Vampire Night

released on Mar 01, 2001

Vampire Night is a light gun game produced by Sega's Wow Entertainment, distributed through Namco and released in 2000 for video game arcades. It was later ported to PlayStation 2 in November 2001. Two players can team up to take down on screen enemies.


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Campy cheesy goodness you'd expect from a 2000s lightgun rail-shooter but with more "edge". Corny, but fun

Ojala se le pudiera disparar a la niña

Como House of the Dead pero con vampiros, o sea con más fantasía y más hortera. What's not to love?

It's literally House of the Dead but with Vampires. It's an instant classic if you ever loved House of the Dead and all of its bad line reading, light gun wielding, RELOADING, campy glory. If that's not to your taste, why would you even be looking up a Namco/Sega game from 22 years ago?

Vampire Night is a strange game.
It was an on rails, arcade light gun game available as an arcade machine and for the play station 2.
This game is a mix. The game play is fun, especially if you manage to find the game in an arcade, the game play is straight forward, shoot the thing, shoot away to reload.
The story is the standard vampires invade a Romanian village. How ever the game does add a contemporary fantasy element by making the game take place in 2006. The art style was a cool devil may cry meats castlevania. But the voice acting, oh god the voice acting is absolutely awful. How ever, its so awful, it's fun. The dry flat lines with poorly translated English make for hilarious situations.
Fun to play, especially if you can find it in an arcade, or find a way to replicate the light gun game play for the home port.
And incredibly fun to make fun of.

The secret House of the Dead game. Vampire Night rules.

This is from Sega's WOW Entertainment (as they were helpfully called for about two years), carries precisely the same tone, pace and ruleset as they brought to HotD. This is as close as you'll get to House of the Dead 2 on a PS2. Other than Typing of the Dead: Zombie Panic.

House of the Dead is an ideal lightgun game. Easily distinguishable enemy types with distinct attack patterns, breakable items to reward quick shooting and dogshit voice acting. It's a game to get good at, whereas many lightgun games are just passing novelties.

This all holds true for Vampire Night. It doesn't go quite as far as HotD2. It's like they turned down the volume a wee bit. There's nothing on-par with Goldman's confrontation, but Sir Vampire is fairly enjoyable. It's also an easier game, which should be a relief to anyone who's managed to push themselves through a final boss in a House of the Dead before. No fucking boss rush, either.

Vampire Night takes on more of a gothic theme, and the game's artists are totally up to the job. Imposing castles, covered with stone pillars and intricate steel embellishments. It's good shit. Even the loading screens look great. I think the team might be better suited to cursed victims and old ruins than modern cities and biological experiments.

There's a wee bit of multi-route stuff based on how many innocent people you can save, seconds before they mutate. It's not a major draw here, and only alters small sections of a level, but it's a welcome touch to keep replays interesting and reward accuracy.

A nice benefit of Namco's involvement in the PS2 port is how well it supports both the G-Con 2 and G-Con 45. You've got a ton of options in how you want to reload. The traditional off-screen shot works, but so does pressing any of the extra buttons, or even using a second controller as a Time Crisis-style pedal. It's something that folk may take for granted, but in a game like this, where challenges switch from long-range enemies and accurately hitting weak spots to quick-moving flying enemies and rapidfire hell, it's really nice to be able to switch your grip on the fly to what feels the most comfortable in that moment. I find my middle finger is quicker than my index, but I'm much less accurate with it. I found myself holding the gun five different ways in my playthrough.

Vampire Night is a quick little game, unlikely to become your sole focus for any given night. I think that's why critics were dismissive of it upon release. It really is a cracking little arcade port though, and I think it cost me about three quid. If you're looking for a lightgun game, you're hoping to find something like Vampire Night.