/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1590772
People want delicious flat lilith.

>that cover
I love Nishimura Kinu's work.

>>1591176
Thank Christ they didn't swap it with an Udon one for this release.

>>1590779
I know I do.
Hard.

Hoping to get a copy of this.

As for what Darkstalkers artbooks have been published... I think this is only the second one that really qualifies as an "artbook", the first being the Darkstalkers Graphic File which came out a few years ago. There were plenty of books before that, but they were primarily gameplay guide books that also happened to feature artwork and interviews and such as bonuses.

I've actually recently been trying to catalog all the Darkstalkers books that have been published over the years, and if anyone's interested I could give a run down.

>>1590779
I want to fill her belly with halfs.

>>1592970

OP here. I also had that Darkstalkers fan-art collection that Udon published years ago in mind.

And yes please a catalog would be really cool.

>>1594381
Ah, right I forgot about the tribute book. That would definitely qualify as an artbook. Anyway, here goes.

First up are the guide books. These are primarily gameplay guides with in-depth system descriptions, character movelists, strategies and such, but they also often include lots of artwork, interviews and other sorts of bonuses.

First within the guides are the "All About" series. This was a series of very fully-featured, deluxe guidebooks from Studio Bent Stuff that are still highly valued to this day. They even include sheet music of the games' soundtracks. Each of the main 3 Darkstalkers games had an All About book. Here's the one for Darkstalkers 1.

>>1594491
And here's All About Vampire Hunter, for the second game. This one was actually part of the short lived "All About Deluxe" series that was printed in a larger size than the usual All About books.

>>1594498
And lastly All About Vampire Savior.

Next in the guide books are the Gamest "mooks" (magazine books). Gamest was THE arcade gaming magazing in Japan back in the day, written by gamers for gamers. And even though it was prone to bizarre typographical errors, it was always full of great info. Aside form the standard monthly magazine, they also published these "mooks" devoted to in-depth looks at specific games.

Here's the Gamest mook for the original Vampire.

Here's the Gamest mook for Vampire Hunter.

Vampir Svaior actually got two separate Gamest mooks: The Graphical Manual and the Technical Manual. This is the former, and is more focused on artwork, character bios, and other such aesthetic elements.

The Technical Manual is more focused on in-depth analysis of the gameplay and strategy.

Next up are the Famitsu guides. Famitsu is another respected Japanese game magazine, but in contrast to the arcade-focused Gamest, Famitsu covered home console games. They released their own guides specially intended for the console ports of Darkstalkers games.

First, oddly enough, were the Vampire Hunter guides. This is because the Saturn port of Vampire Hunter was actually released before the Playstation port of vanilla Vampire (the porting process of which was supposedly a nightmare).

There were actually two Famitsu Vampire Hunter guides: This is "Ver. 1" which seems to be focused on the basics.

And this is "Ver. 2" which seems to have more advanced techniques.

Next is "The Very Best of Vampire", which is the Famitsu guide for the Playstation port of the original Vampire. One notable feature of this book is it has some very in-depth sections devoted to everything about fan favorites Morrigan and Felicia, from their early development and concept artwork to their backstories.

And last in the Famitsu guides is the "Vampire Savior Official Guide Book", for the Saturn port of Vampire Savior.

And next are the individual miscellaneous guides that don't really fit into a series. First is "Vampire no Subete", published by Keibunsha as part of their "Encyclopedia" series.

The "Vampire Hunter Perfect Guide" is actually a Gamest mook, but part of the console-oriented "EX series" spinoff. This one's specifically for the Saturn port of Vampire Hunter.

And from Sega Saturn magazine comes the "Vampire Savior Perfect Guide".

That's about it as far as the actual guidebooks go, I think. Next are a couple of fluff books that are mostly artwork, stories, and interviews with little or no gameplay info. First is the "Vampire Savior Fan Book", a Gamest mook that is part of the "World" subseries that seemingly deals more with games' settings, aesthetics, and behind-the-scenes info than the nitty-gritty of the gameplay.

"Vampire: Night Warrior Taizen" seems to cover every game in the series, even the dreaded Vampire Hunter 2 and Vampire Savior 2. Supposedly includes lots of staff interviews.

Next are a pair of real oddities; the "Mystery" books. These are basically backstory/setting books co-authored by Gamest and Capcom. They seem to take a question/answer format, where a question such as "How exactly does Morrigan drain energy from her victims?" or "What sort of music does Lord Raptor play?" is posed, and short essay speculating on the subject is presented in response.

There were two of these made, this is "Mystery of Vampire", based on the first game.

And here's "Mystery of Vampire Hunter", based on the second game.

Next are novels. First are "Vampire: Midnight Flyer", and "Vampire Hunter: Midnight Elegy", both written by Rei Isaki and published by Famitsu.

Next are a pair of Vampire Hunter "side story" novels written by Akihiko Ureshino and published by Gamest. First is a Morrigan story titled "Witch of the Crimson Moon"

Damn, all this fan catering goodies I'll never get to see. How I wish the japanese had a culture of scanning and uploading their shit like the west does.

Second is a Hsien-Ko story titled "Endless Spring".

>>1594742
There has to be some scanning culture, I mean seriously doubt all those doujins on the internet scanned came only from people who got them from Japan. But most Japanese sites I visited hate images like woah, even their wikipedia is light on images.

>>1594742
Just recently I almost got my hands on a big huge collection of old Darkstalkers manga (more on them later) that were going for real cheap that I was hoping to scan and share. But it didn't work out at the last minute. Oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

More novels. Next up are a pair of novels based on Vampire Savior, also written by Akihiko Ureshino and published by Gamest. It seems these are two volumes of a single story. The first is titled "The Dark Lord", and the second is titled "Where Souls Return To".

And last in the novels is a two volume novelization of the Vampire Hunter OVA written by Makoto Takeuchi(?). Supposedly the story differs a bit from the OVA. Here's the first volume.

And here's the second.

>>1594679
>>1594684

Damn. Do scans of these exist?

I'd love to go through lore like that.

>>1594798
I have a few sample pictures from auctions, I'll post them and try to translate what I can from them later.

Now we get into the manga. First are the serial manga by a single author that tell a continuous story.

And boy do we have a whopper to start out with. "Vampire: Messenger of the End, Victor", by Hiroaki Wakamiya. The fact that the story centers around Victor of all characters is enough to make you raise an eyebrow. Never mind the fact that in this manga he's a secret weapon created by the Nazis and the imperial Japanese army during World War 2. Or that Morrigan Clark Kents as biotech researcher "Professor Mori" to study the human world. Or that Talbain is a CIA agent.... but is somehow Japanese. Or that about half of the cast, including end boss Pyron don't show up at all.

Two volumes. Here's the first.

And here's the second.

Next is the Vampire Hunter manga written by Takeshi Fujita and published by Gamest Comics. Each character has a chapter devoted to them. Two volumes, here's the first.

And here's the second.

"Welcome Nemu Channel: Vampire" by Nemu Mukudori. Don't know much about this one.

"Vampire Hunter" written by Run Ishida and published by Ascii Comics. This one's notable in that it was actually localized by Viz back in the day as "Night Warriors: The Comic Series".

And lastly we have "Vampire Savior: Child of the Lost Soul" by Mayumi Azuma. It focuses on Lilith, and is very long, covering a whopping 5 volumes.

Next are the manga anthologies, which are collections of assorted, unrelated manga by various authors. And there were a lot of them. First are the Gamest Comic anthologies. Each of the 3 games managed to get two volumes published in this line alone! Here's vol.1 of the Vampire anthology.

And here's vol. 2. You might recognize this upside-down Felicia face as a reaction image if you frequent fighting game threads.

Here's vol. 1 of the Gamest Vampire Hunter Anthology.

And here's vol. 2.

Then we have vol. 1 of the Gamest Vampire Savior anthology.

And vol. 2. That's the last of the Gamest ones, but by no means the last of the Darkstalkers anthologies in general.

From Hobby Japan, we have 3 anthologies. One based on the first game.

One based on the second game.

And another based on the second game

From Hinotama Game Comics we have 3 more anthologies: A Vampire Hunter anthology.

A Vampire Hunter Heroine anthology focusing on fan favorites Morrigan, Felicia, and Hsien-Ko.

And a Vampire Savior anthology.

Think that's all? Oh no, we still have a few more assorted anthologies left. Here's a Vampire Hunter one from Ascii comics. Cover says it also includes a game staff interview.

Here's a Vampire Hunter one from Softbank, part of their Super Game Comic Anthology series.

A Vampire Savior one from Enix, as part of their Hyper G Comic Anthology series.

A Vampire Savior one from Movic.

>>1591197
God... after you say that I realize how likely that could have been and it's scary.

And a Vampire Hunter one from Sony Magazines Comics. Whew, that's a lot of anthologies.

Next on the lighter side of things are "4-koma" collections. Books entirely filled with silly, 4 panel gag comics. There were lots of these published for Drakstalkers, too. Once again we start with Good ol' Gamest, who published several as part of their Gamest Comics series. Here's the one for the first game.

And the one for the second game.

The third game got two volumes. Here's the first.

And here's the second.

Hinotama Game Comics also published several as par of their "4-Koma Gag Battle" series. Unfortunately this tiny pic is the only one I have of the one for the first game (it's the book on the left).

Here's the one for the second game.

And the third.

It's amazing how such a niche IP got a whopping 60+ publications based on it.

Movic published a Vampire Savior one as part of their "G Collection" series.

>>1595142
Even if it was never a blockbuster, it really was a beloved series, at least in Japan.

Anyway, last in the 4-koma collections is a Vampire Savior book published by Enix as part of their "4-Koma Manga Theater" series.

Whoops, skipped one. A Vampire Hunter one published by Futabasha as part of their "4-Koma Kingdom" series.

And with that, unless I inadvertently skipped anything, that should be all the "retro" books related to Darkstalkers. There were also a good number of artbooks and anthologies back then that weren't entirely devoted to Darkstalkers but featured Darkstalkers-related material alongside other things. Recent years have seen a few things, such as the Darkstalkers Graphic File, Darkstalkers Tribute book, the Udon comic, and most recently the Official Complete Works book this thread was started about and the new Resurrection Anthology that was released alongside it (pictured). But the lions' share of the books come from back when the series was current.

Am I the only one who liked Pic Related?

Except that kid ruined it

>>1595364
Nah, I love Huitzil. The way all of his attacks have some sort of crazy transforming weapon gadget involved is great. He has some pretty interesting gameplay mechanics too, like being able to hover in midair, change his trajectory mid-jump, air dash, and stuff.

>This stayed Japan only

;-;

>>1595373
Yeah, it's too bad. Especially since we did get the similar Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, and even got the lousy PSP Darkstalkers. Would have been nice if Darkstalkers Resurrection had included all its content, since it was actually built from its code and all.

>>1590772
On the topic of Capcom artbooks and similar stuff, how many of them are scanned?

>>1595575
Capcom Design Works has been scanned. Darkstalkers Graphic File has been scanned, but only the artwork, not the data (winquotes and such). Those are two I can remember offhand.

>>1595364

Huitzil was my favorite fighting sub-boss. Even though he was an ass to beat, I couldn't just stop loving that guy. Awesome design and interesting way to add a killer robot in a game about monsters.

Also thanks the anon for doing this catalogue.

>>1595575
>>1595582

A few years ago I found a Mediafire link containing scans of the Tribute Book. I don't know if the link still works, but I can check out if anyone is interested.

Didn't viz release one of the darkstalkers comics in the US during the late 90s? I'm pretty sure I have them sitting in a box at my dad's house.

I remember them being released in North American comic format.

>>1596340
Yes they did, the one by Run Ishida, as I mentioned here: >>1594912

A sample page from Fujita's manga: >>1594879

I forgot, I said I was going to provide some samples from the mystery books. Here's the one about "How does Morrigan drain energy from her victims?" It basically gives some background info about what a succubus, is, about how they show up in mens' dreams to tempt them, and adds that a kiss is enough for Morrigan to drain energy from you (as seen in her ending where she drains Pyron).

>>1590772
>For a franchise that Capcom wants it dead and forgotten for good
Why do people think this about anything? If they really wanted it dead, they wouldn't have put Morrigan in MvC3, and they probably would've just sold it to someone else.

Sometimes, fans of forgotten series are the worst. At least you guys aren't as bad as Legends fags.

Here's the one about "What sort of music does Lord Raptor play?" It talks about how he's always been described as a zombie rocker, but that the exact type of rock, be in punk, grunge, or heavy metal was never really touched on. It eventually settles on heavy metal, citing his form as a Flying V guitar when cursed by Anakaris. It also even lampshades the fact that he was officially born in the 1880s, long before rock of any sort was even a thing.

>>1601049
Posted the wrong page there... here's the one I was describing in that post.

>>1601051

Yeah I guess that makes sense, after all they wouldn't bother to make Resurrection if that was the case. But then there are time it feels like Capcom just wants the DS girls because of the fanservice factor, and they keep shutting down attempts of revive the series because they are afraid of flopping.

>>1601049
Hey scan guy, can I share some pages of the Tribute book?

Don't die on me yet.

>>1596340
I guess it's not getting a digital re-release with the rest of their works then, because I can't find it anywhere.

Dire shame.