Capcom's Darkstalkers fighting game series is a favorite of mine. The series has some of the most interesting and innovative character designs I have ever seen.
It only gets better with Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire. Released to high-end arcades in Japan in the year of 1997, with little distribution overseas merely going beyond the testing phase in North America. About a year later, the game was ported to the Sega Saturn in Japan, coming with a cartridge containing 4 extra megabytes of RAM. This cartridge was also used in the Saturn version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter to help for an arcade-perfect puppy which allowed the "tag team" feature and all character animations intact. This port of Vampire Savior does the exact same thing.
The port is fantastic, whilst not very many modes, it has very little, if any, loading times. You can change the game speed like in the arcade, and of course change the number of rounds (the longer the better for me!). The 6-button layout is the exact same thing as the arcade too.
The port brings all of the 15 characters from the original VSav, but also brings back some of the characters who were previously in Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge who are Donovan Baine, Phobos (Huitzil), and Pyron. Some of the new characters are awesome. There is a girl named Bulleta (Baby Bonnie Hood). She is a MONSTER! Just think the opposite for a second. While a 100% youthful human, she smokes cigars and kills Darkstalkers for profit. After that's done she goes to her grandmother's house... or does she? She is a classic character design, and a fun character to play with. Other characters like the martial-arts werewolf Gallon (Jon Talbain) and sexy-catwoman Felicia are fun for novice fighters too, if you are used to throwing fireballs and doing Shoryukens in a Street Fighter game.
For a 2-D fighter, the graphics held up for the most part. Every stage has its own unique design. You can fight Darkstalkers in junkyards, downtown alleys, railroads, and even fight the main boss Jedah Dohma around the "Fetus of God". I do not like the whole concept of this stage. It's a disgusting stage. :P But you have a special boss fight after that where you fight a specific character (e.g. B.B. Hood fighting Lord Raptor/Zabel Zarock). Some old stage designs were reused from the original Darkstalkers. I love how all of the characters' animations are all intact from the arcade. Every character is unique and has their own personalities. They're all based on things in fantasies, horror movies and even fairy tales. All in all, this is just like the arcade version. If it weren't for the "fetus of God", then I like the graphics a lot.
The one thing I don't like about this port is the sound, which is actually minor. They had to water down some of the sound effects' frequencies to make them sound more washed up. The majority of the music is in Red Book Audio CD format, but the selection music and victory themes are all in MIDI format. This isn't really anything worth complaining about.
Best of all, when you complete the game with no continues (don't die at all), you can access an "EX menu" where you can change the language from Japanese to English, changes made are winning quotes in English, and the character names change to their actual overseas names ("Bulleta" to "B.B. Hood"). That is cool!
The game also works with an Action Replay 4MB cartridge. Just make sure you get the Action Replay-brand cartridge.
Should I buy Vampire Savior? Yes! Yes! Yes!
Any fans of Japanese/anime fighting games should pick this game up and the Action Replay cart if they have a Saturn. And it's a better choice to get this version over the PlayStation 1 version. Unless you want more modes and don't mind 10-second long loading times and watered down gameplay, then go for the PlayStation version. But as always, Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire is a MONSTER hit in my book!