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Finally! After months of delays, Darkstalkers Tribute, from Udon Entertainment, has arrived on our shelves. Now, for those of you who are going, “What the Hell is ‘Darkstalkers’, and why does it have a tribute book?” Well, look no further, I’m here to let you know just what the big deal is about. Although, I have to say, even though it was originally supposed to come out in August, I think that October is a much more fitting month for its release, considering that the majority of the Darkstalkers are monsters and whatnot. So yeah, this is why you should care about this art book.

The Darkstalkers originate as a series of fighting games created by Capcom (The creators of Megaman, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, etc…) in the mid 90s featuring characters that are mostly of the monster variety. Vampires, Succubi, Zombies, Demons, Ghosts, and Monster Hunters… Not to mention the Robot, the Sun Entity, the Cat Girl, the Merman, the Werewolf, the Sasquatch, and the Bee Queen… These are characters of the Darkstalkers series. The most popular of which seems to be the Green Haired Succubus, Morrigan, (pictured below) which I can for the life of me understand why. lol. That aside, the game was really popular in arcades in the mid 90s and contributed to the final boom of the arcade scene. One could essentially say that it played like Street Fighter, but with with monsters, and as the Street Fighter series evolved it borrowed a lot from its sister series, Darkstalkers. So, while everyone may not have heard of the game or remember its name, if you’re a fan of fighting games, Darkstalkers is responsible for some of the now-standard features in most modern fighting games.

Now, as for the actual book, Darkstalkers Tribute features artwork from over 300 artists from around the world, ranging from Professionals to fans. The book features all sorts of great works, and to be honest, there are a few really well done pictures that happen to be very similar to each other, which become repetitive really quickly… Granted, they all happen to feature the same character, Lord Raptor (The British Rock Star Zombie). There’s also a particular picture that comes across as really lazy to me, but I’m willing to bet that it made it in, because of a lack of pictures submitted for that character. But I’m not all gripes here, overall, the majority of the artwork in here is fantastic. I’m particularly found of the ones that feature out-of-character situations, such as the main vampire, Demitri Maximov, sitting in a blanket covered armchair while sipping on coffee while typing something in on a laptop in what appears to be a cramped apartment building. I wont begin to go into why that’s so out-of-character, but to fans of the character, it’s worth a good laugh.

So, how did Darkstalkers get a tribute book? Well, that question is answered by looking no further than the Street Fighter Tribute book. It all began as a contest for artists to submit a picture of their favorite Street Fighter character(s) to be put in a collection to be sold to the masses. The book was a massive success on both the contest side and the sales side. Feedback from the book was tremendous and as I understand it, the thing fans wanted most, was another chance to get their work printed in another book, and so, instead of double dipping the Street Fighter well, Darkstalkers was chosen for the next project. Over 2000 entries were submitted and out of those, just under 300 were chosen to be put into the book. I personally know 2 folks who submitted work, unfortunately for them, their entries didn’t make the final count. But, that’s just how it goes sometimes…

So that’s Darkstalkers Tribute in a few paragraphs. My not-so-secret hope from this is that Capcom might find themselves in a position to release a new entry to the game series. But that’s really wishful thinking… Another thing I hope comes from this is more contests to submit fan art for more Capcom properties. Maybe I’ll enter the next one… But yeah, come by the store and check it out. Even if you’re not a fan of the game, there’s still a lot of high quality art in the book. Until next time.

-Fleet

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