Vampire Needs Salvation – Darkstalkers Resurrection fails to meet sales expectations

Ah, Capcom. You’re probably the one Japanese gaming company I know of that’ll give a double decade old franchise a digital HD rerelease in the hopes that it reaches AAA game gross sales. I mean, don’t get me wrong. if there’s any fighting game franchise that deserves a proper compilation rerelease (Let alone an actual sequel), it’s the Darkstalkers series.

It’s just a rather unfortunate case. Darkstalkers, (Vampire Savior in particular) has always been a niche title. A hardcore game for the hardcore fighter. High skill ceiling, bizarre, yet crazy, awesome, memorable presentation and design, you name it. It’s about as technical and as much a labor of love as 3rd Strike (if not moreso), and even that game and its earlier builds had been mostly ignored at the start of its heyday.

It still boggles the mind, though. Capcom (barring, of course, Yoshinori Ono) didn’t have enough faith in the series to at least start steady eventual development of a proper Darkstalkers sequel, but they had enough faith in Resurrection to perform better than 7th place on PSN?

So then what audience was Capcom targeting? Were they targeting the diehards of the franchise, who in all probability already have 3 (or more) working versions of the game, be it in their PSP, in the form of a Dreamcast, or Playstation 2 import they had to eBay themselves just to get their fix? Or perhaps they were targeting ADD stricken Marvel fans who wanted to see pixelated succubus tits in their original context, before growing bored and frustrated at not being able to play as Doom or Wesker or what have you?

Using Resurrection as a crowd-funder was probably the wrong approach, which is especially funny, considering how well Skullgirls (possibly a better Vampire Savior successor than any half-hearted cross-over cameo game Capcom can dish out) has been able to underdog their way out of dormancy, lay offs and lack of hype for half a year through its steadily growing loyal fanbase. If anything, Resurrection could have been a good opportunity to introduce some much needed fresh blood into the series, which the tutorials at least try to do. At least its presentation wasn’t messed around with (as much) like 3rd Strike Online’s was, what with the unnecessary and lazy music remixes and such.

Still, it might have been a better idea to just up and create a Darkstalkers 4 so that said HD rerelease has newer curious fans to play with.

You listening, Capcom?