During Capcom’s recent Super Street Fighter IV preview event in Central London, we sought out the game’s producer, Yoshinori Ono, to grill him on the feverishly demanded and repeatedly-rumoured Darkstalkers sequel that he seems oh-so-happy to talk about given an inch of column space.
Morrigan Aensland in her Marvel Vs Capcom 3 guise. Come on Capcom - You built the 3D models for one character, only another 20-odd to go.
Using an unblockable independent translator and following a careful zoning game, we corner-trapped Ono and unleashed a flurry of questions. He wasn’t about to be lured into answering our queries regarding which as-yet unused horror monsters he would personally like to see in a potential sequel, parrying every question with Daigo-like expertise, but we did manage to get to the bottom of his consistent dialogue on the title.
When asked about his regular name-checking of Capcom’s horror fighting series, he responded: “Yes I always try and talk about Vampire (Darkstalkers) during interviews because I want to show Capcom that there is a demand for a new game,” he revealed, before stating decisively in English: “I am desperate to make this game!”
Who wouldn't want to see the Street Fighter IV engine recreate this level of insanity?
There you have it – a call to arms. The man that revived the Street Fighter series and dragged it back into the mainstream is still doing his bit to bring us a new Darkstalkers game. If there’s one thing Ono-san has always made abundantly clear, it’s that Capcom’s fans have a voice. We wouldn’t have seen them jump through hoops to bring Tatsunoko Vs Capcom to the West and we wouldn’t be eagerly anticipating Marvel Vs Capcom 3 if it weren’t for vocal fans baying for more pixilated blood. What with the Twilight-fueled obsession with all things vampire, what better time for Capcom to go ahead and green-light Ono’s dream project? Get over to www.capcom-unity.com and stake your claim.
darkstalkers would be tremendous and capcom would have my garanteed purchase of darkstalkers.
as a kid i would play it in arcades and grew to love the zany characters.
make dark stalkers capcom!
plz plz make the a darkstalkers capcom you better listen to Ono-san he has a great idea that could sell mill of copies i would e one of the people buying the game Ono-san I love youre work keep doing what you do best hope the best if they give you the opportunity to make the darkstalkers game hell yeah cant wait to here baout it if they give you the green light
This game is long overdue.
They should do an HD treatment of the most recent Darkstalkers (3 or Chronicles or whatever and PSN/X-Live release it)…Raptor and Morrigan -MUST- be in the new one though.
I would love to have a new darkstalkers game. But please not this 3d crap.
Day 1 purchase for me! Capcom make it so!!!
Why are you waiting to remake a classic game? This should be a no-brainer!
So now Ono wants to rape Darkstalkers by making it with terrible art design like SFIV/SSFIV eh? I don’t understand why people can’t see that this guy is a hack. The real talent who created all of Capcom’s classic fighting games and designed all of those great, iconic characters is long gone.
Ono is just a spokesperson for Dimps — a company that Capcom outsourced SFIV’s development to. They should try creating a brand new fighting game series and see how they do. No matter how much I love the original three Darkstalkers arcade games, they just won’t sell outside of Japan. Ono would do a despicable job with it, because his team does not create sprite based games. The SFIV engine is pretty much SF:EX on a 2D plane.
No thanks Ono. Stick to casual games like MvC3 and such — the mindless masses don’t care about how those turn out.
I can kind of see where you’re coming from with this but I think you have to be realistic. In an ideal world Capcom would still be churning out three or four fighting games a year, they would all be hand drawn 2D, with CPS3 levels of animation, in high definition and feature over 50 characters each. This isn’t the mid-90s any more though and I’m grateful for what I can get.
While it took me a few months to really appreciate the art direction of IV, I now believe it’s about the best work your going to get out of the company this generation, and I think it would suit the Vampire series beautifully.
Of course Ono is just a spokesperson for Dimps – he’s a producer, not a developer. He’s obviously been very successful with SFIV in that role, so it stands to reason that he would hold some sway at Capcom for future projects.
I share your concerns about him handling a less casual-friendly title though – Taking Street Fighter back to its accessible roots is one thing, but Vampire was never meant to be for everyone.
Vampire/Darkstalkers games should be hot in Japan anyway and hey – why bitch abou that dumbass non-japanese don’t see the magic of Darkstalkers ?
Just scream it to arcades, from there to japanese consoles and BUY it. So simple.
I want my sasquatch!!!
RetroGamer is spot on. People here sound like they are desperate to take anything they can get, even if it costs the series its identity in the process. This is the same reason why 3D Sonic and Megaman suck now compared to their 16-bit versions. Not every game from the sprite generation was meant to be made with polygons.
Furthermore, Street Fighter was NEVER meant to be “accessible” to casuals. SF has been a hardcore VS fighting game series ever since SFII: The World Warrior. Even the single player SF1 was hardcore. It would have these whiny noobs of today in tears.
Darkstalkers is a more hardcore niche series that’s a LOT LESS popular. The only way it would succeed financially is if it’s cheaply made and has a bunch of SFIV characters plus a Dante “skin” in it. And that would be a concession that Capcom just don’t care about making a worthy entry in the DS series. I hope that’s not what we get.
I’m suspecting that people just want to see Morrigan, Lilith, and Felicia’s T&A with polygons and that’s it. You don’t make a casualized DS game and expect it to be fit to share the same status of the originals. It’ll be interesting to see what Capcom does. They should port the originals to XBLA/PSN and test the market first. I’d buy straight ports of those. I won’t ever buy a SFIV with DS skins.
Perhaps we’re talking at crossed purposes here. Of course I don’t want to see the Darkstalkers IP dragged through the mud like Sonic and MegaMan and if you think that’s what’s happened to Street Fighter with SFIV, well, it’s an opinion but not one I share. SFIV doesn’t match up to my favourites in the series (SFII Hyper Fighting or SF Alpha 2) but it’s hardly tarnished the series’ reputation in the way the games you mentioned have. Do you really believe it cost the SF series its identity?
As for Street Fighter being accessible – Viewed in relative terms, SFII is massively accessible in comparison to SFIII, and clearly that was Ono’s intent with SFIV’s direction. Granted, back it 1991 a six button game with eight selectable characters and an unprecedented number of moves may not have been seen as the most accessible thing in the world, but it’s immediacy and accessibility is what separated it from SNK’s and Data East’s output during the early half of the decade.
I definitely don’t want to see SF reskined with Demitri and co, but looking at Ono’s comments on neededing a whole new engine to represent the series’ shape-shifting characters, that’s not going to happen.
As previously stated, I share your concerns about how he’d tackle a much more hardcore title, but using SFIV as a barometer (rather than tripe like 3D MegaMan and Sonic), I’m filled me with a great deal of hope.
Street fighter sucks compared to darkstalker. Darkstalker chronicles was a great game on the psp- mabe the best 2 d fighting game
There is no reason to waste a perfectly good visually stunning new graphics system “AKA SF4″ that works! Dark Stalkers 4 should definitely happen! With the rising popularity of Vampires what better time then now? Capcom needs to really capitalize on a good thing while it’s still fresh. In the same way that it brought a new light to Street Fighter it will and can do for Dark Stalkers! DON’T KEEP US WAITING FOREVER!
I just want to submit some characters to them.
They should make It, I mean I only just become a fan of darkstalkers and a new up to date game with the graphics of SF4 would be fantastic, there is no reason why they shouldn’t make it, Street fighter is good but they’ve milked it a bit too much it’s time to move on to something else and Darkstalkers is perfect.