****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I was hoping this would have more concept sketches and other "raw" materials from the series' development. Instead there is quite a bit of (I think useless) stuff like character win quotes and move lists."Graphic file" must not mean "art book" though. It's more like a record of the series.Since most of the appeal of the Darkstalkers series is the characters themselves, and the detailed and creative animation of those characters and backgrounds, I thought it would include more of that kind of material.It does have more early concepts for the characters than what I've seen in strategy guides or other Capcom art books, but they are mostly around to 1 x 1 inch on the page.Most of the screenshots of the unique special moves or other animations that you barely see while playing the game are tiny and often blurry. Having a frame-by-frame sequence of some (not all) of the moves would have been more interesting.The people interested in this kind of book know it's an old series and that the graphics are low resolution, so I hope they didn't try to smooth or blur the screenshots thinking they would look better that way.I also was hoping to see sketches showing how some moves were developed and animated, and maybe examples of the amount of detail they may have lost when converting it to a lower resolution sprite - or how they managed to keep a lot of that detail.There is a lot of info in the book and it's organized well, but didn't have a lot of content I was expecting.So I still would recommend it to fans of the series artwork, mainly because there probably won't be another book for Darkstalkers anyway. I thought it would be more like the Okami art book or some of the older Metal Gear art books though.If there actually is a Darkstalkers/Vampire book with this kind of stuff already (US or Japanese), please note that in a review or comment to this review.Summary:3-4 stars, depending on what you're looking for.+ Includes artwork not found in other books/guides+ Well organized and printed book- Very tiny artwork/screenshots, aside from most of the main/final pieces- Not as much concept and raw materials as was expectedI'll make this short and to the point!THE GOOD:Great colorful original and concept artworkHas info that you may or may not have known about the seriesScreen shots,move lists,and endings for the gamesHigh quality..not cheaply madeTHE BAD:Not as much artwork as one would hope forSome characters are favored more than othersThe screen shots and the concept artwork are painfully smallA vast majority of the text in this book is ridiculously tiny...seriously,break out the magnifying glassOVERALL:While it may not have the massive amount of artwork that you'd hope for,and beside the fact that a lot of the text is annoyingly tiny,overall it is a very nice,well constructed book.If you are a fan of the Darkstalkers series,this book will be a worthy purchase.If you are not,I suggest checking out the Street Fighter 20th Anniversary artbook.The shipment was fast and the book was in perfect condition. I had gotten the book spiral bound for about $3.00 because I did not want to get any creases in it. They go into great detail for each and every character. They talk about their background story, their fighting moves, all of their quotes and stories from the games and many more! I had wished they added the different colors that each character you choose could be in each game but that is just a minor complaint. Overall, I loved the artwork and the detail work about the Darkstalkers in this book!Awesome and informative book, especially for Darkstalkers fan. It contains quite a bit of art, I'd say about half can be found on the internet, the other half you'll see only on these pages. Where this work really shines is the information inside it. There you will learn all about the world and characters, even the gameplay. It's really great book.The book is in very good quality, bound and print wise. It has in depth character bios as well as different moves from each version of the game, there's not as much artwork as i would've liked to see but it does have a fair amount.Great buy for fans!!!
