All these fighting games I have, now. Recently I’ve been studying KoF98, and have noticed a bunch of details and subtleties that had gone completely passed me by. And then earlier today I decided to pull out Vampire Chronicle For Matching Service; something new I noticed — besides that I don’t seem to have actually played in arcade mode with a lot of the characters (any who aren’t amongst my favourites I guess I tend to just fiddle with in training) is that the details in the background vary considerably depending on which “mode” one chooses (Vampire, Hunter, Savior).

When I played the Saturn version of Savior I had wondered about a couple of the stages, particularly Brazil and the one on the side of the skyscraper. There seemed to be many more things going on in the background in the Saturn version than in my copy of the game, including a lizard being chomped on in the former and helicopters and coloured lights in the latter. Also, many levels of scrolling seemed to be missing in my version. I thought it was a little cheap that Capcom left some of these elements out of the game, as Chronicle was supposed to be a compilation and combination of all of the previous games, into one. As it ends up, though, it all relies on what one sets the game to emulate.

I suppose I’ve mostly been playing in “Vampire” mode, making it play the most like the first game in the series. I just earlier set it to “Savior”, and the backdrops were suddenly quite alive. Also, the music was different (and in places more appropriate).

This is very interesting…