#aulbath

Look, he's strangely attractive for a fish man, let him live.

Darkstalkers is an old fighting game by Capcom -- it's basically like if Street Fighter 2 was a monster mash, except also there's stuff like a demonic alien, and a blue-skinned devil who wants to merge everybody's souls together. They haven't done anything with the series in decades, though, apart from the odd remake, and/or letting Morrigan and possibly a few other characters appear in crossovers. This post will try to come up with ways you can use non-copyrighted versions of the same characters and concepts! Fortunately, this is relatively easy, because a lot of them were Capcom figuring out how to copyright public-domain characters to begin with.

Specific public domain characters:

Sasquatch: Bigfoot. They didn't even give him a copyrighted name. Doesn't look remotely look like it, though. Actually he's kind of more like a Canadian yeti?

B.B. Hood ("Bulleta" in Japan): straight-up just "Little Red Riding Hood ... With A Gun." Like I'm not kidding, her character design is a completely generic rendition of Little Red Riding Hood, aside from the name and the weapons. If anything, her appearance is less distinctive than some depictions you can find on the first page of a DuckDuckGo image search.

Victor von Gerdenheim: An expy of Frankenstein's Monster. They basically just took the Hollywood version, gave him bigger hair and changed his skin from green to blue, and gave him a little sister to care about.

Demitri Maximoff: An expy of Count Dracula, in some ways; Demitri just has some Darkstalkers-specific rivalries and spikier hair. Just don't make it too obvious by directly giving him an equivalent of Midnight Bliss (gender-bender magic being its own non-specific concept).

Non-specific public domain concepts:

Hsien-Ko ("Lei-Lei" in Japan): a Jiang-Shi, a hopping vampire of Chinese myth controlled by a paper charm on her forehead.

Anakaris: The undead mummy of an Egyption pharaoh. Mummies are of course a generic stock monster.

Lilith: The concept of a part of someone's soul, or their entire soul, becoming separated and attaining a life/mind of its own. Can be applied to any other character-concept. Capcom later used this in the Devil May Cry series. Sonic the Hedgehog did it twice.

Felicia: Somewhere on the scale between "catgirl" and "cat furry." Felicia's main distinction is the strategically-placed patterns of fur on her body.

Donovan Baine: a monster-hunting half-vampire. That's not even a particularly distinctive concept.

Q-Bee: Bees.

Non-public-domain inspirations which have public domain counterparts

Jon Talbain ("Gallon" in Japan): His English name is clearly derived from Sir John Talbot, the title character of The Wolf Man (1941), which is not in the public domain; however, the concept of a werewolf is.

Rikuo ("Aulbath" in Japan): An off-brand Creature from the Black Lagoon, which isn't in the public domain, but "humanoid fish-people" is doable. For example, there's the Deep Ones from HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which is understood to be in the public domain, or the kappa of Japanese mythology.

Bishamon: A cursed samurai/animated samurai armor. Not too hard to make something generic out of that.

Multiple concepts/potentially too distinctive to reference directly:

Morrigan Aensland: A succubus, or more generally a she-devil. She could also be some manner of vampire maybe? She can also transform her wings into jetpacks and whatnot (which is the only reason she's listed here instead of under "non-specific public domain").

Pyron: A demonic alien with fire-powers. That's it, that's the concept.

Huitzil ("Phobos" in Japan): an army of alien robots, with a design inspired by doguu figurines from ancient Japan.

Lord Raptor ("Zabel Zarock" in Japan): the more personable kind of zombie + rock and roll.

Wasn't satisfied with the shadows so I made them darker afterwards