Street Fighter 6 director hints that Capcom cancelled a new Darkstalkers game years ago

After the recent reveal of the Darkstalkers Gala Fighting Pass for Street Fighter 6, Capcom fans began asking what they always ask whenever this classic fighting game franchise makes a reappearance in another title: When is Capcom going to make another Darkstalkers game?

Curiously enough, the director of Street Fighter 6, Takayuki Nakayama, shed some light on this situation in an unexpected post on his personal Twitter/X account. On a thread in which he was disclosing his experiences while working on Otoranger (an old rhythmic game released on mobile devices back in 2013) he posted the following tweet:

Here, Nakayama explained how he hoped to work on a fighting game that was not Street Fighter, but Capcom stopped the development of this mysterious title before he eventually joined the Otoranger team. While Nakayama didn’t explicitly reveal what this fighting game was, his cryptic use of a bat emoji heavily implies that this was going to be a brand-new entry in the Darkstalkers series.

At first glance, this may not seem all that exciting, since this happened around 10 years ago. But it’s important to keep in mind that – without taking ports and remasters into account – there hasn’t been a new Darkstalkers game since 1997, more than 27 years ago. So a modern HD revival of this classic monster brawler made would have certainly breathed new life into this forgotten franchise.

Darkstalkers fans are tired of waiting for a new entry

Naturally, Darkstalkers fans didn’t take Nakayama’s revelation very well, with many of them wondering what this scrapped project could have been like and if it could have prevented their beloved franchise from further fading into obscurity. Many others are still hoping that Capcom will attempt to develop another modern Darkstalkers game in the near future.

As over-the-top as some of these reactions may initially seem, they are completely justified. After all, the Darkstalkers franchise was one of the mainstays of the fighting game genre during its boom in popularity during the late 90s, and its iconic characters are still relevant due to their appearances in crossover games and collections, like Capcom Fighting Collection, Puzzle Fighter or the Marvel vs. Capcom series. However, despite all these cameos and ports in other Capcom IPs, this beloved franchise is long overdue for a completely new entry.