Capcom only played the trailer once over a decade ago and never even uploaded it online after all this time
There’s been a few very interesting developments recently regarding what was apparently a modern Darkstalkers project that was once in the works, but those also just raised some more questions.
Chief among them is did we already see the canceled Darkstalkers in motion over a decade ago?
For those who may not know what’s been going on with the revelations lately, let’s briefly go over the information we’ve learned about the Capcom series over the past few weeks.
Most of the details actually came from Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama, and while he remained vague, all signs are pointing towards one direction in particular.
Earlier this month, Nakayama revealed he returned to Capcom over a decade ago to work on a fighting game that wasn’t Street Fighter.
The bat symbol he used seemed to hint at that game being Darkstalkers (known as Vampire in Japan), but the project was canceled with his team being moved to the Otoranger mobile game.
We were also able to uncover and translate part of a Capcom Secret Files book that was exclusive to Japan under a limited release, and it too held some unexpected details.
In it, Nakayama revealed F.A.N.G’s character concept was originally created for a different game that didn’t come to fruition, so they retooled him for Street Fighter 5.
The Director again didn’t specify what title that was, but he left a hint with letters that also lined up with Vampire / Darkstalkers.
With those hints and what we’ve been able to piece together from other sources, it appears a brand new Darkstalkers game was being worked on at Capcom at some point between 2010 and 2012.
This would put the project in close proximity to Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but before Street Fighter 5 with Nakayama and likely some others being shifted to that after Otoranger.
So that leads us back to the question we posed earlier.
Has that Darkstalkers game been in front of our faces this whole time?
To answer that we have to flash back to 2012 on a now infamous day at New York Comic-Con.
During the Street Fighter 25th anniversary panel, Capcom announced Darkstalkers Resurrection as a collection of Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge and Darkstalkers 3 though that’s not all they had to show.
The company also played a conspicuous teaser trailer featuring footage of seemingly brand new 3D models of Lord Raptor and Demitri Maximoff along with some dark and moody backgrounds that give off a lot of atmosphere.
It famously ended with the stinger, “Darkstalkers are NOT Dead.”
Many fans at the time thought this was of course a teaser for a potentially new Darkstalkers with former Capcom Producer Yoshinori Ono also indicating that Resurrection was just the first step in bringing the franchise back at the event.
But then nothing really came of it, and the teaser was never officially uploaded or publicly shown again.
Resurrection came out and didn’t sell up to Capcom’s expectations followed by no further announcements, so the thought then switched to “okay, maybe it was just a teaser for what could be.”
But now we pretty much know that a new Darkstalkers was being worked on right around that exact time.
Was Darkstalkers are NOT Dead THE new game?
This is still the best version of the trailer available to the public
Well, the character models and animations are certainly high quality, and they appear to have been created by Polygon Pictures, who produced the great cinematics for Street Fighter 4, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Street Fighter X Tekken and Street Fighter 5.
So it seems they were hired for Darkstalkers potentially too.
While that does seem convincing on the surface, that also doesn’t prove anything.
We don’t really have that concrete proof either, however, all indications are pointing to the teaser not being footage of the project itself.
Instead, other recent reports and knowledgeable sources back up that Darkstalkers was being worked on around 2012, but development was stopped very early on and likely never made it past the concept phase.
That would typically mean no actual assets were created beyond rough drafts at most, but may have been as little as initial documents and outlines.
The Darkstalkers are NOT Dead teaser was still seemingly connected to the new game that never came to be, though.
Said video allegedly served as more of a proof of concept for the direction Capcom was wanting to take with the project, but then development was halted — and may have already ceased by time the footage was aired for the first and only time.
That connection could be why the trailer was never seen publicly again, which is unfortunate because it would be at least nice to see Raptor and Demitri with the original visual fidelity instead of having to rely on attendees who recorded it from the screen.
Plenty of games are canned very early on in the development process before the public is even made aware of them, so it’s not really an unusual fate to befall the Night Warriors.
It’s unknown why Darkstalkers was canceled, but there’s a multitude of potentially contributing factors that could have led to them staying dead.
There was the oversaturation with Capcom fighters at the time between Ultra Street Fighter 4, SFxT and UMvC3 where sales dwindled from one release to the next as the company itself also started to face financial hardship.
Darkstalkers as a property has just never really sold well either with no title ever managing to eclipse 1 million copies, including Resurrection and the Capcom Fighting Collection.
So it may have just come down to poor timing and a need for returns that Darkstalkers was unlikely to produce.
Ono stated in 2016 he was still striving to get a new Vampire greenlit at the studio, which obviously never came to pass.
After leaving Capcom in 2020, he also lamented being unable to making the Darkstalkers comeback a reality and hoped his juniors would eventually succeed in that mission.
With rising development costs and seemingly soft sales for the Darkstalkers-led Capcom Fighting Collection, a full return of the Night Warriors remains unlikely in the near future.
But perhaps the likes of Morrigan and Felicia could make the move over to Street Fighter 6 as guest characters since Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui already broke that barrier this season.