TOKYO--Capcom's Vampire Chronicle: The Chaos Tower was among the many playable PSP titles in Sony's booth at the Tokyo Game Show. The 2D fighter is based on Capcom's DarkStalkers titles, known as Vampire in Japan, which stars an eclectic collection of characters based on supernatural creatures. Though not as well known as its Street Fighter games, the series has always stood as one of Capcom's finest, thanks to its excellent graphics, inspired character design, and tight gameplay. The PSP game on display is a compilation of the three entries in the series that is based, in part, on the limited edition, online-enabled Dreamcast game released in August of 2000, but this one tosses in some very tasty extras. 

Although not every mode was playable in the work-in-progress version of the game on the show floor, the list of modes that were available included: arcade, network, tower, chronicle, and training. The only playable mode in the TGS version was arcade, which pits you against a series of CPU characters on a ladder-based tournament. Although the final game will feature a complete roster of 18 fighers, there were only seven available in the game. It was possible to choose from: Morrigan, a busty female succubus; Demitri, a demonic vampire lord; Gallon, a lyncathrope warrior known as Talbain in the US version of the game; Victor, a massive Frankenstein-like golem; Felicia, a scantily clad cat woman; Jedah, a demon who is the game's end boss; and Zabel, a skeletal demon with a penchant for guitars. 

Once you settle on your character, you're asked to choose game speed (normal or different speeds of turbo) and which of the Vampire games' fighting systems you'll use. After you've made your choices, you're thrown into battle, which plays out in the basic one-on-one fighting model established by Capcom's Street Fighter franchise. The fighting system in the Vampire series is based on Capcom's six-button mechanic and, of course, it has some similarities to the classic Street Fighter games. A unique aspect of the later games in the series is that your fighter just has a single life bar broken down into two parts, which simply swaps out as you play, essentially condensing two short matches into one long one. As you reduce your foe's life bar to nothing, a bat icon underneath the bar disappears, signaling your victory. As with many Capcom fighters, the Vampire games feature superbars and superattacks. 

The game handles quite well on the PSP and it is coming together nicely. The onscreen graphics match your inputs quickly and fairly fluidly on the whole. The six-button system, which should be customizable in the final version of the game, maps out the weak and medium attacks to the face buttons, and the strong punches and kicks to the shoulder buttons. Even though the game was incomplete, we were already able to pull off plenty of our staple combos with the available characters. The timing was slightly off in a few places, but it was easy to compensate for and it bodes well for the final game. 

As far as the graphics go, Vampire Chronicle is looking sharp on the PSP with visuals that are comparable in quality to the Dreamcast and arcade game source material. Aside from the excellent character designs, the series was known for its smooth animation, which is being re-created pretty well so far. There are some frames missing in both the backgrounds and character moves, but, overall, the game compares favorably to the arcade and DC games.