Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors

English restoration

Release candidaterc1Capcom CPS-2

Game: Vampire: The Night Warriors (Japan 940705)
Hardware: Capcom CPS-2
MAME set: vampj
Version: rc1
Updated: 2026-10-06

Screenshots

Japan's win quotes are back, in English, in the bordered result panel.

Every fighter draws from a pool of quotes again, with the Japanese hearts.

After a loss, the continue screen offers one of 85 tips, here Morrigan's Vector Drain.

About this patch

The original Japanese Vampire gives each fighter a pool of win quotes, and offers move advice after a loss. The USA version uses one English win quote per fighter and removes the advice.

The English Restoration brings back the Japanese quote pools and bordered result panel, the complete ending dialogue, and all 85 continue tips, translated from the Japanese.

The voices the USA version muted are back: Morrigan’s alternate victory, Vector Drain and throw, and Felicia’s Rolling Buckler, Dancing Flash and special damage reaction. As in the USA release, Rikuo’s crouching heavy punch can be blocked with a crouching guard.

It keeps the ten playable fighters and the Western character names, and adds Free Play to the operator menu. It runs in MAME and HBMAME and on MiSTer.

This is a release candidate.

What's changed

Japanese win-quote pools in English, with the Japanese result-panel border
Complete Japanese ending dialogue in English, with the original scene timing
All 85 Japanese continue tips in English, including their arcade move commands
Morrigan’s alternate victory, Vector Drain and throw voices, and Felicia’s Rolling Buckler, Dancing Flash and special damage voices
Rikuo’s crouching heavy punch can be blocked with a crouching guard, as in the USA release
Western character names, and Free Play in the operator menu

Spot a difference we missed?

A restoration is only as complete as its list of differences. If the Japanese version does something this one still doesn't, whether a line of text, a scene, a screen or a small detail, please let us know. Anything you find goes into the next release.

Downloads

Patch kit for MAME, HBMAME, MiSTer and original hardware

dstlk-restoration-rc1-ips.zip (64 KB)

SHA-256: 6bb833b4899047f609effe18d10eca8a32cd8af608ad1c3bd5d100cadc700d25

MiSTer MRA only

dstlk-restoration-rc1-mra.zip (33 KB)

SHA-256: 22324b39158e19fb5dcd00967911741ebf923db73335bf7303f4bd8f09d54dde

You need your own dump of Vampire: The Night Warriors (Japan 940705) as the MAME set vampj.zip. Each zip includes a readme.txt with full instructions.

Merged, split and complete sets work, including nested or renamed ROMs. Use --rompath /path/to/roms to search a collection (repeatable), and --check to check inputs before building. ZIPs and extracted folders need no extra software; 7z archives require 7-Zip. QSound can stay in your emulator's ROM path; valid firmware already embedded in a source set is kept in complete outputs.

How to apply

unzip dstlk-restoration-rc1-ips.zip -d vampj-patch
cd vampj-patch
python3 apply.py /path/to/vampj.zip --out-dir out

The script checks every file against the checksums below, applies the patches, checks the result, and writes the files for every platform in one go:

out/mame/vampj.zip
out/hbmame/vamprest.zip
out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/Darkstalkers The Night Warriors (USA) [English Restoration].mra

MAME and original hardware. Put the zip from out/mame/ ahead of the stock set in your MAME rompath (it keeps the name vampj.zip), or burn its ROM files. MAME's game menu won't start a set with patched ROMs, so start it from the command line: mame vampj. MAME shows checksum warnings for the patched ROMs. That's expected, and the game runs normally. To start it from a menu, use the HBMAME build.

HBMAME. Put the zip from out/hbmame/ in HBMAME's roms/ folder together with qsound.zip; it holds the complete set. It loads with no checksum warnings. This restoration is an official HBMAME set, vamprest (merged upstream), so full HBMAME collections may already carry it.

MiSTer. Copy the _Arcade folder from out/mister/ to the root of your SD card, and keep the stock, unmodified romset at games/mame/vampj.zip (split MAME sets also need qsound.zip). You need Jotego's jtcps2 core, which update_all installs. The MRA applies the restoration in memory as the game loads, so nothing on your card is modified, and it keeps its own settings and saves under vamprest. The MiSTer-only download holds the same MRAs, ready to copy.

Any IPS patcher. Apply each file in ips/ (Flips, Lunar IPS, …) to the ROM file of the same name and re-zip the set yourself.

Changed ROMs

File	Size	Original CRC32	Patched CRC32
vam.13m	4.0 MB	c51baf99	2c48a876
vam.15m	4.0 MB	3ce83c77	6465e083
vam.17m	4.0 MB	4f2408e0	c613f6eb
vam.19m	4.0 MB	9ff60250	29424b8d
vamj.03a	512 KB	f55d3722	f36d0886
vamj.04b	512 KB	4d9c43c4	48f49597
vamj.09a	512 KB	fc0a4aac	744507a9

Release history

rc1 (2026-10-06)

First public release.

Related projects

Vampire Savior, the third game, restored in English the same way

Notes

MAME shows checksum warnings for the patched files. That’s expected; the game plays normally. HBMAME with the vamprest set definition loads it without them.
Fan work, unaffiliated with Capcom. The patch contains no ROM data; you need your own dump of the Japanese set.