-huitzil-cshp3.gif

An alternate arm part intended for a frame of Huitzil's close-standing hard punch exists, it makes the transformation of the arm a bit smoother.

In-game Fixed
Ds-huitzil-shk1.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk2.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk3.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk4.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk5.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk6.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk7.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk1-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk2-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk3-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk4-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk5-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk6-fix.gif
Ds-huitzil-shk7-fix.gif

The weapon part used in Huitzil's standing hard kick is a rough mockup, a finished version can be made by combining other parts.

More legs to break your fall.
A special animation intended for Huitzil landing after being hit in midair exists. Although his midair recovery animation actually does show his quadruped legs deploying, upon landing he plays the same animation he uses for landing from a jump.

Slice Recovery Frame 1 Slice Recovery Frame 2
Slice Animation Including Unused Recovery Frames.
This unused two-frame sequence was intended for Huitzil recovering from a standing sliced-in-half animation.

Making an entrance.
Despite seemingly being complete, Huitzil's intro animation goes unused, making him the only character in the game to lack one. It would eventually get used in Night Warriors.

Certified within EPA standards. Smokin'
Sprites for two small bursts of smoke, one diagonal and one horizontal, exist in Huitzil's sprite set. The horizontal one would see use in a slightly modified form in Night Warriors.

Ds-huitzil-njmk-unusedbit.gif
An unused frame of Huitzil's orbiting attack bits exists, seemingly an in-between transition frame to either the mace used in his diagonal jumping light and medium kicks, or perhaps the spiked saucers used in his vertical jumping medium kick.

Ds-huitzil-fxpal.gif

In-game With FX Palette
Ds-huitzil-elecpal1.gif
Ds-huitzil-elecpal1a.gif
Ds-huitzil-elecpal2.gif
Ds-huitzil-elecpal2a.gif

Huitzil loads a turquoise and steel blue palette seemingly intended for his personal effect sprites into memory when active, but most of the sprites this palette was seemingly intended for don't end up using it. The electricity effects in his throw animations use his main body's palette, rendering them gray with a few stray red pixels. Assigning this FX palette gives them the more fitting steel blue with no stray colors.

In-game With FX Palette
Ds-huitzil-beampal1.gif Ds-huitzil-beampal2.gif

Like with his throw, Huitzil's beam from his Plasma Beam special flashes rapidly between the yellow global effect palette and the palette used for Huitzil's lower body when jumping, the latter of which does not seem to fit the sprite at all. However, the turquoise section of this personal effect palette seems to fit perfectly and somewhat looks like how it appears in Night Warriors.

Frame 1 Frame 2 Frame 4 Frame 6
Frame 8 Frame 10 Frame 12

In-game Full
Ds-huitzil-beamfx-ingame.gif Ds-huitzil-beamfx-full.gif

Several frames of animation of the charge up and muzzle flash effect for Huitzil's Plasma Beam are omitted in-game.

Om Nom Nom.
Demitri has sprites and animation data for what would seem to be a second normal throw where he bites his opponent, similar to the one he would later become able to do in Vampire Savior.

Like a bat out of Hell, this sprite is gone gone gone.
This bat animation exists in Demitri's sprite set. Judging from the angle and the similarity to the bat sprites used in his intro, this might have been intended for a home stage CPU character intro (as some other characters in the game display) which would have involved the bat flying from the background.

Slippery
Rikuo has an unused back dash animation that has similar features to his forward dash (arms becoming long fins, legs liquefying). In the finished game, his back dash is a repeating backflip.

Good, Good, Good, Good Vibrations.
A version of Rikuo's Sonic Wave projectile that expands to a larger size than the regular one exists, presumably intended for an unrealized ES version of the move. Once he became able to use an ES version in Night Warriors, its normal size was reduced and the ES version's size became equal to this game's normal size, thus this large variant remained unused.

What are you looking at?
Morrigan's graphic in the attract mode's intro extends a bit beyond the bottom of the visible screen, revealing that she is in fact not wearing anything.

Franken Frankenstein
A pair of unused name labels, one for the lifebar and the other for the Player Select and "VS" screens exists. The former reads "Franken" and the latter "Frankenstein", likely abandoned names for Victor, the Frankenstein's monster-based character.

Demitri is a Bird Gamefan August 1994 issue
Demitri's lifebar name graphic is actually misspelled as "Demitori" (a direct romanization of the Japanese phonetics). Apparently there was no time to actually fix the graphic, as the finished game employs a slapdash fix: the tiles are overlapped in such a way as to hide the "o". The misspelled name was shown as is in some pre-release promotional screenshots, as seen on the right. The graphic was given a proper fix in Night Warriors.

DarkstalkersArcMorriganSelectIconUnused1.png DarkstalkersArcMorriganSelectIconUnused2.png

In-game Full
DarkstalkersArcMorriganSelectIcon.gif DarkstalkersArcMorriganSelectIconFull.gif

Morrigan's icon on the Player Select screen has 6 frames of animation, but the last two frames are not used, resulting in a less smooth transition when opening her eyes. The full animation later became used in the PlayStation port.

Unused Sounds

ID Track Notes
68
A honking horn intended for Huitzil's one-man-band win pose. It wouldn't actually get used until Vampire Hunter 2, albeit at a higher pitch.
98
The sound of a cow mooing, intended for Bishamon's stage, where one can be seen in the background. According to a developer interview in the Gamest magazine, this ended up getting removed because it was annoying.
D8
A version of the horn in sound 68 with a different pitch.
An instrument sample of a guitar exists, unused by any of the game's music.
A looping, laser-like sound effect. Although it has instrument data defined, no sound effect code seems to use it.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan International
Ds-title-j.png Ds-title.png

The game, as well as the series in general, is titled Vampire in Japan, and Darkstalkers everywhere else. The subtitle "The Night Warriors" applies to both versions of this first game, which often leads to confusion given that the international title of the sequel was also Night Warriors.

Character Names

Four characters have different names in Japan. According to developer interviews, the international names are actually the originals.

Japan International
Ds-gallon.gif
Ds-gallon1.gif
Ds-talbain.gif
Ds-talbain1.gif

The kung fu werewolf is known as Gallon in Japan (a pun on a Japanese word meaning "hungry wolf"), Jon Talbain everywhere else.

Japan International
Ds-zabel.gif
Ds-zabel1.gif
Ds-raptor.gif
Ds-raptor1.gif

The rocker zombie is called Zabel Zarock in Japan, and Lord Raptor in other regions.

Japan International
Ds-aulbath.gif
Ds-aulbath1.gif
Ds-rikuo.gif
Ds-rikuo1.gif

The curiously attractive fishman goes by Aulbath in Japan. He's called Rikuo on international versions, certainly based on the name Ricou Browning, one of the actors who starred in the 1954 film The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Japan International
Ds-phobos.gif
Ds-phobos1.gif
Ds-huitzil.gif
Ds-huitzil1.gif

And finally, the Mayan killer robot is called Phobos in Japan, Huitzil on the international versions.

Japan International
Ds-zombie.png Ds-ghoul.png

Furthermore, Raptor/Zabel's monster type varies between regions. He's classified as a Zombie in Japan, and a Ghoul internationally.

Win Quotes

Hmmm...
To do:
Add the Japanese-exclusive win quotes here and translate them.
Japan International
Ds-winquote-j.png Ds-winquote.png

The Japanese version's win quote screen contains a decorative border graphic around the quote. The international version's quotes take up too much space to fit within this border, so it was removed.

Also, similar to how it was done with Street Fighter II, the Japanese version contains way more win quotes: a total of 18 win quotes for each character, as opposed to the international version's 4 per character.

Voices

In non-Japanese versions of the game, most Japanese voices were removed except for grunts and cannot be enabled by normal means, and there does not seem to be a way to reinstate the voices via the test menu.

Revisional Differences

In the 940630 build of the Japanese set, Rikuo's crouching hard punch cannot be blocked while crouching, which is extremely awkward given the attack's look and other properties. In subsequent builds, it was made able to be blocked while either standing or crouching.