I swear these 2d sprites games never aged a day at all since their releases almost thirty years ago. They are still as easy on the eyes as the first day they came out.
Ah, the Capcom golden age. I played this game by accident a few years back and it quickly became a favourite. I scored my own copy a few years after for my own Saturn. These games have aged very well indeed!
This is one of Capcom's finest fighters, seriously up there with 3rd Strike and CVS2. It deserves a sequel as much as those series. I understand Capcom's reluctance, as it never really caught on in the west, but with the current fighting game renaissance that we're in, maybe it would finally catch on.
I see a new Sega Lord X vid, I watch it. My dude, you opened my eyes to Vampire Hunter before and I am so grateful for it. SLX videos are comfort food for me and a guidepost to my Sega Saturn journey, which has been utter joy.
Wouldn’t be Halloween without a darkstalkers game. The best capcom fighter ip next to street fighter. The animation in this game is absolutely timeless, plus the q sound
Back in the day I imported a few games for the Saturn: first was Dead or Alive, next was X-men vs Streetfighter (with the 4 meg Ram cart) the last was a choice between Cyberbots and Vampire Savior. Vampire Savior all the way.
Imagine locking language option behind a 100% completion... "That's right, in order to understand and navigate the menu we would ask you to complete this criteria first not knowing what it is or how to do it"
The menu is already in English, so that's not a problem. The Japanese PS2 Darkstalkers Collection on the other hand, the entire options menu is in Japanese, though not too much of a chore to navigate.
I remember only being able to play the ps1 version. I thought it was okay. 10 years later I finally played the import Sat version. It was so much better. Thanks for the review!
Sega Lord X I love these solo reviews of the 2d saturn banger titles. I hope to see many of the Capcom and SNK titles given the same treatment as this video. Your quality is as high as ever. Great stuff
I bought this on the day it came out from my favorite import house. AWESOME!!!!! The Saturn was my favorite game system, and I bought a whole bunch of games for it! Thanks for the memories SLX!
I knew about this game almost since its release on arcades, but only ever got around to playing it with a burned ISO of the Darkstalkers Collection for the PlayStation 2. Then I bought the Resurrection pack for my Xbox 360, and when it eventually RROD'ed I snatched the Capcom Fighting Bundle for my PS4 and PS5 at a discount. These games are super fun and I especially play them during this time of the year. Happy Halloween, everyone!
Excellent review. I was lucky enough to pick this up a few years ago for only $30 CAD from an ebay seller in Japan. What a game! Completely agree with all you said!
As the only Saturn owner among friends in the world of PlayStation, they were often over at my house to play Night Warriors and Guardian Heroes all night and all weekend.
I still remember seeing many of the Saturn imports in the clearance bin at Babbages back in the late 90's, but passing on them because I didn't have the cartridge to allow me to play them. I still remember holding a brand new copy of Radiant Silvergun in my hands with a $29.99 price tag. Ouch!
This game was a showpiece title on my Saturn back in the day. I had friends that bought the system just for this game and Radiant Silvergun. I never got RS because it was actually hard to get after that first initial shipment.
Still play Vampire Savior and there is a very dedicated community playing this game. I also love how Demitri was added as a boss character is SVC Chaos from SNK.
Absolutely a beautiful 2D game with top notch animation and love and care put into its creation. This era of gaming is sadly gone and this, IMO, is the top of the pile.
Like most recent experience with anything close to the Darkstalkers games are the Project X Zone strategy games on 3DS. Morrigan and Dimitri are in both games with Hsien-Ko appearing in the first one and Felicia appearing in the second one. Not the greatest games, but it's fun to see characters from Capcom, Bandai Namco, and Sega interacting in both games.
No matter how many versions or rereleases come out, I agree this is the way to play. Same with Alpha 2. CRT + Saturn + this era of capcom fighter is very hard to beat.
Bought this online at NCS (out of New York) upon release. It's still in my collection and still gets played. I think it's better than the arcade originals for having the bosses and other fighters from Night Warriors in the lineup. I'm glad to have options to play these Capcom greats on newer hardware, but my Saturn and DC copies are still my favorite ways to play them.
This is definitely my favorite version of DS3. The dreamcast version is cool too but the saturn version hooked up to s video is more colorful and crisp in comparison. The english story being unlockable in game must have been a great bonus back in th day
I love how PS1 fans say that the anything the Saturn does, then so can the PlayStation. While the alpha series is decent on Sony's first system, it was nothing compared to the 2D monstrosities that the Saturn put out.
All the 2D Capcom fighters were better on the Saturn than PS1 mainly due to the increased RAM of the system. Though I think a lot of the PS1 versions were not as bad as most people make them out to be, I mean people harp on the poor frame rate and load times in X Men vs Street Fighter but I think on it’s own merit it’s a fairly good playing game, not a mark on the arcade original and the Saturn version is definitely superior but still very playable.
Simply, my favorite fighting game ever (with Astra Superstars 2nd, 1998 was clearly a good time :). If you can only get one Saturn fighting game, then you don't need to go further. Yoh, who is happy that this game was financially affordable... unlike AS :(.
My fav capcom fighter franchise even over SF. I just the character designs, crazy animation, stages, gameplay and music. Other capcom games have a lot to thank darkstalkers for like EX moves that SF later took on. So criminal we’ll never get another game, could you imagine a new one on the RE engine like SF6
Still one of the best 2D fighting games and I'm glad the Saturn was able to handle this compared to PlayStation (which wasn't bad but is proof that sometimes having everything doesn't always work and you need to make tough cuts).
That English mode option is actually cursed, much like NeoGeo it censors the game. Blood animations are cut back and any blood that does show it's white, like BB Hood's throat slash animation. Also, were Bishamon can slice people in half, the animation is missing completely. Basically turns the game into the PS1 version. I Iove this game, 😂 I've had it since near launch. My local Babbage's had imports at the tail end of Saturn's life. I'll always defend this version.. back when games were built for the hardware's architecture and not just ported Arcade ROMS that we've gotten since
this game is good, is one of the saturn games that i own, but in my opinion the superior version on that moment in time is on the ps1 (that i also own) has a lot more content, several game modes, all the osts, and the frames of animation are very good is like 3/4 of the arcade, but the definitive one is on the psp (i own this one too), adds a lot more content that the ps1 and has all the frames of animation, playing this one on a vita, a psp fat with the dpad improved or on a psp 2000 o 3000 is the way to go, the ps2 collection is good too, but is emulation, also check the power stone collection on psp like this game this one is the definitive version of that set of games
Love my Japanese Saturn! Oh awesome Pocket Fighter and Silver Gun!? I wish my copy of Scud would play, I had the disc resurfaced. But it doesn't seem to load past the main menu into the game itself. Very weird, as my other games work just fine.
The only "minor" flaw the Saturn version of DS3 has is the voices bitrate. Putting that thing aside, everything is arcade perfect, and the game is a carbon copy of the original Vampire Savior in the arcades (unlike the PS1 version which feels odd sometimes), with the addition of Huitzil, Pyron and Donovan. A shame this version doesn't get the recognition it deserves.
Yeah the English option is nice, but it censors the game somewhat. Once you unlock it, stick to the Japanese version on this, and treat the bonus English option as just that, a bonus. I have 3 options to play this one: Vampire Savior EX PS1 Vampire Savior Saturn Vampire Darkstalkers Collection PS2
Good review! Darkstalkers is one of my favorite 2D fighting series. I had the PS1 port of Darkstalkers 3 and even though it was only an average port, I still enjoyed it. It is a shame there was never an official Darkstalkers 3 released to the US on the Saturn. I never remembered seeing an actual Darkstalkers 3 arcade cabinet back then. Was it released in US arcades as "Vampire Savior" or did it even come to US arcades at all?
@@SegaLordX I had no idea! I don't think I ever came across it, but good to hear it actually had a US release even if it was a limited release. It's a shame US support for the Saturn kind of petered out only after a few years.
Great video, X!!! However, I noticed there was no mention of Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection on the PS2? I had to actually buy a japanese PS2 (silverado?) to play it. Vampire doesn't seem to play nice even on chipped PS2s... Your thoughts (in comparison)? 🤔🤔🤔
It's great for the content and arcade accuracy, but emulated compilations lack a certain charm of the actual conversions like this Saturn edition. Can't fault either choice really.
The Saturn version had sound issues particularly on it’s music (which was not a problem on PS1) and it’s voices were compressed. On top of that it was based on Vampire Savior 2 (which was a problem with every port outside of Anthology), which NOBODY played competitively.
Not to mention the loading times...there isn't! It's insane how fast you go from one fight to another in a cd based system. With the 4mb cart of course.
There’s load times, you can’t skip a lot of the scenes. Just because they’re tucked in the transition phases between rounds and win quotes doesn’t mean it ain’t there. The only version with no load times is the arcade game itself.
I grew up with the Playstation version and I thought it was fine and pretty good. I didnt play any of games in the arcade so I didnt know which animations got cut so that didnt bother me.
Outside of some of the slowdown the PS1 game had it was actually very solid and one of the first PS1 ports where it felt like Capcom finally figured something out with the system.
I swear these 2d sprites games never aged a day at all since their releases almost thirty years ago. They are still as easy on the eyes as the first day they came out.
Nowadays they all have the generic Street fighter graphics that all modern fighting games have.
And the 3D polygon games have generally aged horribly in comparison. Yet, 3D is all people wanted back then.
Well yeah cause 2d art isn't technology dependent.
That goes double for the Guilty Gear 2D games.
I love the 2.5D games like Outrun, Afterburner, Space Harrier, and Super Monaco GP.
So many good fighting games during this era
Ah, the Capcom golden age. I played this game by accident a few years back and it quickly became a favourite. I scored my own copy a few years after for my own Saturn. These games have aged very well indeed!
LOVE me some Darkstalkers. 3 is crazy slick on Saturn, plays like butter and looks absolutely divine.
This is one of Capcom's finest fighters, seriously up there with 3rd Strike and CVS2. It deserves a sequel as much as those series. I understand Capcom's reluctance, as it never really caught on in the west, but with the current fighting game renaissance that we're in, maybe it would finally catch on.
I love how creative the backgrounds are in this game, that ghost train is epic
I see a new Sega Lord X vid, I watch it. My dude, you opened my eyes to Vampire Hunter before and I am so grateful for it. SLX videos are comfort food for me and a guidepost to my Sega Saturn journey, which has been utter joy.
Glad I could help.
Wouldn’t be Halloween without a darkstalkers game. The best capcom fighter ip next to street fighter. The animation in this game is absolutely timeless, plus the q sound
Ahhh dark stalkers. The game where many fell in love, (lust?) with Felicia🤣
Many also feel in love with Morrigan and Hsien ko too lol
@@mrlaidback83 Don't forget Lilith!
I named a pet cat after her in '98. She's passed now, but I'll always have DS Felicia.
Perfect way to start my 10 year anniversary. Thank You.
Back in the day I imported a few games for the Saturn: first was Dead or Alive, next was X-men vs Streetfighter (with the 4 meg Ram cart) the last was a choice between Cyberbots and Vampire Savior.
Vampire Savior all the way.
Imagine locking language option behind a 100% completion... "That's right, in order to understand and navigate the menu we would ask you to complete this criteria first not knowing what it is or how to do it"
The options themselves are always in English no matter the setting. Only the story itself changes language.
The menu is already in English, so that's not a problem. The Japanese PS2 Darkstalkers Collection on the other hand, the entire options menu is in Japanese, though not too much of a chore to navigate.
@@Bloodreign1 There's a hidden English setting in the PS2, although using cheat tables.
You said it all, Savior is in serious contention for best fighter on the system.
Great review, as usual✨
Thanks for watching.
Got to love how well the Saturn could handle arcade ports of the era
That cartridge slot really was a game changer for the later stuff.
I grabbed a Saturn specifically to play these and the other Capcom games for the Saturn. Darkstalkers is my favorite fighting game franchise.
Perfect review for Halloween 🎃
I thought so.
I literally just played this for the first time yesterday!
Perfect timing!
Happy Halloween
You as well.
Bulleta FTW. Loved this on the Saturn. Combined with the saturn pad is a match made in heaven.
This is one of the first games I got when I bought my Japanese saturn like 15 years ago now. Love this one!
I remember only being able to play the ps1 version. I thought it was okay. 10 years later I finally played the import Sat version. It was so much better. Thanks for the review!
Sega Lord X I love these solo reviews of the 2d saturn banger titles. I hope to see many of the Capcom and SNK titles given the same treatment as this video. Your quality is as high as ever. Great stuff
I bought this on the day it came out from my favorite import house. AWESOME!!!!! The Saturn was my favorite game system, and I bought a whole bunch of games for it! Thanks for the memories SLX!
My favorite game on the Saturn!
For my taste, there aren't any visually better 2D-fighters than the Darkstalker/Vampire Savior games. That artstyle is impeccable imo.
My bud had a Saturn growing up. Always good times playing this and other great games at his house.
How do you keep pumping out those quality videos every 3 to 4 days? I'm legitimately impressed.
Keep it up!
Thanks for the kind words. I do my best to make a watchable show.
I knew about this game almost since its release on arcades, but only ever got around to playing it with a burned ISO of the Darkstalkers Collection for the PlayStation 2. Then I bought the Resurrection pack for my Xbox 360, and when it eventually RROD'ed I snatched the Capcom Fighting Bundle for my PS4 and PS5 at a discount. These games are super fun and I especially play them during this time of the year.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Stunning game that still looks great to this day, picked it up in Tokyo when it came out! Saturn was 2d Capcom heaven...
Excellent review. I was lucky enough to pick this up a few years ago for only $30 CAD from an ebay seller in Japan. What a game! Completely agree with all you said!
As the only Saturn owner among friends in the world of PlayStation, they were often over at my house to play Night Warriors and Guardian Heroes all night and all weekend.
I still remember seeing many of the Saturn imports in the clearance bin at Babbages back in the late 90's, but passing on them because I didn't have the cartridge to allow me to play them. I still remember holding a brand new copy of Radiant Silvergun in my hands with a $29.99 price tag. Ouch!
My favorite entry of the darkstalkers series, thanks for sharing and Happy Halloween!
Princess Crown now playable in English
This game was a showpiece title on my Saturn back in the day. I had friends that bought the system just for this game and Radiant Silvergun. I never got RS because it was actually hard to get after that first initial shipment.
Still play Vampire Savior and there is a very dedicated community playing this game. I also love how Demitri was added as a boss character is SVC Chaos from SNK.
these games are still bangers
The graphics were and still are SOOOOOO GOOD!!!
Absolutely a beautiful 2D game with top notch animation and love and care put into its creation. This era of gaming is sadly gone and this, IMO, is the top of the pile.
I still love those sega Saturn games a lot.
Great review on Vampire Savior SLX! Happy Halloween!
Im blessed to still have my original copies. These titles had me deeper in love with capcom
Happy Halloween, Sega Lord X.
Like most recent experience with anything close to the Darkstalkers games are the Project X Zone strategy games on 3DS. Morrigan and Dimitri are in both games with Hsien-Ko appearing in the first one and Felicia appearing in the second one. Not the greatest games, but it's fun to see characters from Capcom, Bandai Namco, and Sega interacting in both games.
I love darkstalkers, I own the old darkstalkers 3 ps1 disc and case, one of the coolest covers. Happy Halloween.
No matter how many versions or rereleases come out, I agree this is the way to play. Same with Alpha 2. CRT + Saturn + this era of capcom fighter is very hard to beat.
Happy Halloween SLX and all in the comments!
Have a safe holiday!
What a classic
Bought this online at NCS (out of New York) upon release. It's still in my collection and still gets played. I think it's better than the arcade originals for having the bosses and other fighters from Night Warriors in the lineup. I'm glad to have options to play these Capcom greats on newer hardware, but my Saturn and DC copies are still my favorite ways to play them.
This is definitely my favorite version of DS3. The dreamcast version is cool too but the saturn version hooked up to s video is more colorful and crisp in comparison. The english story being unlockable in game must have been a great bonus back in th day
Morrigan sounds like she's saying, "Sorry. Gotta break!"
Happy Halloween everyone! 🎃 🍬
Best unappreciated fighting game. A game changer for sure
This and SFA3 are the best looking 32-bit games imho. They play pretty amazingly too.
I love how PS1 fans say that the anything the Saturn does, then so can the PlayStation. While the alpha series is decent on Sony's first system, it was nothing compared to the 2D monstrosities that the Saturn put out.
All the 2D Capcom fighters were better on the Saturn than PS1 mainly due to the increased RAM of the system. Though I think a lot of the PS1 versions were not as bad as most people make them out to be, I mean people harp on the poor frame rate and load times in X Men vs Street Fighter but I think on it’s own merit it’s a fairly good playing game, not a mark on the arcade original and the Saturn version is definitely superior but still very playable.
I actually got both vampire hunter and savior from one of your earlier videos!
Thanks for the video and Happy Halloween!
Same to you!
Darkstalkers 3 AKA Vampire Savior 3... Awesome game, just the cast would attract my friends who were not into fighting games.
Beautiful game and roster
Really fun series.
Sega Lord X back with Vampire Savior/DarkStalkers
Simply, my favorite fighting game ever (with Astra Superstars 2nd, 1998 was clearly a good time :). If you can only get one Saturn fighting game, then you don't need to go further.
Yoh, who is happy that this game was financially affordable... unlike AS :(.
My fav capcom fighter franchise even over SF. I just the character designs, crazy animation, stages, gameplay and music. Other capcom games have a lot to thank darkstalkers for like EX moves that SF later took on. So criminal we’ll never get another game, could you imagine a new one on the RE engine like SF6
My favorite fighter on the Saturn!!
I've played Nightwarriors a LOT during that time! A shame that this release never came to the West.
Japanes Saturn ;
December 1998.
3 new fighters :
Bulletta
Jedah
Q-Bee
Playstation :
April 1999
Happy Halloween 🎃!
Definitely one of the shinier jewels in the Saturn's library. The animation is more fluid that Alpha/Zero 3 and I much prefer the gameplay.
“in twenty twentyfour, I awoke the find another banger of a Sega Lord X video…….” 🤣
Still one of the best 2D fighting games and I'm glad the Saturn was able to handle this compared to PlayStation (which wasn't bad but is proof that sometimes having everything doesn't always work and you need to make tough cuts).
I prefer the exclusive Nightwarrios Darkstslkers Revenge, but is also good too
I didn't discover this one till the Capcom Fighting Collection came out. I really missed out back in the day.
7:50 such a dope tune🥰
B.B Hood was my main. Great game.
I’ve been going through the chaos tower these past 2 days… what timing 😅
This game series and bloody roar series are my best, its a shame they haven't done anything with them for years
That English mode option is actually cursed, much like NeoGeo it censors the game. Blood animations are cut back and any blood that does show it's white, like BB Hood's throat slash animation. Also, were Bishamon can slice people in half, the animation is missing completely. Basically turns the game into the PS1 version. I Iove this game, 😂 I've had it since near launch. My local Babbage's had imports at the tail end of Saturn's life. I'll always defend this version.. back when games were built for the hardware's architecture and not just ported Arcade ROMS that we've gotten since
The Darkstalkers cast is so creative. Street Fighter characters are cool and all but Darkstalkers was peak character design for Capcom.
this game is good, is one of the saturn games that i own, but in my opinion the superior version on that moment in time is on the ps1 (that i also own) has a lot more content, several game modes, all the osts, and the frames of animation are very good is like 3/4 of the arcade, but the definitive one is on the psp (i own this one too), adds a lot more content that the ps1 and has all the frames of animation, playing this one on a vita, a psp fat with the dpad improved or on a psp 2000 o 3000 is the way to go, the ps2 collection is good too, but is emulation, also check the power stone collection on psp like this game this one is the definitive version of that set of games
HA! NOT FAIR!! I WAS JUST ABOUT TO TRY AND CRASH!! PEOPLE GOTTA WORK IN THE MORNIN😛 Happy Halloween, Man!! Have a safe one!🎃
It seems like Arc System Works was watching this a lot and got influenced to make Guilty Gear X. Awesome 👍 😎
Its super affordable in this market. There's no reason to miss out on this update to the arcade version.
Indeed it is. I've seen disc only go for $10.
This game rules.
Switch keeping the 80s and 90s arcade alive
loved this game ❤
Love my Japanese Saturn! Oh awesome Pocket Fighter and Silver Gun!?
I wish my copy of Scud would play, I had the disc resurfaced. But it doesn't seem to load past the main menu into the game itself. Very weird, as my other games work just fine.
The only "minor" flaw the Saturn version of DS3 has is the voices bitrate. Putting that thing aside, everything is arcade perfect, and the game is a carbon copy of the original Vampire Savior in the arcades (unlike the PS1 version which feels odd sometimes), with the addition of Huitzil, Pyron and Donovan.
A shame this version doesn't get the recognition it deserves.
There is something in life more reused than the Morrigan sprites?
Youve played every game ever!
Hardly. I have my fair share of experiences in the 4th and 5th generations, but before and after that, there are thousands of games I haven't played.
Awesomeness video please do more thanks and happy Halloween 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Yeah the English option is nice, but it censors the game somewhat. Once you unlock it, stick to the Japanese version on this, and treat the bonus English option as just that, a bonus.
I have 3 options to play this one:
Vampire Savior EX PS1
Vampire Savior Saturn
Vampire Darkstalkers Collection PS2
Yea, the white blood gives me English NeoGeo shivers
2D fighters are a staple of gaming.
HELL YEAH
Good review! Darkstalkers is one of my favorite 2D fighting series. I had the PS1 port of Darkstalkers 3 and even though it was only an average port, I still enjoyed it. It is a shame there was never an official Darkstalkers 3 released to the US on the Saturn.
I never remembered seeing an actual Darkstalkers 3 arcade cabinet back then. Was it released in US arcades as "Vampire Savior" or did it even come to US arcades at all?
It definitely had a US release because I've seen it. I don't think it was widely distributed, however.
@@SegaLordX I had no idea! I don't think I ever came across it, but good to hear it actually had a US release even if it was a limited release. It's a shame US support for the Saturn kind of petered out only after a few years.
You can play this game on current video game consoles with one of Capcom fighting cocollectors
Q-bee terrifies me
Great video, X!!! However, I noticed there was no mention of Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection on the PS2? I had to actually buy a japanese PS2 (silverado?) to play it. Vampire doesn't seem to play nice even on chipped PS2s...
Your thoughts (in comparison)? 🤔🤔🤔
I believe that also includes Vampire Savior 2 as well, correct?
@@kaikiske7436 correct...
It's great for the content and arcade accuracy, but emulated compilations lack a certain charm of the actual conversions like this Saturn edition. Can't fault either choice really.
@@SegaLordX 🤓🕹🙏
The Saturn version had sound issues particularly on it’s music (which was not a problem on PS1) and it’s voices were compressed. On top of that it was based on Vampire Savior 2 (which was a problem with every port outside of Anthology), which NOBODY played competitively.
Not to mention the loading times...there isn't! It's insane how fast you go from one fight to another in a cd based system. With the 4mb cart of course.
There’s load times, you can’t skip a lot of the scenes. Just because they’re tucked in the transition phases between rounds and win quotes doesn’t mean it ain’t there. The only version with no load times is the arcade game itself.
I grew up with the Playstation version and I thought it was fine and pretty good. I didnt play any of games in the arcade so I didnt know which animations got cut so that didnt bother me.
Outside of some of the slowdown the PS1 game had it was actually very solid and one of the first PS1 ports where it felt like Capcom finally figured something out with the system.
@@Darknight0681Yeah this was a great port I feel like a lot of others are unfairly criticized too