Before we get into the details of game play however, a brief overview is necessary. The Darkstalkers universe has existed for quite some time (since 1994) and includes a variety of supernatural characters from hot female vampires to werewolves to mummies to Sasquatch himself. Unlike other Capcom fighting games there is no need to justify how these guys obtained their powers; they are just born freaks. Many of the character animations are hilarious and nonsensical to enhance the game’s sense of otherworldliness. In the arcade, these games were an incredible amount of fun as well as highly competitive just like most other 2D fighting games that followed Street Fighter 2.

Given the chronology, it’s no surprise that the games in the Darkstalker series were ported to the original Playstation and later to the Sega Dreamcast. They were the reigning systems at the time. Unfortunately for fans of the series, there is nothing available in the current generation of game systems. That was until last week when the PSP finally launched in the U.S.

Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower actually combines all three games (Darkstalkers, Night Warriors and Darkstalkers 3) into one letting you pick from any of the 18 characters in the series. You can select which game version you want to play, because they each have slightly different rules and moves. But even if the character you want to use wasn’t in that particular game, you can still select them because Capcom has normalized their moves to make them more applicable. The end result is similar to what they did for the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. Like other ports to home consoles, they include options to customize the actual game play and training modes to hone your skills.

As far as gameplay goes, I could not be more pleased. I understand what others have indicated as difficulties in performing special moves, but it really is not that bad. After getting used to the way the PSP D-Pad functions and getting into a proper special move timing groove, there wasn’t really a case where I legitimately performed a move and it didn’t go off. It didn’t even seem too difficult to pull off the bread and butter, 3-hit jump kick fireball combos. You may find that you have to be a tad more deliberate when performing certain special moves, but I didn’t think it detracted from the game at all.

If you happen to be one of the poor saps that can’t seem to deliver consistent fireballs, there is a “special” mode you can use that simplifies the key sequences of most special moves to little more than a direction followed by a button press. If you can’t handle that, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

For those of us who played them, the difficulty of the CPU is similar to previous Capcom fighting games. I was able to beat the game on the default difficulty setting of two stars without continuing. Eight stars, the maximum difficulty level is significantly more challenging and as yet remains unbeaten on my PSP. The reward for competing at these higher difficulty levels is, of course, the utter humiliation of demolishing your friends in Network mode.

Unfortunately, at the present time I am the only person I know with a copy of the game so I have no one to destroy and no way to evaluate the Network mode. If like me, you’ve beaten the game in Arcade mode and have no one to bruise yet, you can spend exorbitant amounts of time trying to complete the Tower mode.

The Tower mode lets you unlock special goodies like concept art images of the game’s 18 characters. Basically, you fight against the computer with conditions like no blocking or only able to use kicks. Some matches have multiple paths that let you unlock different sections of the tower as you move up it. This particular mode can be exceptionally trying on your skills. The first time through, I exhausted my three characters near level 20 and I’m unsure how far it continues upward. It may not be much of an extra feature, but it does add value and can be a challenge to those that have demolished the CPU opponent and have no human opponents to fight against.

The last mode of note has to do with the screen aspect ratio. Anyone familiar with 2D fighters will attest to the fact that they are implemented in 4:3 aspect ratio to conform to typical arcade cabinets. Well, Darkstalkers Chronicle does not attempt to deviate from that particular standard. Instead of making the game physics work in a wide-screen mode, your options are to use sidebars (blank or one of 11 different wallpapers) or have the screen shift up or down depending on where the action goes. Although it may imply some laziness on the part of the dev team, neither mode is all that bad. I personally prefer not using the sidebars, because I’m used to the background scrolling in games like Marvel Vs. Capcom. Besides, with that beautifully wide screen, how could you not use it? Scrolling through the wallpapers reveal sidebars that are textured to resemble several of the stages available for fighting on. The problem with this is that with random stage selection, the wallpaper often clashes with the background and doesn’t look attractive.

The only real negative comment I have for this game is the loading time. While it is not horrible, it can be annoying. Just about everything you do brings you to a loading screen including just starting up the game. The game lacks a simplified character selection screen that could cut down on some of the loading after a match is concluded. The graphic intensive character select screen looks nice, but I’d like the option to select my characters using the text of their names only, especially if it significantly reduced the time in between rounds. It’s hard to understand why this was not included because the feature has already appeared in several Capcom titles on the home consoles. The one thing they added in place of this functionality is a prompt asking if you want to use the same character after you’ve been defeated and decide to continue. This is fine, if you only use one character, but if you wish to change midstream, you must wait several seconds for the character selection screen to be loaded.

Waiting has never been my strong suit, but when there is something worth waiting for, it tends to bother me a lot less. Darkstalkers Chronicle is one excellent example of something worth waiting for. Besides being a beautiful translation of one of Capcom’s best fighting game series, it is quite possibly the best handheld fighting game ever created.