PixlBit

 

Author's Note: Sorry on the Delay with this one! I had really crappy day yesterday I just couldn't bring myself to write both mentally and physically.

There are a lot of non-Capcom fighting games that I could talk about that seem to take inspiration from Darkstalkers. Probably the most current of those would be Skull Girls. The games art style and old school style approach of fighting game mechanics do invoke a Darkstalkers feel. However, there is another game that Skull Girls takes inspiration from that is much more Darkstalkers inspired. That game is Guilty Gear. What makes Guilty Gear the ideal game to compare against Darkstalkers? Because at one point it was going to have a cross over fighting game with it. If that's not a good enough reason to investigate the Darkstalkers connections with it, then I don't know what is.

The Guilty Gear series started in 1998 by Arc System Works. A 2D Fighter created by Daisuke Ishiwatari. Ishiwatari was a former programmer at SNK who worked on titles such as the fighter The Last Blade. He was not only the creator of Guilty Gear franchise but its illustrator, musician, and voice over for the main protagonist of the series, Sol-Badguy, until fairly recently. Its first entry was noted for its very detailed sprite work at the time, fast game play, and rock/heavy metal soundtrack. In fact, Guilty Gear was completely based upon rock and heavy metal allegories. For example at the being of every round the announcer would say “Heaven or Hell?”, a reference to a song by metal band Black Sabbath. Every round would end with “Slash” instead of a KO, a reference to the guitarist in the band Guns n' Roses. Characters and backgrounds were a clash of metal and anime influences. The game play of GG was fast and furious. Guilty Gear was a 6 button fighter (Punch, Kick, Slash, Heavy Slash, Dust, and Respect). Guilty Gear also featured a super bar, known at a tension bar. The tension bar allowed for super like attacks but also one important ability as well, instant kill. By pressing four buttons (Punch, Kick, Slash, and Heavy Slash) The tension bar would turn red then you would have a short time to input each character's instant kill input and it would instantly kill your opponent, or how Guilty Gear puts it, “ “Destroyed”. The move was a very risk/reward move as failure to do the move would result in no tension meter for the rest of the round. This move was similar to Mortal Kombat's fatality move and would be come one of Guilty Gear's establishing trade marks.

Guilty Gear was a very offensively heavy game. The flow of combat was reminiscence of Marvel Vs. Capcom's over the top, off and on the ground action. There was even a universal button in Guilty Gear to allow all characters to launch opponents into the air to air combos (Dust).

 

The first Guilty Gear did make it the jump from arcades to home consoles and even to the West. It garnered a moderate success here and generated an update for the PS2 in 2001. However, it wasn't until 2002 where Guilty Gear got its first big break in the mainstream and caught the eye of many gamers around the world.

 

Guilty Gear XX, also known as X2, premiered in arcades in Japan in 2002 and home consoles around the world in 2003. XX was a update to the 2001 semi-sequel of the original Guilty Gear, Guilty Gear X. It revamped the sprites to outstanding quality, added new game play elements such as roman cancels, added 4 new characters, and had an amazing hard rock soundtrack. It also included the now important mechanic of Burst. Burst is a universal defensive technique push back opponents when the put up pressure. Think like its' Darkstalkers' guard canceling without a offensive move. Also, unlike guard canceling, Burst was tethered to a meter that was full at the start of the round but once used become empty and would slowly increase as the match progressed. However, its most important facet about the was that it was the first Guilty Gear to gain a ton of mainstream press.

In the supposed “drought” of fighting games in the early part of the new millennium, Guilty Gear XX stood out of the haze. This not only catapulted Guilty Gear as a brand but also the company that produced it. Arc System Works and long with Sammy, the publisher of the first few Guilty Gear titles, had become extremely popular among the gaming world. So popular that Sega actually bought out Sammy and eventually the rights to the Guilty Gear brand for a short time. Eventually, Arc got the rights back but even before then, Arc's reputation for their 2D fighters grew along with Guilty Gear.  Guilty Gear XX spawned a long running series that most recent update was last year entitled Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R. While all of this is interesting to note, an important question still remains: What does Guilty Gear have to do with Darkstalkers? And how did this lead to Capcom to possibly doing a crossover with Darkstalkers?

Guilty Gear is a much more technical fighter than compared to Guilty Gear. However, at its heart, the game play is a lot like Marvel Vs. Capcom, something that Darkstalkers had already proven twice that it can work with. What really Guilty Gear best encapsulates about Darkstalkers is its marriage of style and game play together. There have been many fighting games that look pretty but matching that visual style with actual game play has been especially challenging. That's part of the reason why the fighting game genre “crashed” in the late 1990's and early part of the new millennium. Guilty Gears sprites, especially the sprites from XX, were not just clean and pretty but flowed well with the combat. Some of their design might have been obtuse but never to the point that made game play impossible. Darkstalkers exaggerated sprite work was the same, very detailed but had depth in game play.

Another similarity was with the character design. Like Darkstalkers, Guilty Gear's character design was steeped with horror and film monster archetypes. It makes sense though, Guilty Gear is based on rock and metal music motifs. It no secret that a prevailing theme in those types of music deal with the occult and monsters. Darkstalkers acknowledged this with the character L. Raptor and his background story. Pretty much every type of Darkstalkers character was represented in Guilty Gear in some fashion.

From vampires....

  

.... To Frankenstein-like artificial creatures and Robots....

 

... Powerful seductresses...

.... Innocent childlike demons...

... Narcissist hell spawns...

...Bloodthirsty Samurai...

.... And even half-demon, sword swinging anti-heroes were all present in Guilty Gear.

 

Guilty Gear, like Darkstalkers, also introduced cultural monsters archetypes the West had not seen much. Zappa, named after Queen lead singer Frank Zappa, is based around Japanese ghost stories. Specially, Zappa is modeled after the popular Japanese horror film series Ringu, re-branded in the West as The Ring. The ghost that possesses him is named S-ko, which is a reference to Sadako Yamaura, the main antagonist from the Ringu series. Another odd bit a of trivia about Zappa is that he fights with many ghosts that physically appear and attack. This could possibly a reference to stands from the popular manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, which was also turned into a Capcom fighting game in the late 90's.

The most important connection and relevance Guilty Gear has towards Darkstalkers was the continuation of 2-D sprite work as a median for fighting games. Guilty Gear XX showed that 2-D sprite were still very relevant to fighting games. Despite the fact so many fighting games, and gaming in general, made the jump to 3D, Guilty Gear XX's lavished sprites show how much 2-D could still be eye catching. Just like Darkstalkers' sprite work did with Capcom in the 1990's. Guilty Gear XX showed that 2-D Sprite-based fighting games weren't a kitsch fad and could have the same explosive punches as their 3D counter parts. Unfortunately, many companies didn't agree with that including Capcom. By the beginning of the new millennium, most of Capcom's 2D artwork staff had either switched to 3D work or gone from the company. Arc, on the other hand thanks to Guilty Gear, was branching out and working with other companies IPs and this is where Guilty Gear and Darkstalkers stories start to entwine.

I can't pin point an exact year but I will say it was around 2005 or 2006 is when I first heard about the rumor that Capcom and Arc Systems in talks together. I read in an issue of EGM which the stated the two working together on a possible Guilty Gear Vs. Darkstalkers game. Details of the game were scarce beyond the fact that Arc was working on it. It got the hopes up of myself and whole bunch of gamers who hopeful for the cross-over. Unfortunately, that never happened. Those talks apparently fell though and whatever cross-over was planned didn't happen. However, Capcom did commission Arc to make a fighting game but not on any existing fighting game IPs. Instead, Arc's new fighting game was based upon Capcom's popular Dynasty Warriors-inspired game, Sengoku Basara. So in 2007, Arc released Sengoku Basara X (pronounced Sengoku Barasa Cross).

The game featured most of the characters from the second Sengoku Barasa as well as Guilty Gear-like game play including Guilty Gear's instant kills called Barasa KO's in Basara X. Sengoku Barasa X was the last time Capcom and Arc have ever worked together. The game will probably not ever come to the West due to Barasa's low popularity. Despite not having a cross-over with Darkstalkers, the spirit of what that game could have been lives on in Guilty Gear's modern successor, BlazBlue.

Started in 2008, this franchise has once again help get Arc Systems on the map with its incredibility high resolution sprites and fast game play. BlazBlue features a similar mechanics (too similar to in many in the Guilty Gear community which is why it not very popular among them) but one notable difference, the drive system. Drives are individual mechanics that distinguish each character. Some drives are unique attacks, other special movements, or even special status changing effects. Blazblue even features the similar character designs that not only echo Guilty Gear but Darkstalkers as well. Its newest version, Chrono Phantasma, is out at arcades already in Japan and will be released for the PS3 in Japan sometime this year. It marks the 5^th anniversary of BlazBlue on same year of Guilty Gear's 15^th anniversary, which is also Arc System Works' 25^th anniversary as a company.

Despite Guilty Gear Vs. Darkstalkers not happening anytime soon, its spirit lives on through Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. More importantly the spirit of sprite-based 2D fighters lives on through the fighting games of Arc System Works and many other companies such as Lab Zero Games (Skull Girls), Ecole (Under Night In-Birth), and SNK Playmore (The King of Fighters XIII). Still, Capcom acknowledges importance of 2D fighting which why games like Street Fighter 4 and Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 still work on 2D perspective with 3D visuals. That's is probably the same route Darkstalkers 4 would go. More importantly, Capcom has a game out right now that can best show how Darkstalkers 4 would like in a 2.5 perspective. What that game is and what it will mean for the future of Darkstalkers 4 will be revealed tomorrow.