Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge

Overview

Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (known in Japan as Vampire Hunter: Darkstalkers' Revenge) is a 2D horror-themed fighting game developed and released by Capcom for arcades (using the CPS-2 hardware) on April 6, 1995.

The second installment of the Darkstalkers franchise (and the sequel to Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors), Night Warriors refines the gameplay (including playable boss characters, updated chain combos, new ground-based techniques, an "Auto-Blocking" character mode, and a revamped Special Meter system) while adding two new characters (the dhampir Donovan Baine and the jiangshi Hsien-Ko).

The game's plot is a remake of the original, involving an invasion of Earth by the alien Pyron (which happen to take place during a tournament of "Darkstalkers" to see who is worthy to take over the Demon World). At the same time, the two new characters enter the fray as "Dark Hunters" (whose goal is to hunt down the other Darkstalkers, each for different reasons).

The game was ported to the Saturn on February 22, 1996, featuring an "Appendix Mode" that allows players to switch between this game's version and the original game's version for certain background stages, character palette, and background music. The original version was also re-released in two compilations: the Japan-exclusive Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection (released for the PlayStation 2 on May 19, 2005) and the online-enabled Darkstalkers Resurrection (released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 12, 2013).

Gameplay

While keeping the basic fighting mechanics from the first game including Chain Combos, Crouch walking and air blocking, several refinements and, balance tweaks were made.

The energy meter system from the previous game was replaced with a more traditional "stock" system similar to that of Street Fighter Alpha. This system allows you to save up energy to use at a later time.

Also introduced in this game were recovery rolls and pursuit attacks. Pursuit attacks allowed a player to attack a downed opponent. While the recovery roll could be used to counter this new mechanic and "roll" out of the way of the attack ether towards or away from the opponent.

Chain Combos where heavily modified, and now where called "Hunter Combos". This is a specific kind of chain combo where the player starts by hitting weak attacks and progress up to stronger ones of the same type. This same combo mechanic was later used in the newer Marvel vs franchise.

Characters

The game features 14 playable characters, two of which are brand new and two of which are boss characters that were not playable in the original.

Much like Street Fighter II': Hyper Fighting and Super Street Fighter II Turbo, all of the characters' default color palette are changed to an alternate.

Returning Playable Characters

New Playable Characters