Published in Gamest Issue 139 (October 30, 1994), a special issue serving as a mook for Darkstalkers 1. Interview with planners Junichi Ohno (referred to here as OHN) and Noritaka Funamizu (referred to here as POO).
Capcom’s recently released Darkstalkers is fully-loaded with inventive new concepts. We dared to hold a special interview with the individuals responsible for the game’s planning!
The planning phase of Darkstalkers
Gamest: I know you all are busy, so let’s get right into the interview. Were you both in charge of planning for the game?
OHN: Yes.
POO: That’s right. Though I joined midway through development, so my role was more like being his underling.
Gamest: All the playable characters in this game are monsters called “Darkstalkers”. Was there any direct motive that had you decide to make this kind of fighting game?
OHN: We had started on the planning itself around 2 years ago. We knew we were going to use monsters right from the beginning.
Gamest: Any particular reason why?
OHN: We figured that if we worked with characters who already had a certain level of recognition, players would be more attracted to the game than if we had completely original, newly created characters.
Gamest: What criteria did you use to decide which monsters ended up making it into the final game?
POO: We pretty much named every monster we could think of, and then decided on the ones that would have good presence in a game, and who we thought would be best received by players. We had around double the number that ended up making it into the final game, right?
OHN: Some of them even made it to the stage of having drawings done. Like a tree-man. His whole body was a tree. There were quite a lot. As far as weirder stuff goes, we had a normal middle-aged salaryman who fights. Though that’s not really a monster (laughs).
POO: Other than that, there were quite a lot of Japanese yokai, but they were rejected for lacking international recognition. Stuff like a nurikabe. They would be in a guard-state the whole time, reducing the load on the graphics team (laughs).
OHN: There was also an invisible man. You would just see his gloves floating in mid-air.
Gamest: That’s great (laughs). How do you end up deciding on names for each character?
POO: Official names are decided later on in the process. Street Fighter II was also like that, where we called the characters by nicknames during development.
Gamest: For example?
OHN: For a character like Morrigan, her original concept was a “female vampire”. So in order to differentiate Demitri, we’d call him stuff like “the guy” or “old man”. Felicia was “cat”, Talbain was “wolf”, though some people called him “dog” (laughs). Then there was also stuff like “mummy” or “samurai”.
Gamest: Any particular reason you went with vampires for the lead character? Why not the werewolf, or others?
OHN: Well, there’s not really a particularly deep reason… When we were naming monsters we could use, “vampire” was the first one to come up. So before we knew it, that became the protagonist.
Each character’s hidden background?
Gamest: So, moves like Talbain’s kick attacks bear a strong resemblance to real-life martial arts…
OHN: The original idea with Talbain was that he would reflect real-life martial artists. This is a remnant of that.
POO: In fact, we actually had to remove some animations from him due to storage limitations.
Gamest: So there were a decent number of scrapped moves?
OHN: That’s right. At first, we were just making things without considering storage capacity at all. Quite a few changes needed to be made.
POO: Even normals were all going to be different at close range and long distance for light, medium and heavy. Characters like Anakaris had so many. Some weird ones too.
Gamest: This is something I’ve personally been very curious about: what is Bishamon doing in that snow hut? He looks embarrassed when he comes out (laughs).
POO: We have a few theories about that (laughs). Like, he was grilling mochi, or was hiding. We had actually considered a few different animations for his entrance. Like having him burst out the front door of the neighboring house, or pop out from inside of a snowman (laughs).
Gamest: Characters like Morrigan had different intro animations for vs. CPU and vs. Human, right?
OHN: That’s right. Art staff would come to us with these animations they had made, and tell us to find somewhere to use it in-game. That Morrigan animation is one of those.
Gamest: By the way, who’s this “master” of Morrigan’s?
OHN: We hadn’t really considered it in that much detail, but for now let’s say it’s a father-like guardian figure. At first, we also had Morrigan and Demitri as siblings.
Gamest: How did Huitzil and Pyron come about?
OHN: We had a number of candidates for boss characters other than those two. Some people thought we should have even more of them, but in the end we settled on what you see now.
Gamest: Did you think that characters like Anakaris would be quite so weird from the outset?
POO: We did. The design process went something like: once the character design was finalized, we would go “they should use this kind of move”, and we’d work from there. Like, we would decide to get rid of his normal grab and instead give him a command grab to reach distant enemies. For something like the coffins, we would ask the art guy if it would be too much to have them fall from the sky, and he would say “it’s okay” (laughs). There was a lot we were able to end up doing once we tried it out. It was the same for something like his Royal Judgment, we would ask the art guy if we could do it, and he really went and did it for us (laughs).
Gamest: And you ended up having Talbain, who’s supposed to be a werewolf, turn into a dachshund when he gets cursed.
POO: Well, it’s a long story (laughs).
Gamest: When Raptor uses Hell’s Gate, there’s this weird monster that appears for just a second to swallow him. You probably won’t even be able to see it when you’re playing normally.
POO: That’s pretty much Raptor’s henchman, right?
OHN: Another idea was that they were friends. At one point we had the idea that they would fight together.
POO: He’s called “Le Malta“, because he resembles a character from Three Wonders with the same name.
Arcade mode secrets
Gamest: So, there’s no mirror matches in this game’s arcade mode.
POO: Mirror matches have this kind of unnatural feeling to them, but it would also be a problem if we didn’t have them at all. Still, I feel like they tend to make for less interesting matches than two different characters. I figured there are some parts of the game where we can get by without factoring in mirror matches.
Gamest: It also feels like Rikuo and Sasquatch tend to appear last in arcade mode.
OHN: That order has been preset. Sasquatch always comes last, and Rikuo comes before him. Other than that, the previous characters have their order changed every time. And of course, the character you use won’t show up.
Graphics
Gamest: This game’s visuals have a completely different vibe than anything that has come before it.
POO: We had decided to go with this kind of visual style right from the start of the planning phase. We wanted it to be something different and unique. We had a method to simplify the process of coloring sprites compared to how we previously worked, and as a result, decided to go in a direction that used more unique sprites.
OHN: Once we had decided to go with that method, the characters designs ended up getting boosted in turn.
Gamest: When you compare it with something like Street Fighter II, it seems like the number of animations really increased.
POO: It’s around four times the number that the original Street Fighter II had. We wanted to make all the characters’ actions more showy and dramatic, so the time it took to draw the animations was actually shorter than the time it took to think of them. Although we designed Morrigan and Demitri more like typical fighting game characters, so their actions were a bit more restrained. We figured that if the game only had weird characters it would be less approachable, so we intentionally wanted at least some traditional characters.
Gamest: Was part of the design approach out of consideration for overseas players?
POO: Not particularly. We’re certainly aware of the types of animation you see in America and other places, but our primary goal was just to make something that was unlikely anything else out there.
About the game systems
Gamest: How did you come up with ideas like Chain Combos?
POO: From the beginning, we wanted to try making normal moves cancellable into one another. At first, I thought it would be nice if it was just a simultaneous button press. You would press the buttons for the moves you wanted to use at the same time, and it would automatically link them together into a combo. We called it “registering”. Anyone would be able to do combos. But of course, when we did that, it ended up being too easy. So we reverted back to a timing-based system like you see now. Stuff like Guard Cancels ended up being hard to balance. Whatever we did, it seemed like it benefited turtling.
OHN: Also, Guard Cancellable moves are inherently ones that have invincibility frames, so we made the Guard Cancelled versions have longer invincibility than the normal versions.
Gamest: So, Bishamon and Anakaris don’t have any Guard Cancels.
POO: Bishamon does have a reversal move. He was way too good at first, in a way that made him a very lame character. We didn’t think Bishamon and Anakaris would be very popular, so with that being the case, we decided to make them completely weird and unique. They’re kinda a twisted version of a fighting game character.
OHN: Bishamon seemed unbeatable at the location test. They would just keep winning and winning. When they finally lost, it would be to another Bishamon (laughs). His dash was about twice as fast as it is now, and his reach was longer.
Gamest: Did Chain Combos and Guard Cancels end up coming out in the final game similarly to how you envisioned them?
POO: Not really. Thinking about it now, it’s a bit too hardcore. I think the skill difference between people who can use them well and people who can’t use them is too big. We also didn’t really consider how the large number of multi-hit special moves in the game would work with Guard Cancels.
Gamest: Was the idea for how the Super Meter would work there from the beginning?
OHN: That’s right. From the beginning, we had the idea of being able to power up some of your special moves once you had filled your gauge. Though we had actually considered other uses as well.
Gamest: Is there any difference in move strength if you use it when the gauge is full vs. once it starts decreasing?
OHN: No, it’s the same. Moves are uniformly powered up.
Gamest: Though, doesn’t it feel like moves you use the moment the gauge is filled are more powerful?
POO: It does somehow feel stronger… Especially throws.
The small details
Gamest: Are the characters’ voices done by professional voice actors?
OHN: That’s right, we used professional voice actors. There were actually five people: two women and three men. So some of the male characters share a voice actor. The person who played Demitri, Hiyama-san, has performed in works like Yu Yu Hakusho, so he’s a pretty well-known guy.
Gamest: What exactly is it that Bishamon is yelling when he loses? It sounds like “hoehoe”.
OHN: He’s saying “onore” {old-fashioned way of saying “damn you”} (laughs). We applied effects to a lot of voices in this game, so that’s one of them that had post-processing. Though some characters like Demitri are pretty much unedited.
POO: Demitri’s Chaos Flare special move has been misheard as “sanbai gaeshi” {triple counter} (laughs).
Gamest: “Sanbai gaeshi”, huh (laughs).
OHN: “Senbai gaeshi” {thousand-time counter}, “genmai rice” {brown rice}… there have been lots of theories (laughs). Some people have also heard Morrigan’s Soul Fist as “pork pits”.
Gamest: We’ve had some people here saying that as well (laughs).
OHN: At the start, we had a pretty considerable number of both sound effects and voices. Though there’s no “danger music” like in the Street Fighter II series. Originally, Talbain’s stage theme was at a slower tempo, but we didn’t think it fit very well, so it changed into what you hear now.
Gamest: We really ended up getting absorbed in the small details, like in the backgrounds. Things like the dog in Bishamon’s stage. When you win it just goes crazy. That dog has some huge fans in our editorial department.
OHN: That dog’s name is Tarou. There’s also a cow tucked away in the corner who at one point made noise as its mouth moved. We made it so it would moo whenever the characters are at the part of the stage where he’s visible. It’s loud and annoying, so we shoved it into the corner. It’ll just keep going “moo moo”. So you’d want to hurry up and beat Bishamon quickly so it’ll shut up.
Gamest: So, is the dog an Akita? (laughs)
OHN: No, it’s a Shiba.
Gamest: We’ve also been curious about the girls in the snow hut. The one on the right in particular seems to be pretty enthusiastically cheering on the fighters.
POO: That’s such a small detail (laughs).
OHN: According to our plans, the one on the left is the older sister, and the one on the right is the younger sister. The younger sister is absorbed in the fight going on outside, while the older sister grills mochi for her. That’s what the animator says, at least.
Gamest: So you really did have that all figured out. I just figured I would try asking and see what happened (laughs).
Gamest: Changing the subject, the way throws work after getting up are different than in Street Fighter II, where you have the advantage when you’re the one getting up.
POO: The throw system itself ended up becoming something completely different from Street Fighter II’s. When you enter the command for a throw, you don’t perform it immediately. There’s actually a moment where your character will reach out in order to do the throw. So if your opponent gets away during that time, you’ll enter a “missed throw” pose. Though earlier on in development, it was even more different. We changed it to how it is now for the sake of approachability.
Gamest: I assume that for the game’s speed, you used Super Street Fighter II Turbo as a reference?
POO: Everyone had their own opinions on what the game’s speed should be like, but in the end we decided that this would be best. Although Speed 3 is pretty darn fast. Originally we had intended it to be an even higher-tempo game, but I think what we have now feels right.
Gamest: Got it. So, do you two have any final messages for the players out there?
POO: More than anything, I hope everyone is having lots of fun matches in Darkstalkers.
OHN: Keep practicing your Chain Combos and Guard Cancels, and I’m sure you’ll be able to do them. Keep working hard and executing them consistently, and you’ll be able to enjoy the game even more!
Gamest: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to speak with us.