Week 1: Gothic Style

Gothic Style: Darkstalkers

            Well luckily for many others and I two things we both enjoy, horror movies and videogames have cross-polluted many times before and produced a lot of titles. My heart however belongs to specific genres of videogames and horror. Those being fight games and monster movies respectfully. There is but one game that fits into both those, the Darkstalkers series.

Darkstalkers Resurrection

 I guess I should define my own understanding of the term "Gothic" before going into detail. I define it with words such as "Dark, Violent, Romantic/Sexy, and dealing with lost"

  At its core the Darkstalkers game takes iconic monsters (mostly universal's) and gives them a twist in some way. Characters range from a zombie british rocker, kung-fu werewolf, and a gun packing little red riding hood. Though the idea of a Kung-fu werewolf is somewhat comical, the back stories of the character gives a bit more to them in there appearances and play styles let on.

Lord Raptor Win Pose

John Talbain turned to marital arts in order to not let the beast take over him, he hoped that if he pushed his limits he could retain inner strength and maybe one day his humanity as well. The games follow him over his story where, sadly he finds no way to cure himself. The aforementioned British rocker is also a mass murder. Lord Raptor killed 100

people and himself at his final show, but was brought back to serve the devil. Most characters have this type of back-story fitting into different horror archetype origins. Another tie in is that stories being told through different characters and points of view is also something happens frequently in the Gothic literature style. Stories like Frankenstein, Dracula, and other novels do this.

The Train Stage

What really stands out in many 2-D fighting games is the backgrounds. There is just something really interesting about them many have a personality all their own. Darkstalkers is a key example of this statement. It has a pretty well rounded catalogue of backgrounds, jungles for the sasquatch, and castle for the vampire. Things start to get a lot darker and interesting with the last two stages in the games arcade mode. The first is a train which appears to be living; it has a mouth and eyes. It reminds me a lot of how I imagined Blaine the Mono from “The Dark Tower” books. The final stage is one of the most iconic 2-D backgrounds in gaming. The “Fetus of God” stage takes place inside of God’s womb I assume. The background is probably the creepiest thing in any fighting game hands down, and it looks great. If that isn't Gothic Horror I guess I don't know what is.

The Fetus of God

Darkstalkers remains as one of the few games and probably piece of media that honors the monsters of Gothic literature and movies in such a unique and well executed way. Though it has some comedic pieces in there too, I think that the dark stuff is done so well that it can be easily over looked. It's not the most Gothic game, but it damn sure does honor and build upon it.