Night Warriors: Dark Stalker's Revenge

About the same time Capcom realized their Street Fighter II characters were losing steam they turned to other franchises. Among them were the popular Alpha series, the X-Men series, the Marvel Super Heroes series, and this, the Vampire Savior (Dark Stalkers) series!

Much like the other Capcom games of the mid 90s there are six attack buttons, special moves are done simply by fireball and uppercut joystick maneuvers. Frankly, if you like Street Fighter II there's no reason you shouldn't like Night Warriors.

Well, almost. You see, Night Warriors isn't quite as balanced or defined as that of Street Fighter II. For Street Fighter fans it's odd trying to adjust to characters who have very little defense. Many jumping kicks are nothing more than animation for the characters. Sure you can take damage, but few characters really have a defined kick or even punch.

The graphics for each of the characters is unbelievable. It's as you've come to expect from the folks at Capcom. Each of the characters is unique and carries a lot of personality with them. The game packs a good selection of classic horror movie-inspired fighters. You get the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, the mummy, and so on so forth. Not all of the characters are famous monsters, Felicia, a pussy cat turned naked woman, is one of those characters that defies all logic. Everybody from the Sasquatch to Anakaris, an Egyptian mummy, is fully realized, something you expect from a 2D Capcom fighter. It's a wonderful idea to see my favorite monsters fighting, and especially fun to finally see a match up with Frankenstein and the Wolfman!!

Like X-Men, Night Warriors has a lot of big animation. But it lacks the good clean fun that Street Fighter II was known for. Something about the game just feels slightly wrong to me. It's hard to recommend this game, especially with the release of sequels that improved upon many of this games problems.