Slowpoking on this a bit, but I just came across the Twitter account of Yasuhiko Magamichi (https://x.com/micchiy_) who was a planner on the original Darkstalkers game. Late last year he Tweeted a lot of development anecdotes I figured fellow fans might find interesting, so I'm taking it upon myself to start a thread translating them. Translations begin in the next post.

after development ended on Captain Commando, Ohno and I started development on "Baoh (Temp. Name)." As the name suggests, it was an action game where you transform and fight, but we only ha rough plans and couldn't nail down any specifics, so development was rough. Then one day we got called into Okamoto's office...

The "Baoh" project was cancelled, and they wanted us to come up with two new project ideas. One of them was a monster fighting game to follow up SF2, based on info that monster movies were being made in America. The other was a game based on a manga it seemed like we could get the rights to.

And thus I was put in charge of the fighting game project based on monsters, and Ohno was put in charge of the game based o the manga. The info on monsters came to use from Akitomo. As Okamoto said on Youtube, the Vampire project was originally his idea, so he can be said to be the one responsible for the initial idea.

So, we started planning a fighting game that would improve nm the foundation laid by SF2. We played SF2 every day an started thinking of ideas for new mechanics.

And around the same time, we started thinking what playable characters we should have. Like a vampire, a female vampire (like Carmilla,) a werewolf, a fishman, an a Frenkenstein's monster and so on. We pretty easily thought up all the famous ones up to and including Bigffoot and even a zombie. For a Japanese monster we could only think of Youkai, but in the end I thought up the ghost of a fallen samurai.

Also as a joke we also included a modern day Japanese salaryman in the list. His moves would include Bowing Attacks and Business Card attacks... The alien and robot weren't among my list. I believe they came from the art team. I also think the catwoman was their idea.

We didn't like SF2's "Jump over a Hadouken, get Shoryukened", "Jump over a Sonic Boom, get Flash Kicked" situations, so we thought "If you're a monster, it shouldn't be out of the question for you able to block while jumping in!" And thus air blocking. And in order to speedily close in to your opponent as well as avoid attacks, we quickly thought up dashes and back dashes.

While we were working out the mechanics, the art team was proceeding on character design under Akiman's supervision. In terms of this project, I was only involved with the system mechanics and had no input on the characters at all (although I did choose the monster types.)

Darkstalkers' success can largely be attribute to the appeal of the characters and stages. The fact its characters continue to appear in so many games is proof of this.

The mechanics we added during the middle of development were pursuit attacks and throw teching. You'd press down and an attack button to perform an additional attack on a knocked down opponent. We only ended up implementing this for Zabel.

Throw teching wouldn't work against command throws or throws that slam you against the ground. For normal throws that toss the opponent, they'd input down and an attack button at the moment they hit the ground to recover. This mechanic ended up getting scrapped because it would be too frustrating for the person doing the throwing.

One thing we didn't like about SF2 is you'd get winquotes like "You must defeat my Shoryken" even if you didn't use Shoryuken, or boastful winquotes even from a character who only just barely won, We wanted to really breathe some personality into these appealing new characters, so we came up with a new winquote system.

The winquote would be read from a table a shown according to how much life you had left, whether you finished off the opponent with a special move, and so on. We had a quotes prepared for "Easy Win", "Standard", "Hard Win," "Special Move 1," "Special Move 2," and "Mirror Match" situations.

And then because we couldn't get those manga rights I mentioned earlier, Ohno ended up joining the project. Chain Combos and the Super Meter were his ideas.

We... don't really talk about these original Capcom devs. They've been saying some questionable things about Poison...

So now that the characters and stages were nearing completion, we'd need to get around to the music. Our basic order was to compose something that fit each character's image.

Some of our specific requests were to give Aulbath's stage a lively song like the jungle stage in Konami's X-Men, slow tempo jazz for the werewolf, and a song with a back and forth between two guitars like Wing's Goodnight Tonight for the zombie.

In arcades back in those days, high pitched sounds stood out more than low-pitched ones, so we asked them to keep that in mind. So we made sure to have the coin insert and new challenger sounds stand out with high pitches.

I remember we requested the composer to town down the hihat on the vampire's stage as it was standing out too much and threw off the song's balance.

When the werewolf's song was finished, we ran into some complaints about the slow tempo not feeling right, and not fitting his speedy attacks an moves, so we redid it as something more up-tempo. (We apologized since we had ordered the slow tempo in the first place.)

The title "Vampire" was chosen since it can refer to monsters in general, not just the blood-sucking type. Writing it with a ヴァ and not バ was me being particular.

The overseas version was named "Darkstalkers" by Capcom USA. They explained it means the ones who wander about in the night. Back then the word "stalker" wasn't as common as it is today.

For Vampire we wanted to only have command type inputs and get rid of charge inputs because they felt unnatural. But the Frankenstein monster's developer wanted him to have charge moves, and we thought the players would want them too, so we allowed it.

Capcom USA came up with the developer names. In the Japanese version, a few characters were named by Ohno (such as Aulbath, whose original name Rikuo sounds like "Land Man" in Japanese in contrast to him being a fishman.) When the female vampire was named Morrigan I vividly remember her developer, who happened to be named Mori, responding with "Is this a play on my name?!"

Along with the names, Capcom USA also told us the female vampire was too sexy and so she'd be better as a succubus, and that the zombie looked too withered and was more like a ghoul. We ha never heard of a succubus, but it turned out to be fitting, so we did officially change her species to succubus.

Once the game gets to certain point, you want to start adding voices. We were told to choose from voice actors with the Arts Vision agency, and given a sample CD. I wasn't really knowledgeable about voice actors, so I simply chose 5 going by the images their voices gave me. (Some of them would play multiple roles.)

We thought it wouldn't be fitting for monsters to shout their move names, so we thought up lines without that. Although the only characters who seem like they'd talk would be Demitri, Morrigan, Felicia and Bishamon.

Demitri's "Get MY Rage!" means "Feel my wrath!" For Morrigan, Ohno really wanted to have her VA shout move names, so Murata very quickly came up with some names for her moves (those being Soul Fist and Shadow Blade.)

While recoring, Yuji Ueda, who voiced Aulbath, Zabel, and Gallon said "Do you really even need me?" since he was basically just howling an shouting "Hey!" and such. but his voice fit them perfectly so it turned out great.

For the voice clips in English, an American programmer named Scott was there to help with pronunciation.

Kan Tokumaru's curse voice for Anakaris was an adlib sutra recitation-like performance that he did for us. We were left so speechless that he ended up stopping and saying "Is that good enough?"

I remember Nobuyuki Hiyama looking so happily at Demitri on the screen and saying "I'm going to voice this?!" Kae Araki sounded so cute when she sneezed, so we basically had her o that voice. She really liked those snowmen that appear in Sasqutch's winpose.

Yayoi Jinguji was like a beautiful older sister, and I felt she fit Morrigan perfectly. I remember fanning myself like crazy the whole time we were recording since the booth was so hot. This was the first time Capocm used professional voice actors, and I was glad we were able to breathe so much more life into the characters than we had before.

For the base story of Vampire, I wrote the basic reason why each character fights. About what impact Pyron's arrival had on the characters and how the fight begins. Using that as a base, Murata wrote a much richer and wonderful backstory.

For those who like Demitri and Morrigan's story, I would recommend Astaroth by Maya Mineo. Our Makai setting was heavily based on it. I recommended Murata to rea this manga back then.

Murata wrote each character's ending and came up with all their move names. I think his talent really showed in Vampire. He did a wonderful job at enhancing the appeal of each character.

And when it comes to Vampire you can't forget Bengus. I remember being so impressed by the characters he drew for the opening demo. The seductive close-up of Morrigan was very prophetic of the popular character she would become.

During the location test for Vampire we saw a Bishamon player repeatedly pulling off a special move with a timing we had never seen before. When we investigated it back at headquarters, we found that because of a glitch it was something you could do if you had completely frame-prefect timing. I was amazed as how incredible human players can be!

When Vampire was at the Game Show, I went along. And when I was looking around, there in a photo booth was a butt in a thong! It was a woman cosplaying as Morrigan. She was pparently a writer for some publisher, but I was shocked at how quickly people were cosplaying.

On the subject of cosplay Felicia is just sparse fur on a naked body, so we thought cosplaying her wouldn't be possible. But to my surprise people pulled it of with full-body tights. Just goes to show what an appealing character she is.

The reason Vampire's credits do't show up unless you 1CC is in order to cut down time where the player is doing nothing and speed up the rate of turnover. But I figure it would have been nice to just show them regularly. We also added an Easter Egg where the credit roll song changes if you hold down all 6 buttons.

cool

Pyron's move where he turns into something like a tire and rolls forward (Zodiac Fire), we called it "French Cruller" during development.

It feels like Succubi became more famous after Morrigan, but Incubi are still obscure...

(In response to video about Akitomo's pitch) By the way, I hadn't heard any of Akitomo's ideas at all. Okamoto just told me "It looks like monster moves are gonna be popular in America, so think up a monster fighting game." and nothing else. There was no roster given to me, so I picked out the famous ones myself.

>>11787665
Darkstalker is a play on all the classic monster movies, I'm kinda surprised they never added a kaiju

>>11787696
Scale would likely be the problem there, since Kaiju are typically giant.

>>11787696
Im surprised they never added a slasher movie type monster akin to Jason or Freddy, though i suppose Raptor could fill that role. Likewise, would have been cool to see a mutant/xenomorph like character, though I guess Q.Bee very loosely is something like that.

Very interesting!

>>11787779
>>11787656
Here potentially SNES vram test.

https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=206370&hilit=Darkstalkers#p206370

>>11787497 (OP)
Asked about him rumor super nes port of the night warriors?

https://twitter.com/HUnewearlXZR/status/1565550188495745024

>>11787497 (OP)
Good job, anon. That was a pretty interesting read.

>>11787629
Hiyama being Demitri always felt interesting considering his usual roles (his Yarudora 4 one is interesting too). Demitri didn't shout that much aside for some special moves and to me his raspy voice made me think it was a different actor. On Namco X Capcom is more recognizable.

>>11787575
Fucking pussball

>>11787497 (OP)
Weird how none of the other devs have ever mentioned that story Alex Jimenez always tells about how Darkstalkers was meant to be a Univeral Monsters fighting game but Universal wanted too much money for the license to Capcom reworked it into its own thing. You'd think if it wasn't outright true they'd have said so by now but they also never ever bring it up

>>11787926
It could be that Jimenez himself did want to go the licensed route, but either he couldn't convince Capcom or they couldn't get the rights. At any rate Akitomo says that from the beginning he was more for the "inspired by" route than a directly licensed route because he felt the true Universal monsters weren't flashy enough for something like a fighting game, so making their own characters would allow for more creative freedom for that sort of thing.

>>11787832
Would been a bitch to port it on a 32mbit/4MB cart with shit muffly voice samples, so and so instrumentation and keyframes only.

It would probably run like Alpha 2 on Snes, with tons of slowdown and framerate issues.

>>11787497 (OP)
That was interesting, thanks op.

>>11787608
>Capcom USA also told us the female vampire was too sexy and so she'd be better as a succubus
They had to be fucking with them.

>>11787541
>Also as a joke we also included a modern day Japanese salaryman in the list. His moves would include Bowing Attacks and Business Card attacks...
BBH's unseen fellow human rival. representing the other dark side of humanity: being a wagie.

Super cool, thank you. Funny that he gets to say "The characters are what endured, but that's not the part I worked on."

>>11787629
>>11787915
>I remember Nobuyuki Hiyama looking so happily at Demitri on the screen and saying "I'm going to voice this?!"
Wouldn't we all, man. Yeah I can kind of hear it (in the games) if I know what I'm listening for.

>>11787990
>with tons of slowdown and framerate issues
Explain explained this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnjMUI_4BA

>>11789486
Would actually be a cool idea for a character in a similar way to B.B. Could still be treated like a jokey character, but could also be given a backstory of just a salaryman who snapped, killed his boss, killed his family, decided he liked the feel of murdering and lives now entirely by the laws of nature and their purity, survival of the fittest, either he fights, wins and kills again, or he loses and is killed. Something like Skullomania meets Falling Down.

>>11789802
Demitri so underrated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_27mpBsrdPI

>>11787608
>We ha never heard of a succubus, but it turned out to be fitting, so we did officially change her species to succubus.
Imagine the rabbit hole those japs went down when they first discovered that the Succubus monster was a thing. Probably comedicly fell backwards with blood spraying out of their noses.

>>11790831
No homo, but it would have been interesting if the series stayed alive and they added an incubus counterpart, maybe as a rival to Morrigan whom was a banished older sibling who has returned to claim the title of lord of his families great house.

>>11790831
So Donovan Morris get lost in Castlevania?

>>11790831
At first, Felicia was supposed to be the sexy girl and Morrigan the comic relief, maybe after hearing this they changed things around.

Lilith otoko no ko

>>11791705
onna no ko desu yo

>>11791705
It’s a trap!

>>11791850
Yeah, gays go thinking it's a boy and it's actually just a flat chested girl. The hips give it away, anywya.

>>11787575
Yeah, what a dick move.

>>11791159
Yeah, and at first Felicia was more sarcastic and mature, but then she became dumber and bubblier with every following game.
I think the Disgaea crossover refers to her as a teenager as opposed as the 28 year old woman she was on Darkstalkers 1.

>>11791923
Felicia muscle alt. for super smash bros

Best neko

>>11787990
Star Fox 2 or Tekken 1/SF EX1 (FX Fighters) seem feasible on SNES 96’

>>11787990
>simple hack fixes loading issue
It pathetic on Capcom

>>11787550
>We didn't like SF2's "Jump over a Hadouken, get Shoryukened", "Jump over a Sonic Boom, get Flash Kicked" situations
based

sometimes i think about what it would be like living with felicia. she is an erotic looking cat lady who is more comfortable being naked than actually wearing clothes. but then i think about the cat element more and more and she seems to be the type to occasionally go on autistic fits and knock down and break things and probably piss or shit in the middle of the floor on a bad day. also would probably try to rub against your legs all the time which would be awkward given her size. she would probably get on her back and wiggle on the ground a lot while exposing herself to you too. while also annoyingly move away if you get too close only to immediately get on her back again.

>>11787742
I always thought Q Bee was an extremely loose take on The Fly

>>11795585
she would use a litter box, you fucking idiot

>>11795592
IIRC Akitomo was asked during Savior's development for character ideas ad he said "A man-eating insect camouflaged as a girl like Chika from Space Family Carlvinson."

Never forget: https://news.sankakucomplex.com/2022/07/05/capcom-fighting-collection-censors-sexy-secret-ending/

>>11795585
She would also lick herself to bathe.

>>11795740
Too much cat fur

>>11791705
>Otoko no ko Lilith
>Dick goes hard

>Genki girl pettan Lilith
>Dick went diamonds

>>11796475
>Lily
Anon…

>>11795592
If only Ponzu from HxH revive into bee lady.

>>11787497 (OP)
The reason this game remains a niche is because of the dumb push block system that is not only annoying but can only be done on stick, rendering high level play near impossible for console or most online players, otherwise cool series

>>11787832
better question, what about the rumored Super 32x port? Darkstalkers showed up on a lot of 32x release lists for whatever reason. I can't even imagine how it would've looked on that machine.
but a game designer might not know about ports, their job is to make the game, ports can be outsourced by the parent company.

>>11795592
>>11787742
I always thought Q.Bee was based on killer bees, the popular name for a species of african bees crossbred with european honey bees in order to make them more productive, but instead they ended up with a super asshole bee species that is extremely aggressive and will follow victims for far longer and sting them many many more times. There were some horror movies about killer bees too, like The Swarm.

neat thanks op

>>11797979
The port will be cranky weird like cyber brawl / cosmic carnage.

>>11787497 (OP)
Why haven't Capcom made a new Dark Stalkers game yet? And no I don't mean those awful Marvel Vs Capcom games. I mean a real Dark Stalkers game. Capcom can even save money and reuse the Street Fighter game engine.

>>11795678
Trvke!

>>11800673
Because they can't get people to buy the existing ones.

>>11800673
It Nintendo Switch or Super Switch 2rd generation get Darkstalkers 4

>>11800673
Darkstalkers never made money, there's no nostalgia for it in the West and Capcom is already not well financially

>>11801420
It did make money, just not as much as Street Fighter.

>>11800773
The big toe on Morrigan's right foot is on the wrong side

>>11801847
Must be demonic birth defect

>>11800673
>>11801420
What series need is Nintendo 64 port alongside street fighter alpha 2 gold

>>11800673
Don't fret anon, Darkstalkers are not dead!

>>11800673
Capcom seems to throw darts at a dartboard as to whether or not an IP gets a resurrection. It took 19 years until Onimusha got a new entry.

>>11802225
Oops, miss pic

>>11787832
VGH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxH6A9e9DtA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8t9GO8okyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LetAsb-lhNU

>>11787918
>Friereddit
Not retro.

>>11787575
>being attached to the most lamest capcom whore

>>11787575
So? They been saying Zero was almost Bishi Roll, but we don't care.

>>11802407
>pitched censored Felicia for the Nintendo release
Thankfully it never happened.

>>11802843
So THAT'S why Zero has those glowing green lights on his chest. It all makes sense now.

>>11787629
>Yayoi Jinguji was like a beautiful older sister, and I felt she fit Morrigan perfectly. I remember fanning myself like crazy the whole time we were recording since the booth was so hot.

I was curious and googled. Dead at the age of 52!

>>11802843
Well these ex Capcom guys aren't talking about "almost", they outright said Poison is a DNA XX. Inacceptable

>>11802850
Nintendo of America censorship ended in 1994 with the release of Mortal Kombat II.
I don't think Nintendo would mind Felicia much. Picrel was a SNES exclusive from Capcom.

>>11796475
They threw around ideas in the concept for her and one of them was an otoko no ko angel, but then decided with a succubus(female) related to Morrigan and it eventually evolved into the lilith we have now

>>11800673
Nu capcom lacks the raw skills to make a convincing fighting game. It would be useless for them to try. They rather run the Street Fighter franchise into the ground.

>>11797963
You try not being a little bitch and getting good?

>>11801523
Or MK, or KI, or Tekken, or Marvel, etc etc. It was never in the upper echelon of popular fighting games cause it never really broke into the home market in any big way, and financially it's not very high on the list of properties is gonna focus on, they're known for tanking IPs anyway. Hell they've given up on Mega Man completely and that was their mascot

I would like a new Darkstalkers, but really what I want is them to remake the old games minus the pushblock shit. The small group of devotees of the old games can keep playing the originals, but removing that will allow people playing it at home to feel like they can actually be viable, which IMO always held it back even among the "FGC", a lot of people don't play stick, and even if you do it's kind of a pain in the ass mechanic, nobody wants to deal with it in an otherwise fun, fairly casual friendly game

>>11802975
>Nintendo of America censorship ended in 1994 with the release of Mortal Kombat II.

They still had censoring for a ton of things related to sex and religion all the way up to Super Mario RPG.

>>11803151
SF6 is wildly popular, you're retarded

>>11803241
Censorship wasn't always consistent. Many Sega and Sony games were also censored, too.
For example, Mega Man Legends on PS1 outside of Japan had the sexy catgirl (like Felicia!) removed and replaced with a super hero. But on N64 the catgirl is still there.

>>11800673
Why spend resources making a Darkstalkers game (that has no guarantee of being a success) when you can just make another Street Fighter to rake in all the money?

The era of these mega companies flooding the genre with a ton of games instead of just one mega game is long gone.

>>11802843
>>11802859
I do down for Ciel-Cial may cry

>>11803241
Anon…have bouncy ball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tjuiGQjKg

>>11803358
The new games must made in CPS3

Here nice pictures.
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/rokerrabbit40/morrigan-aensland-retro

>>11802843
What? Roll being remodeled Berkana make lore sense.

>>11802937
>they outright said Poison is a DNA XX
>left 2003
They are lying unless weird Seth experiment

>>11802850
never heard of that, can you post it?

>>11806481
Poison was created in 1989

>>11807039
He referred akiman claim on 2013

>>11787497 (OP)
Post the original tweets?

wtf it's shadow blade?

>>11787571
>One thing we didn't like about SF2 is you'd get winquotes like "You must defeat my Shoryken" even if you didn't use Shoryuken
Hahahaha. A valid concern to have.

no it's demon cradle

>>11807561
Also what is Witchblade manga

>>11807490
Doesn't matter, Akiman and Nishitani both designed Poison in 89.
Both said Poison is dna XX. Akiman only said that "us version poison is newhalf", but he considers the original jp poison to be natural female. She was designed and cinceived as one. Confirmed by her 2 designers.

>>11807743
>Akiman only said that "us version poison is newhalf", but he considers the original jp poison to be natural female.
Where revisionist at? X68k and SFC booklet clearly say she a newhalf.

>>11807778
And those were ports, after Capcom were advised to make them male to avoid possible lawsuits from american feminists when the arcade released in USA.
the original game is from arcades in 1989 from Japan. Poison was never created as a newhalf. Confirmed by both her original designers.

>>11807839
>avoid possible lawsuits from american feminists when the arcade released in USA
Source? I trusting hack who left the company back in 2003.

>>11807884
Nishitani co-designed her back in 1989
>I DON'T TRUST THE ORIGINAL DESIGNER!

>>11807680
what do you mean "also"?
why the hell did you ask me?

Using Poison to derail a thread should be punishable with death

>>11807923
Original designers can’t stop lewd doujin, anon

>>11807923
>>11807839
>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lj-9npanOI

>>11807743
>>11807839
>>11807923
>>11808742
Poison's origins are completely contradictory.

Her original designers claim that the newhalf aspect was a complete retcon to pander to the west. But we have japanese concept art and old japanese bios of her being a newhalf right from the beginning. So there's a clear misremembering somewhere about how this character came to be and what happened.

stop saying "newhalf". the word is tranny.

>>11810229
I thought it was a pso race for a second.

>>11807743
You've gotta love americans and their obsession with their creepy trans agenda. Poison's a woman, and there's nothing you weird fucks can do about it

>>11810204
>But we have japanese concept art and old japanese bios of her being a newhalf right from the beginning.
There has never been any source saying that one sketch drawing saying "newhalf" is from the very beginning, though. In fact I believe that was from the times of the console ports iirc

>>11810380
Called her shemale bombshell, stop the bigotry!

What a bunch of retards. Go and make a Poison thread if you're so hellbent in derail this one with your brainrot

>>11810837
Filter or what? People fap off to mad gear "woman"?