Given the poor representation of Capcom's Vampire series in the US (known here as Darkstalkers), its fans would no doubt appreciate the release of a compilation intended for play on a platform capable of pushing the required sprites. As it happens, Capcom has released such a product, albeit only in Japan, much to the chagrin of any American fan who isn't import savvy. Titled Vampire Chronicles, the game combines features from every installment of DarkStalkers (including Vampire Hunter 2 and Dark Savior 2, neither of which saw a stateside release) into one rich package, featuring a plethora of fighting modes, a horde of playable characters, and all the requisite modes. What's more, Japanese players can go head-to-head online via Capcom's Matching Service network.

What makes this product stand out as a plausible import is its sheer level of completeness. North American gamers have not been treated to an arcade-perfect version of DarkStalkers, and importing Vampire Chronicles is the best way to make up for it. The PlayStation ports of DarkStalkers and DarkStalkers 3 compromised many of the game's lush animations and featured grueling load times. Only those lucky enough to have imported the Saturn version of Vampire Savior were treated to a competent translation, due mostly the console's 4MB RAM cartridge, which was required to play the game.

Aside from the troubles involved with the actual procurement of the game (which is only available through mail order, even in Japan), importers will find Vampire Chronicles an easy, painless import to play, as most of the pertinent lists and options are in English. And indulging in the stylish, arcade-perfect graphics native to the compilation is a pleasure indeed. Those who've played any game in the Darkstalkers series will feel right at home with Vampire Chronicles. Essentially, the game is built around Street Fighter mechanics, with the appropriate button layout and supercombo systems. The game allows you to choose which combo system you want to use (Vampire mode, Hunter mode, and Savior mode, after the series' titles), which affect how the power gauge, supercombos, and life bar behave. Furthermore, you can tune your character's fighting style by selecting one of four modes: Vampire type, Hunter type, Savior type, and Savior 2 type. Corresponding to the appropriate games in the series, the various types affect your character's individual attacks and supermoves/combos. Interestingly enough, characters that weren't present in earlier games in the series are allowed to choose fighting styles from those games.

Visually, Vampire Chronicles is perfect, and the only limitations present are those that the game inherited from the CPS II technology on which it was born. The series' character designs have widely been regarded as Capcom's most lively and thoughtful. Brought to life by countless, lovingly crafted elements present in their animations, the characters in motion are as terrific, at times, as they are amusing. For a bona fide fan of the series, Vampire Chronicles is a prudent import in terms of its value as a catalogue of visual art alone.

Sadly, Vampire Chronicles is fetching upward of US$100 at the few secondary outlets that offer it. Needless to say, only the most loyal fans are going to pick this one up.

Virtua Fighter 2 Review

Virtua Fighter 2 was a classic 3D fighting game that really cemented Viruta Fighter as a serious name in fighting games. Arcades, especially in Japan, were packed full of players looking to hone their skills in this highly technical, timing-driven fighter. But you're not getting a faithful version of that arcade classic here on the Wii's Virtual Console series. No, for 800 points ($8) you get the practically unknown version that was released on the Sega Genesis. It squashes all of the arcade version's action into a 2D game but does not contain any of the thrilling gameplay or strategy found in the original game.

However, that's not to say that VF2 for the Genesis is completely without merit. It's actually kind of interesting to see how many moves and combos from the original game made it into this version of the game. The same old punch-punch-punch-kick combo from Sarah is still in there; Jacky can do his double spinning backfist; and so on. The controls are also the same as the arcade version, with guard, punch, and kick buttons. Of course, the timing is completely butchered, so it's not actually entertaining for very long. Still, as a curiosity from days past, the Genesis version of Virtua Fighter 2 is sort of neat. It's just not neat enough to be worth $8, that's all.

The Virtual Console is certainly capable of running such games as Virtua Fighter 2 for the Genesis; the emulation seems accurate enough, right down to the awful animation. But this is one of those situations where you sit back and wonder why, exactly, this game is coming to the Virtual Console at all. Anyone old enough to remember the Genesis game probably knows to stay away, and anyone who only knows of the recent Virtua Fighter installments won?t find anything to like with this ugly chapter in the series? history. Your Wii Virtual Console fighting dollars are better spent on something like Street Fighter II.

Barbarian Review

Barbarian is an attempt at re-creating the manic formula that Capcom used for its Powerstone games, but with a hack-and-slash theme featuring ancient castles, wizards, demons, and more. You'll take on several opponents in a variety of environments, in which you can move around in any direction and even use and interact with certain objects, like rocks, clubs, or even stone pillars. Barbarian executes the most basic elements correctly, but unfortunately it ultimately falls short of its intentions. Uninteresting characters, a poor storyline, and some problems with its gameplay mechanics serve to bring Barbarian down.

There are only three gameplay modes to choose from in Barbarian--practice, quest, and versus. The practice mode teaches you the basics of the game--for example, how to use the magic system and the counter-and-combo system, as well as how to interact with objects in the environment. In practice mode, you're given a computer opponent who essentially stands completely still while you attempt the skill being described. If you successfully complete the skill, the game will kick you back out to the practice menu screen--so if you want to repeatedly practice a specific technique, you need to reenter that particular section and go through it again. The practice mode also offers a full AI opponent in a battle where neither participant loses energy, but as you'll quickly find, almost everything learned in the practice sessions goes flying out the window when fighting a real opponent.

In Barbarian, you can execute several different combinations, depending on the order that you press the weak and heavy strike buttons. Some of these combinations can be used to lift opponents into the air or to stun them. When you've successfully executed a combo, you'll be granted a rune based on the type of combination. So, for example, if you just threw an opponent, you'll be given a throw rune. If you've just executed a basic combination of moves, you'll be given a different rune. Essentially, these runes function as special magic attacks, giving your character the ability to perform techniques that range from damage shields to unblockable strikes. You'll also have access to some basic magic attacks in the form of projectiles, but these can drain your magic power quickly, so you can't just stand at a distance and fire away.

It sounds like a solid gameplay system, but none of it really matters because regardless of how you try to play the game, every fight almost always comes down to just using a specific combination, blocking counterattacks, and then using the same combination again. In Barbarian's quest mode, some of the fights have special conditions in which your character may be poisoned. Or the opponent has the ability to regenerate energy--but even then, you'll fall into the same cycle. Suffice it to say, this makes Barbarian's gameplay pretty tiring, and even if you try to go out of your way to vary your attacks, the enemy AI seems to entice you right back into the routine because of the way your opponent fights.

The aforementioned quest mode has some good points. Each of the 10 characters in the game has a separate storyline that unfolds differently, depending on the fights you select. At the end of each fight, you can also spend some points on a few different character attributes, such as strength and energy. However, the storyline in the quest modes is told through boring, sometimes poorly written dialogue sequences in which a narrator simply reads the text that scrolls up the screen. In addition, the branching storyline aspect isn't handled particularly well because, in some cases, the storyline that you were engaged in beforehand will end abruptly. There's little transition, if any at all. Lastly, the character-building aspect seems largely irrelevant, partly due to problems with the gameplay but also because you simply won't notice any substantial gain in your characters' abilities.

The graphics in Barbarian are surprisingly good. Though the character designs are uninspired--just the usual assortment of barbarians and magic users--all the characters look detailed and animate decently during a fight. Most of the environments in the game are equally appealing. You'll fight in places like the sands of Egypt next to a fallen statue of a pharaoh or in a crumbling castle next to the sea where waves break on the rocks nearby. You'll even fight in the cold north, where a Viking ship is frozen within a massive glacier. The frame rate remains solid on most of the levels, though in some of the levels with large amounts of water, you'll notice some hiccups.

While the basic sound effects in Barbarian are done well, every other aspect of the sound is incredibly subdued. You'll hear grunts from the fighters, as well as the clashing of weapons, but that's about it. The soundtrack seems to serve as ambience rather than to stir you into action.

Overall, there really isn't much to Barbarian. The gameplay mechanics are pretty basic and repetitive, and the storylines are so bland that there's not much value in finishing the game with every character. The versus mode doesn't do much to help matters either, other than to test one of your powered-up characters from the quest mode against a friend's. Even the four-player action is dull. So unless you're desperate for some barbarian action, or unless you wish to increase your chances of getting carpal tunnel syndrome from mashing the same buttons repeatedly, you should probably pass on Barbarian.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Review

Based on a famous manga (Japanese for "comic book"), Jojo's Bizarre Adventure follows the story of Jotaro and his friends as they travel throughout the Far East in search of his mother's captor, Dio. Filling more than 40 volumes, the story of Jotaro Josuke's family (hence the name "Jojo") spans multiple generations and is one of Japan's longest-running series ever. The linchpin of the storyline is the relationship between the main characters and their "stands." Stands are psychic partners that enhance the characters' own physical powers and are something akin to guardian angels.

Fittingly, it was Capcom and its CPS3 technology that came along and made a 2D fighting game that was not only able to capture the detailed artwork and character designs, but was able to handle the extra animation involved with each character's stand. Unlike a game such as Street Fighter III, which used all of the CPS3 board's extra horsepower to render the massive amounts of animation in that game, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure used it to animate four characters onscreen at once (two characters with one stand each). When it was announced that this game would be coming home to the PlayStation, which boasts all of 2 megs of onboard RAM, many were expecting a very poor port, with large sacrifices in character animation and speed. It happened with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and despite the decent port of Street Fighter Alpha 3, things looked grim for the PlayStation version of Jojo.

Amazingly, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure comes home in extremely playable form. Better even than the PlayStation port of SF Alpha 3, Bizarre Adventure retains the arcade version's speed and playability, if not all the animation. Though some frames of animation appear to have been left on the cutting-room floor, if you haven't played the arcade version, you will never notice. Bizarre Adventure plays fast and controls great, even with the PlayStation's controller. One reason for this is the simplified button layout, which maps the weak, medium, and strong attacks to the square, triangle, and circle button, while X activates your stand.Your stand is used to block attacks, offer additional attacks, and absorb damage. However, due to the symbiotic nature of your character and his or her stand, should your stand take damage, you too will share in the punishment. While your stand automatically appears for certain attacks, you can summon it "permanently" by pressing the stand button. If your stand takes damage while exposed, your stand meter drops incrementally and when depleted, you suffer a "stand-break." If the fight ever gets to this point, your character is then stunned and left momentarily vulnerable to attack.

The fighting in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a wild combination of typical Capcom "versus" games, like Marvel vs. Capcom, combined with screen-filling over-the-top super-attacks like those found in Arc System's Guilty Gear. In addition to the normal arcade modes, versus modes, and training modes, there is a story mode that offers various minigames borrowed from the comic book itself. There's a card game that pits you against a character from the book, whose stand smashes its opponents into poker chips. Another game is a side-scrolling shooter that is actually quite difficult and is significantly more than just a simple afterthought. Although most American gamers won't be able to appreciate the subtleties of the storyline as much as their Japanese counterparts might, there is certainly enough dialogue included in the intermittent cutscenes to give you an idea of what's going on. Even if you don't have any knowledge of the original comics, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure still offers a more intriguing back story than the vague Street Fighter plot ever did.

So if you're into your 2D fighters, but have begun to grow tired of the countless Street Fighter spin-offs and bad home conversions, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure offers fine-tuned Capcom quality with a unique storyline and great control. That alone is worth its weight in gold. This one belongs in every fighting-game fan's library.

Street Fighter IV Review

It's obvious that each iteration of the long-running Street Fighter series has been carefully tuned and tweaked to the finest degree, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Street Fighter IV. The lessons learned in the franchise's 20-plus years have been used to prune back the core fighting experience to create something truly special. Street Fighter IV isn't a success simply because it's one of the most technically complex 2D fighters ever made, it's a success because it's also wrapped inside a layer of absolute accessibility. Never has the old "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master" adage been truer than it is here.

The Street Fighter fundamentals have remained consistent over the years; your job is to knock out the other guy or gal. All 12 of the classic world warriors--Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison--are back and playable from the outset, and they're joined by six brand-new and diverse characters. Abel, a mixed martial arts grapple-style character; Crimson Viper a female fighter with sweeping, airborne fire attacks; Rufus, a rotund fighter whose body makes him a bit of a sight gag despite his deceptive speed; and El Fuerte, a pro wrestler whose rushes and air throws make him a slippery foe. Ryu and Ken's sensei, Gouken, also makes his playable-character debut in Street Fighter IV. Naturally, he didn't teach the boys everything he knows, so when they meet again he has a few tricks up his sleeves, including a horizontal and vertical fireball EX move. The game's new end boss, Seth, fills the last spot and joins the list once you've unlocked everyone else. Character balance is absolutely spot-on across the entire roster, and as a result, you should never feel that you can't compete simply because you've chosen one character over another.

You'll need to finish the game multiple times and in special ways to unlock the complete character list. Doing so will make fan favourites Cammy, Sakura, Akuma, Fei Long, Rose, Gen, and Dan playable. Like previous games in the series, Street Fighter IV lets you perform powerful super combos, but it has removed air blocking and parrying completely. Developers Capcom and Dimps have added a completely new gameplay system: focus attacks, a new multipurpose offensive and defensive ability that can be charged to one of three levels by pressing and holding the medium punch and kick buttons simultaneously. There's no onscreen bar to show how charged your attack is, so you'll need to rely on the progressively darkening ink splashes surrounding your character model. Each character features a unique focus animation, so you shouldn't have any trouble working it out after a few rounds with each. Focus attacks make you vulnerable to damage because you need to be standing still to charge them (though you can dash forward or backward to cancel them), but the trade-off is that you'll absorb the first hit without the penalty of an animation reset, allowing for an instant counterattack if you land it. They can also act as armour-breaking moves, shutting down more-powerful attacks. Successfully landing a fully charged focus attack will deal damage and crumple your opponent to the ground, giving you the chance to follow up with an unblockable hit as he or she falls.

The new mechanic also lets you use part of your EX power-meter charge to exit animations early and chain bigger combos together. They take a little getting used to and some serious thumb dexterity, but once they're mastered, you can perform moves such as dragon-punch stalls directly into super moves or use them to juggle players in midair with multiple hits. Your revenge meter builds as you take damage, whereas the EX meter fills as you dish it out. EX power rolls over to the next round, but revenge must be built from scratch each time. This becomes a crucial risk-versus-reward mechanic. Do you take hits to build revenge and power up an ultra attack, or do you deal damage to burn your EX on improved moves, cancels, or save it for a super finisher? The flexibility of this system means that you're free to play according to your strengths and style. But just like reversals, EX power-ups, and ultra combo attacks, focus attacks serve to mix up the experience only for veteran players; such is the game's balance that they have never been required to win a match, and they act more as an additional weapon in the arsenal of a skilled player. They're waiting for you when you want to take a step up and learn how they work, but well-timed basic punches and kicks are just as effective.

The single-player mode is robust and has a lot to offer across several components. Arcade mode pits you against a set number of fights from your unlocked-character roster and culminates in a showdown with Seth. Along the way to your goal, you'll always encounter a rival fight. These are regular fights accompanied by an in-engine exchange with your opponent. They're a welcome mix-up but often add nothing to the character's storyline because some fighters clearly don't even know why they hate one another. Each character's adventure is bookended by an anime-style cinematic movies that explain his or her motivations for attending the tournament. They're quite short and keep story to an absolute minimum, but they get the message across and do a reasonable-enough job of filling in the gaps. Given the amount of additional content shoehorned into this game, we were slightly disappointed to find that no bonus levels have been included, especially since we had high hopes of reliving our car and barrel smashing from Street Fighter II.

Regardless of whether you're down with busting out a tatsumaki senpukyaku at will or think it's some kind of egg-noodle dish, there's a difficulty mode here for you. Eight levels ranging from very easy to hardest are available, so you're sure to find one appropriate for your skill level. That said, even at the gentler difficulties, Street Fighter IV is no cakewalk because your opponents will occasionally mix things up with surprise super and ultra combos. First-timers will have no trouble picking up, playing, and learning as they go. Playing on the medium or above difficulty will also enable score tracking, letting you submit and compare to other players on the game's online leaderboards.

Prior to the 2002 release of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, video games based on the high-octane anime and manga series all had one thing in common: Unless you were a hardcore Dragon Ball Z fan, they were generally quite unbearable. Though the Budokai series has had its ups and downs, all of the Budokai games so far have had a level of polish and accessibility that has merited praise without requiring the "for a Dragon Ball Z game" qualifier. That said, fans looking for a straight follow-up to Budokai 3 will be surprised by what Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi has to offer, and possibly a little disappointed.

Originally released earlier this year in Japan as Dragon Ball Z: Sparking!, Tenkaichi deviates quite significantly from the standardized 3D fighting formula that the core Budokai games have generally adhered to. Developed by Spike, a Japanese studio best known for its somewhat technical wrestling games, Tenkaichi inserts a fairly simple, stripped-down fighting engine into the framework of a free-roaming, third-person action game.

For the majority of the game, you're given a behind-the-back perspective on the action, though the camera will lean a bit to the side when you get up close to your opponent and will cut to an entirely different camera angle for special moves. The main reason behind this rather unorthodox camera angle (unorthodox for a fighter, anyway) is to let you run and fly around the environment as you please. The free-roaming components definitely gives the game a more authentic Dragon Ball Z feel by increasing the overall scope of the fights, though it's stymied somewhat by force fields that limit the size of the levels. It's not unusual to find yourself stuck up against one of these rainbow-colored boundaries, which kind of ruins the whole illusion. Another negative aspect is that there's not much in the way of direct camera control. The problems this creates are twofold. For one, it's not hard to lose track of your opponents, and though you have a radar that can help you pinpoint their location, it's often not quick enough. Secondly, the camera isn't quite flexible enough for the game's fully 3D environment, and you'll regularly find yourself viewing the action from a rather uncomfortable angle.

By using the L1 button to lock onto your opponents, all of your movement instantly becomes relative to their position, allowing you to dash right at them or do a bit of circle-strafing. The lock-on function is a little inconsistent; you can lock on to an opponent from a great distance, though if you choose to move to do a little circle-strafing rather than attack head-on, you'll lose the lock. Hand-to-hand combat is pretty simple, since the square button is the only way to throw a punch. A few consecutive taps will dish out a nice little combo, and you can vary your attacks by holding a direction as you launch your attacks. Additionally, you can create longer combos by throwing in instant teleports and energy attacks. You can launch simple energy (or "ki") attacks with the triangle button, and holding down L2 and triangle will produce a much more substantial blast. You can expect to see your favorite characters trotting out their most well-known moves, as well as power struggles when two characters throw massive energy attacks at you at once.

The simplicity of the combat in Tenkaichi is a bit deceptive, as much of the controls are contextual to your current situation. For example, the circle button by itself serves to block incoming attacks, though if you press to the left or the right just as your opponent is attacking, it instantly teleports you to the side, giving you an opportunity to strike your attacker. On the other hand, the main function of the X button is to let you dash in any direction quickly, though when you use it correctly in the middle of a combo, you can trigger an attack that knocks your opponent across the screen. The combat isn't any deeper or more varied than what's found in the core Budokai games, but it's not as friendly for button-mashing, and the learning curve is much steeper. It's commendable that Spike wanted to try something different here, but the dividends don't quite justify it.

Tenkaichi might have an unorthodox control scheme, but the game mode options are pretty straightforward. The Z Battle Gate operates under the contrivance of restoring Shenron's memories by reenacting classic Dragon Ball moments, though the "classic" status of some of these battles (Krillin vs. Yamcha!) is somewhat suspect. Rather than having you just knock down one opponent after another, the Z Battle Gate regularly gives you conditions to win certain encounters, such as requiring you to use a special finishing move, and you'll also find yourself squaring off with characters in matches that feel more like boss battles than standard fighting-game matches. Z Battle Gate is the first menu option in the game, but the competition is fierce right from the start, and you should probably go through the tutorials and practice modes first to avoid frustration.

You'll earn loads of Z items in the Z Battle Gate, which are special performance-enhancing modules that you can apply to different characters. Each character has a limited number of slots for these enhancements, though certain Z items can be fused to create a single, more-powerful item. It's not entirely unlike the character customization system found in the core Budokai games, and it has an appreciable impact on the capacities of the different characters.

The ultimate battle mode puts a unique spin on the standard tournament and survival modes found in other fighting games. Here you're put at the bottom of a 100-fighter tournament, with the goal of working your way up to number one. Winning matches will bring you up a rank and can also earn you points. Rather than knocking you down a rank, losing a match will deduct from points you've accrued. It's a nice buffer against losses, though the consequences for running out of points altogether are severe, requiring you to start the mode all over again. It's just too harsh, and it makes for more moments of frustration than are necessary.

The other two modes found in Tenkaichi are the world tournament mode, which gives you several tiered tournaments to fight in, and the dueling mode, which lets you go one-on-one against either the computer or another player. The multiplayer game isn't as compelling in Tenkaichi as that found in the core Budokai games, largely because the behind-the-back perspectives require the use of split-screen for two players. With the expansive nature of the levels and the outstanding camera issues, these things create more technical hurdles than players ought to be expected to wade through.

Some clumsy camera work aside, Tenkaichi looks pretty good. Though some of the fighters' finer details appear a little blocky up close, they're all fine 3D renderings of their 2D counterparts. When powered up, characters crackle with energy, and well-timed use of slow motion gives many of the attacks some extra punch. Some of the between-fight animations can look a little mechanical, but in action everything feels smooth and exaggerated in an appropriately DBZ manner. Though the power struggles have an appropriately over-the-top feel to them, regular energy attacks don't always carry the grandeur they ought to and are further diminished by canned attack routines that always play out the same way.

The Dragon Ball Z name carries with it several decades of signature sound effects, musical themes, and character voices, which Tenkaichi basks in. All of the sound effects for punches, powering up, instant transmissions, ki blasts, and the rest of the Dragon Ball Z trademarks come through crisp and clear. As has become expected, the American voice cast provides character vocals, though you might get the impression that some of these actors are growing weary of the characters. If you've been exposed to the US version of Dragon Ball Z exclusively, you can have your mind completely blown by switching the voices to use the original Japanese voice cast instead. Rounding out the sound effects is a soundtrack that balances the funk of the original Japanese DBZ soundtrack and the more rocking American version. It can create some inconsistency, and there are a few occasions when sound fidelity is questionable, but the payoff is quite worth it.

Despite the fact that Tenkaichi doesn't quite live up to the higher standards set by Budokai 3, the execution is still good enough, and the game makes the kind of thorough use of the license that will keep the DBZ devout happy. Make no mistake, though--the gameplay is different enough that Tenkaichi should be considered a spin-off more than a sequel, and Budokai fans should approach it with a bit of caution.