Vampire Saviour: World of Darkness

My eyes were opened to a new world today. People were dancing like mad, throwing water at each other, so I retired to the wall of arcade games at the back of the wall. Seems like most people were into the classics like Donkey Kong or.. um, what else was there? Oh yeah: Centipede.

My eyes were opened to a new world today. People were dancing like mad, throwing water at each other, so I retired to the wall of arcade games at the back of the wall. Seems like most people were into the classics like Donkey Kong or.. um, what else was there? Oh yeah: Centipede.

And there, second game from the end, there was Vampire Saviour: World of Darkness, a game that I can find no shots of on the web. So you're just going to have to take my word for it. And my words, no matter how chillingly accurate, likely won't do it justice, especially in Verdana font.

So the controls were a joystick and six buttons. The buttons said stuff like Fierce, Strong, Soft, Tap. I wondered why I would ever use the Soft or Tap buttons?! Is it for times when you want to walk over to the enemy and Tap him on the shoulder and say, "Hey, excuse me," (like totally fake him out that you're all kind and gentle) and they lay on the Strong button and give him the wonderpalm? Here we learn an essential rule about the game Vampire Saviour: Relinquish all reason or you will die.

The game resembled Street Fighter. See, and it was made by Capcom. Same people. But this game had the best people in it. For example, I played this lady with giant metal hands. And you could turn her hands into a saw, or a jigsaw, or a table saw. Her hands would turn into a table saw and shoot into the ceiling (still attached to me by a pair of chains) and then I would turn into a table saw and become a freaky pendulum made of table saws and chains. It also kind of reminded me of the yo-yo Rock the Baby move, but entirely executed with chains and table saws. (Yeah, this game was that good!)

So the enemies were totally insane. I fought this one pharaoh who I couldn't get past. He has this raging move where he'd throw a long strip of cloth at you. And then he'd mummify you with it and trap you in a huge sarcophagus and slam you into the ground. Then you'd be buried for five seconds until your character could dig her way out. The metal hands came in handy. That mummy move he did ruled though, because it took like ten minutes worth of graphics for him to complete the whole embalming process and everything.

I also kept dying at Little Red Riding Hood. She shoots Uzis at you. And her little dog turns into these two huge musclemen with automatic weapons. The only thing I could do is get my character to do this special metal prayer (since she had metal hands she could do this incredibly clasped prayer with her hands) and this ghost lady would appear and try to punch people. But she was pretty helpless and, shrugging at me, she would fly away.

When you're the Vampire Saviour, you tend to look at life differently than normal people who dance and throw water at each other. In the end, I didn't actually get to save any vampires. Who knows if there were even any vampires to save? Perhaps a previous player saved all the vampires and I was just enciting battles between the disenchanted remnants of the game. But as I played, a line formed behind me. The Donkey Kong people got in line. The Centipede people were there too. The Missile Command people who kept asking where Missile Command was, insisting it was there somewhere.

Come on, guys. Screw that. Once you turn into a table saw, you'll never want to go back.