Disclaimer: This review covers the 4-episode 1997 OVA "Night Warriors - Darkstalkers' Revenge," also titled "Vampire Hunter" and "Darkstalkers - The Complete OVA" in some American releases. Also, I have not played any of the titles in the game series it's based on.The 1990's were an exciting time for fighting-game gans. Many classic franchises grew in popularity, from "Street Fighter" to "The King of Fighters," thanks to home consoles with the capability to render impressive 2D sprite animations. Most of these franchises also got tie-in anime adaptations, made for no other reason than to further market the property (hey, that's a big reason why "Pokemon" was and still is so successful with children). Many of these anime productions even got American releases, primarily because the games already had, so it seemed to be a safer bet. Whether or not the films and OVA's were any good... well, in an attempt to both be faithful to the sprite art that had hands twice the size of a human face, and to follow the style trend of mishapened, sinister faces, I'd argue these adaptations in particular to be among the ugliest anime ever produced, with a questionable story to boot. That brings us to "Darkstalkers - The Complete OVA," as it was titled by Discotek in a mid-2010 DVD release. It was originalled called "Night Warriors - Darkstalkers' Revenge," and in Japan, originally called "Vampire Hunter" (which remains on the title card of each episode). It's confusing, but yes, this is an adaptation of the "Darkstalkers" video games. And apparently, a completely different children's tv cartoon of the games was also made a couple years prior. By comparison, this OVA should be a treat for fans of the cult series, retaining most of the sexualty, gothic horror, and rock-and-roll humor the games were marketed with. You would be forgiven for not having ever played "Darkstalkers." The Capcom fighting game was overshadowed by "Street Fighter" and "Marvel vs Capcom," as well many other 2D fighters from outside the company in the 90's. The game has a Halloween-motif, with vampires and werewolves and demons as the main characters. The most recognizable characters include Morrigan, a succubus with black wings and pink tights, and Felicia, a half-cat-half-human woman, nude, with white patches of fur barely covering specific parts of her body. Gameplay and lore aside, I have to presume the fan requests for a modern sequel come from the sexy fantasies gamers have of the female cast. Regardless, a cult-classic it is, and it continues to come up at convetions, a common request to Capcom staff, and enough to make news whenever its characters appear as guests in a separate gaming franchise. There are a number of issues that come up when trying to adapt a branching game's excuse-of-a-story into a linear film or series. One issue is trying to organize background information for each character, and likely, writing new content to make a story that comes across as compelling, or at least, sensible, while remaining faithful to the original material. Another issue is the large and diverse cast of characters, most of whom must be present to appease all fans. That's difficult to accomplish in a feature-length movie, which might be why "Night Warriors" chose to spread its content across four 40-minute episodes, giving a little more room to breathe. And yes, a good number of characters get their chance to shine, or at least an appearance: I counted at least ten? But try as you might, it's really hard to make a decent story out of "Darkstalkers." Despite some decent directional skills and good story-thread ideas, none of the intersecting stories are as interesting as they could be. The general over-arching setting is of a Earth where demons have come from another dimension, living alongside the human race, and blocking out the sun. Humans are understandably concerned: the lack of sun affects their food and daily lives, and of course, the demons feed on human souls, which is scary. Some demons live peacefully among humans, only sipping off their souls when needed, but others don't hold back from killing hundreds of humans at a time. Racial tensions between races are high. And the demons themselves take sides, some against the demon hierarchy that lives in the other dimension. 
One story thread involves Demitri, a powerful and dangerous vampire count with the intention to directly challenge the demon king, to become the king himself. This thread also involves Morrigan, a succubus and capable fighter, who both stands in Demitri's way and finds herself intrigued by his ambition. Another story involves Felicia, a cat-girl who works to be a famous performer, but her demon-traits put her at odds with humans that don't trust her, with differentiating opinions from other demons, including zombie rocker Lord Raptor and werewolf Talbain. A pair of Chinese vampires, Lei-Lei and Mei-Ling, travel to hunt down demons for money, with sarcastic banter through their journey. And the main character is arguably Donovan, the title "Vampire Hunter," a wandering barefoot Buddist monk that is half-demon, half-human, and looks like a distant cousin to "Street Fighter"'s Dhalsim. He's struggling with his lineage, trying to make up for it by hunting vampires, and his journey takes him to a lost girl, the last survivor of a demon attack on her village, with special powers of her own. Everything culminates with the summoning and fight with a flame-god, another classic character. Generally, these stories do have interesting themes, and can be funny and exciting at different moments. But mostly, it's just boring. Frankly, there's too much white-space, and the four episodes could have easily been edited down to a film at half the length. Some characters I rather liked didn't reappear after a single scene in the series, and I didn't particularly care about the main cast. It's hard to imagine a story for "Darkstalkers" being better than this, but it's hard to imagine a story for "Darkstalkers" at all. The production values are a mixed bag. I already mentioned the ridiculous character designs: yes, it's faithful to the games, like seeing HD animation for your favorite sprites, but they look just plain weird. The animation fares a bit better, with some genuinely impressive action scenes to break up otherwise mediocre dialogue scenes. But that action... again, to remain faithful, most of the one-on-one fights are choreographed using fighting moves directly taken from the game. And it looks ridiculous again, making an otherwise dark fantasy come across like a Saturday morning cartoon. Were you looking forward to sexy scenes with spurts of adult violence? Yes, there is partial nudity and blood, but even compared to other anime at the time, it's all relatively tame, and could be shown to young children without much concern.The old American dub and soundtrack is a bizarre highlight that sets the tone of 80's punk rock. The dub isn't all that bad, actually, but the characters and their script make them goofy, both intentionally and not. Discotek went above and beyond when including the original Japanese dub: there's multiple subtitle options, to display either the original Japanese character names, or the English names from the American game release. The music sounds cool, but often doesn't match the context of the scene, again becoming unintentionally fun to laugh at with friends. It's corny and cheesy in a stupid but satisfying way. When it comes to fighting-game anime, there's a lot of stuff to choose from, but none of it is great. "Night Warriors - Darkstalkers' Revenge" fits perfectly in that trend, not really worth anyone's time unless they are die-hard fans of the original games. But on the other hand, the spooky monster setting is refreshing, there is some impressively decent animation hidden in some of the action, and the dialogue has a stupid charm about it. American companies used to heavily edit down OVA's to become a single feature film, and while we look down on the practice today for ruining the original artists' voice, "Night Warriors" would have benefited from exactly that.