Hands-on with Dark Presence

Galloping Ghost Arcade has become a notable name in the gaming scene, but many people seem to be unaware that the overall company also includes Galloping Ghost Productions. While the arcade features more than 700 arcade games from a span of decades, the productions company is developing its own arcade games to not only feature at Galloping Ghost Arcade, but distribute them as new products that other arcades worldwide can purchase and feature on location.

Galloping Ghost Productions just recently finished and shipped its very first game release, The Spectre Files: Deathstalker. The title is an FMV, choose-your-own-adventure game that was resurrected from canceled status after it was originally filmed, then canned, by Midway in the 1980s. Thankfully, the original film was kept and archived by game designer Brian Colin (Arch Rivals, Rampage, Xenophobe, General Chaos).

Brian Colin said The Spectre Files was pitched as a Video Disc game that would have been included in a series of games planned by Midway. The Video Disc concept is similar to the LaserDisc games we know and love (or not), but the hardware featured a needle that read the disc like it was a vinyl record player. Midway launched an NFL-licensed Video Disc game, and, to the surprise of nobody, bumps or jolts to the arcade machine resulted in the needle rendering the game completely useless. With only the one release squeaking through, the rest of these titles, including The Spectre Files were immediately canned.

Galloping Ghost Arcade Owner Doc Mack met with Brian after the opening of the arcade, and The Spectre Files became a topic of discussion. After some footwork, Galloping Ghost Productions got the film digitized and installed it inside an extremely limited run of new arcade cabinets. Cabinet number one has been on location at Galloping Ghost Arcade for a while, but, late last year, production run cabinets have been purchased and shipped to locations such as Level 419 in Ohio and Game Grid Arcade in Utah, along with possibly a private collector.

The Spectre Files became a finished project in a few years, but Galloping Ghost Productions is still hard at work on a vision Doc started pursuing about 25 years ago in the digitized fighting game Dark Presence. The project as we know it now started materializing about 15 years ago, and, in 2018, the arcade community finally caught a tangible glimpse of what may solidify as Dark Presence’s finished product.

The game made a few appearances at events in 2018, and this was capped by a huge showing at Galloping Ghost Arcade in December as part of a Dark Presence Day. As we close in on a realistic completion to this long-standing arcade game project, here is a detailed account of my history with the project and hands-on information of the game from its appearances in 2018.

EARLY CONCEPTS
Approximately 10 years ago, I learned about Dark Presence through the Arcade Heroes website, which I highly recommend following if you have an interest in arcade industry news and new game releases. I then got acquainted with Doc Mack over email and started to learn more about the project. I was in the Chicago-area for that year’s Wizard World event, and he invited me into his home, where the development HQ of Dark Presence was located at the time.

Doc and Jeremiah Smith were in the office, where the game was merely at the point of taking the raw film footage of the actors and implementing the chroma key to pull out the character animations. No gameplay was present at that point, but I was brought up to speed on the project and we discussed a number of general topics such as fighting games and the arcade scene.

The computers were ripe with Dark Presence and Conquering Light (the game’s planned sequel) footage, and I was able to view some of the animations, including what will eventually become some of the finishing moves that will be worked into Conquering Light. My discussions with Doc that year led to the article, “An Early Look at Galloping Ghost’s Dark Presence,” that can be viewed on this site.

Staying in contact with Doc, I was in the area for the 2010 Anime Central event, and I was able to meet up with him once again. However, the meeting place this time was an emptied out pool hall that Doc was cleaning up and slowly filling with just more than 100 arcade cabinets – the future site of Galloping Ghost Arcade on Ogden Avenue in Brookfield, Illinois.

The arcade opened Aug. 13, 2010, and its growth and contributions to the arcade community took priority. While the development of Dark Presence still simmered on the backburner, it took nearly five years before Galloping Ghost Productions could get its feet firmly planted and once again make considerable progress on the project.

Through my visits over the years, the productions office once occupied space that was utilized by one of the arcade’s multiple expansions. Work on the game progressed in these offices, with computer screens identifying hitboxes on the game’s characters, computers set aside to render Dark Presence’s meticulously-detailed backgrounds and Doc’s giant whiteboard filled with development landmarks that would get crossed off over time.

Still, this period of development still slowly dripped out details about the game. Dark Presence’s prototype of the deluxe cabinet long stood in the production office’s hallway, offering a glimpse of what the machine will eventually become. The game’s web page is still intact online, and, all of these years later, the more recent builds of the game still largely match the spirit of what is proposed by the 10-year-old pre-alpha screenshots in its media gallery.

Titan finishing move pre-alpha concept courtesy of Galloping Ghost Productions

Just prior to the arcade’s first large expansion about five years ago, a very early build of the game was temporarily located in the productions office. It was popped on to a computer in the office, allowing two characters to move around on one of the backgrounds.

At this very early stage, the characters’ moves still had 100 percent of their frames attached with no adjustments. So, when you pressed a button, you were fully committed and locked into the entire duration of that move. If you initiated a kick, no further inputs could be made until the character started the move, attacked their target range, reeled back and returned to their neutral stance. Pressing a button would prevent a player from making further inputs for full seconds at a time.

But, the beauty of this build was its incredibly fluid HD animation. The digitized fighters players are accustomed to have the sprite aesthetic to them, but Dark Presence had raw, high-definition footage, looking like a film of martial artists playing out in smooth 60 FPS video. The gameplay building blocks were there, but it was more of a glimpse at how the filming process would benefit the presentation of the game.

Pre-alpha concept photo courtesy of Galloping Ghost Productions

At one point, we arranged one of the characters to kick, and the opponent was in a crouching stance. The attacking character did a full-on back kick and it connected flush with the opponent’s face, sending them reeling backward. It looked fantastically brutal, and it was my first in-motion glimpse at the promise this title had.

PROGRESS THROUGH 2018
With the productions office now located a few blocks away from the arcade, a fully-staffed team is making considerable progress on the game. The current arrangement now makes the game way more accessible, as team members can use computers to load predetermined conditions onto a game screen housed inside a makeshift wooden rig. Members of the team can view the backend details of the game in real time, allowing them to make decisions on what still needs to change.

On my first play of the game, the build had a fully-featured Veil character, which was used to measure how effective Wilson and Titan were performing in the game. The team had just introduced Ravona into the game, but she had just entered the “playable” phase of her inclusion and still needed some base work.

Development photo courtesy of Galloping Ghost Productions Facebook page

I was able to get in a few matches with the team, as they sought input on how the characters measured up at that point. Veil had been in the game long enough that he was the preliminary “measuring stick” to determine if the other characters had the tools they needed to fit into the overall gameplay.

Veil seemed to still hold a decisive edge over the other characters, but Wilson and Titan were quickly gaining ground as the gameplay team made and continually tested different tweaks. These decisions were based around data points such as damage and utility – utility meaning items pertaining to the characters’ trait abilities they can benefit from by using the rage meter. I’ll touch more on this point later in the article.

At this point, the game had shed the majority of its “canned animation” skin that I spoke of at the end of the previous segment. Some of the animation frames still required adjustments, but it was a very playable game at this stage of its alpha phase.

The game also had its HUD adjusted to reflect what is in place now. The characters’ health meters had been tightened up to cover three lines instead of the original four and the rage meter was put into place in its current forms. Based on screenshots, the question comes up frequently – what’s up with the meters? The characters have three lines of health, and Doc always said this plays into the game’s premise.

Dark Presence isn’t a tournament or competition fighter – the characters are in engaged in the war that has besieged the town and they are fighting for survival using their weapons. As such, the default game setup doesn’t feature rounds, but the life meters are adjusted to give players the same span of play they would experience in a common fighting game. Still, Doc had previously told me the game will eventually come with operator options to toggle rounds and such settings if that should be the location’s preference.

The early 2018 work built into the game’s planned appearance at the April Midwest Gaming Classic held in Milwaukee. While the game was very accessible at the office, to a game consumer, its implementation amounted to a makeshift training mode. It served as a fantastic tool to the developers, but would be extremely basic in an actual gaming environment.

Midwest Gaming Classic attendees play Dark Presence in April 2018 – GemuBaka photo

The staff’s work paid off, though, as an alpha build of Dark Presence was loaded into two styles of dedicated cabinet and packed along for show at the event. The game still only had a two-player versus mode, but it worked in user interface features such as the title screen, attract mode, character selection screen, multiple stage backgrounds and placeholder music. On top of that, the character Kyla had just been introduced, being in a development stage similar to where Ravona was on my previous experience with the game, and Kin Kade had also been worked in as a playable character.

The game had been in place for some time, but, for the majority of people in the gaming scene, this was the public’s first big taste of Dark Presence as a product. It was still very much a work-in-progress, but it gave attendees the ease of use of digging into the game and giving feedback to the developers.

At the time of the event, Veil and Wilson were the two most fleshed-out characters in that build of the game, so I gave them a couple of spins, trying out their moves and combos. I gravitated toward Veil, and that character choice would largely remain firm in the upcoming builds of Dark Presence that I would play.

Gameplay photo from the April 2018 build of Dark Presence – GemuBaka photo

Having the experience I’d had with the game up to that point, the user interface was largely the unique factor for me at the Midwest Gaming Classic, but the development team kept up with this pace for the remainder of the year. Their hard work led up to December 2018, when Galloping Ghost Productions promoted their latest build as the first beta version of Dark Presence.

An event was held Saturday, Dec. 1, featuring the game, large and in charge at the arcade in its deluxe cabinet. For one day only, players could sink their teeth into all eight characters, using all of the game’s stages and variations and challenge the single-player arcade ladder.

DARK PRESENCE DAY
In speaking to the developers, common feedback from the Midwest Gaming Classic had the visuals as a big positive. The most common negative feedback received was based on the speed of the game, with many players commenting it felt “slow.” Along with further refining the frames of the game, the beta build was said to increase the speed of the game by approximately 10 percent.

I drove in to Illinois the same morning of the event, arriving roughly one hour before it started. The event officially kicked off with an introduction by Doc and the development team that was streamed live on the Galloping Ghost Arcade Twitch channel. If you want a great visual sample of the game, along with commentary from the people who have worked on Dark Presence, this nearly five-hour stream is preserved on the Galloping Ghost Arcade YouTube channel.

I highly recommend checking this out, and, as a bonus, you can see me get my ass kicked a handful of times before I find my groove again with Veil! At the least, the first 20 minutes or so of the video is a valuable primer of what the game is all about and its extensive history. The rest of the video also features excellent matchups, further commentary, Twitch chat Q&A and a few visits from actors who were filmed for the game.

The obvious hook of Dark Presence is in the live actors used to film the game. Doc’s studio actually formed back in 1994 with his dream to build such a game, but the video quality and technology at that time didn’t match Doc’s vision. Years later, the project was given a second go, requiring four years of filming to get what was needed to start development on Dark Presence. This filming period also includes all of the footage needed for the Dark Presence’s sequel, Conquering Light, and Doc said because the game utilizes no flipped images – the characters are filmed for separate left and right stances – this also greatly added to the time and challenges of filming.

The Dark Presence control panel – GemuBaka photo

Doc said approximately 300 moves were filmed for the game. Martial artists that were filmed for the original Mortal Kombat games were originally approached for the project, but their schedules didn’t match up with the long filming periods. However, Doc said he was able to ask students of those actor’s martial arts schools to be involved in the project.

The developers are huge fans of fighting games, with several participating as professional Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice players as part of the former Galloping Ghost Arcade gaming team. The team members are fans of a large number of fighting games, popular and obscure, but the vision of the game was to not rip those games off and give players something new. The original course of the project was rooted in realism, but Doc said the team had to ease up on the realism of some elements in the interest of gameplay.

As the game evolved, Doc said the team looked at the elements that caused the game to play out slowly, and made changes accordingly. The original vision of the game had characters playing very differently based on whether they were facing left or right to take advantage of the detailed filming process for Dark Presence. However, Doc noted the sides have become a little more balanced so the stance changes wouldn’t be as jarring for players.

Fighting game player and arcade scoring record holder BlondeBunny tests Dark Presence – GemuBaka photo

Doc said a lot of fine tuning has already taken place for the game. He said the team is trying to avoid “overdesigning” the game, making note of gaming’s massive casual audience. Still, many mechanics are in place to allow players to experience a deep fighting game as they dive into the finer details. As Doc said at Dark Presence Day, players can’t walk up and think they are playing Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat – Dark Presence is its own thing.

The process to the beta build was very gradual, as the developers walk a very fine line of speeding up the game as necessary, while still keeping in all of the frames that give the characters a smooth, yet realistic feel. Dark Presence has also honored its stance on featuring no projectiles, which Doc said has become commonplace for many 3D fighters, but is an incredibly rare approach for 2D fighters. Some characters do have a little bit of range, such as Kin Kade using his chains and hooks, but the closest thing to a projectile in Dark Presence is a ranged mind control stun move used by the game’s final boss, the Mind Master.

At the event, Jeremiah said every move in Dark Presence has a reason for being in the game. This philosophy was billed as the core idea of starting each character’s design. Thought was put into how the character’s normal attacks, special attacks and rage moves would differ not only between characters, but in the utility of a character’s overall moveset.

Doc added the characters are intentionally very diverse. He said it intentionally opposes an approach similar to Street Fighter, where, if you become familiar with Ryu, you gain at least a base familiarity with other “Shoto” characters such as Ken, etc., without much experimentation.

The characters even differ in how they build and use their rage meter. Veil builds meter using blade attacks, and can use half a meter to immediately cancel a move to continue a combo or safely interrupt a punishable attack. Kyla’s meter is broken into four parts and she can use segments to do a fast, long-range knee blade attack or cash in more meter for “bleed” properties that make her blades do more damage. Titan can only build his meter by using a risky taunt move, but doing it three times allows him to enter a rage mode where he temporarily gains more armor and damage on his already-powerful moves.

Gameplay photo from the December 2018 build of Dark Presence – GemuBaka photo

Dark Presence is intended to be arcade exclusive upfront, but Doc said considerations will eventually be made to see how the game can potentially appear on home systems. The proposition seemed iffy in the past, as, over the years, I’ve heard Doc comment on the multiple hard drives that store the games’ assets.

Even at this stage, there is a lot going on in Dark Presence. Following the 2018 Midwest Gaming Classic, a brief discussion was held on the consideration of bumping up the RAM of the hardware. If I remember correctly, the suggestion would boost the memory to 64GB running under the hood (if I’m wrong, the suggestion was 128GB – it was nearly a year ago, so cut this aging mind a little slack).

Most of the development time frame took place during the previous generation of consoles, so, I don’t want to completely shut down the possibility of a home version, but the game as intended would certainly make big demands of a home console’s hardware. At one point, I’ve also heard Doc say a “spin-off” game might be more suitable for a home console (this would again be during the previous console generation). Doc mentioned Dark Presence was originally pitched as a beat ’em up game as an homage to Double Dragon, so, there are certainly possibilities even though the team is 100 percent focused on the arcade release at this point in time.

Dark Presence has been showcased in its deluxe cabinet, but a smaller model has also been developed, and Doc said a kit version could possibly come following the game’s release. The deluxe cabinet will eventually feature tablet style input devices to display character and move information, USB slots to allow players to record data and earn in-game rewards and a slot to drop physical prizes to players if the arcade chooses to support the feature.

Cabinets are also slated to house a GPS device. Players can currently choose stages and their variants in the versus mode, but the GPS is proposed to recognize time and local weather to automatically present those stage variations as they match local conditions. Each stage has day and night variations, as well as differences for clear, rainy and snowy conditions.

The backgrounds and characters also reflect approximately 1,400 pages of story written by Doc to detail the events of Dark Presence and Conquering Light. Everything that takes place in Dark Presence is the result of Mind Master attacking a town in his bid for revenge for his parents’ deaths. Doc said the depth of the storyline won’t be necessary for players to enjoy the game, but they have shaped the reasons the characters are fighting, as well as their ending stories and how they interact with other characters.

Gameplay photo from the December 2018 build of Dark Presence – GemuBaka photo

Finishing moves still have not made their way into the beta build of Dark Presence, but, in my mind, that’s just fine as the current focus should be on getting the core fighting tightened up as much as possible. I haven’t discussed the game’s story with Doc for some time now, but the finishing moves have been filmed as cutscenes. In my previous discussion with Doc on the game’s story, it was pitched that each character will have three fatalities that can potentially be linked into one execution move. These cutscenes were filmed with both characters acting out the moves, which would result in 437 possible fatality strings that reflect the characters’ relations to each other – rivals will be more visceral with each other, but those with friendships and relations might be a little more hesitant to end one another’s lives.

Doc said, with the current focus on making the fighting right, the processes of adding blood effects, other animations, background effects, additional music and more is still down the road. Still, the beta made available at Dark Presence Day offered plenty to players as the game finally has a realistic potential to wrap up for production some time this year.

Getting my hands on the game, I do echo the sentiment that Dark Presence doesn’t play like most other fighters. The basics can be grasped within one or two matches, but button mashing will only get players so far.

There are still quick pokes and faster attacks at the characters’ disposals. Veil has fast pokes with the pole of his weapon, he has a decent sweep with his weapon and he has a pretty good jump kick. But these attacks are mostly to keep the opponent in check or knock them down to set up your next move. When you peel back the surface layer of Dark Presence, you learn that knowing WHEN to use any of your attacks – period – is one of the ultimate strategies in playing the game.

It’s probably not an apple-to-apple comparison, but the engagement in Dark Presence is something akin to the “feeling out” periods of a game like Koihime Enbu. Comparing Dark Presence to an anime fighter probably sounds insane, but, what I mean by this is that both players have a neutral back-and-forth, getting in those quick hits and short chain moves.

However, once a player slips up with a poor move choice, in Koihime Enbu, you get the critical “hougeki” counter hit that crumples the opponent and allows you to then unload for huge damage. Dark Presence doesn’t necessarily give you the crumple animation, but, the idea is the same. Sure, you could technically do your most damaging moves at any time in Dark Presence, but this comes at a risk as a lot of these can be snuffed out easily unless you are punishing a whiffed move. In the beta build of Dark Presence, the poking and setup game was recognized by the repeated players, and it wasn’t uncommon for a big move to not be done in a match until players were in their second life bar.

Gameplay photo from the December 2018 build of Dark Presence – GemuBaka photo

Building on this, “safety” is actually highlighted in Dark Presence to a very noticeable degree. While the faster, poking moves aren’t accented, heavier moves and special moves are given trails of light, sort of like in Soul Edge/Calibur. If the trail is white, these moves are safer to use, and the matchup will likely continue in neutral unless the player on defense has their range and timing completely on point to counter. However, if the trail is red, this move is unsafe on block. If your opponent chooses to do a move with a red trail and you block or avoid it, this is your “hougeki” moment to counter with the most vicious moves you have at your disposal.

I didn’t notice it until late at night after the stream was over and most people had left, but I could hear the game audio better by this point. The “safety” detail is so meticulous, I eventually noticed these move strings had a completely different and discernable sound effect for the final attack when it came out from the opponent.

Despite this notation, Dark Presence still has different categories of attacks, including high/low, overheads and unblockables, so it still keeps the game honest, and there is reason to give your stronger attacks a shot if you can keep the mix-up game going. From the move lists I’ve seen, the unblockables require a large amount of rage meter, so there are no common unblockables that I am aware of.

As Veil, I found I could mix up by using a neutral jump kick, which either hit the opponent for a knockdown and position reset or was blocked to keep the opponent on defense so I could use a follow-up tactic; I could use an overhead if the opponent decided to block low on wakeup; and I could use a pole sweep to catch an opponent for a knockdown and positioning if they blocked high. Veil’s back+2 attack was relatively safe and led into a combo string, which I could also cancel at the end if I had half a meter to double up the hits and damage. If the opponent read correctly and blocked, it kept the poking game going back and forth until one of us slipped up.

Dark Presence may feel like a game that “isn’t working” the first time you step up to bat, but, when you learn to play by its rules, it’s an intense matchup of fighting game basics. I had very few lopsided matchups playing against a couple of the arcade visitors that stuck with the game.

On that note, with Dark Presence missing its bells and whistles at this stage in development, it could stand to have some sort of supplemental material to help guide players into the nuances of the game. Limited information was printed onto move list cards for Midwest Gaming Classic, but, as it stands, the knowledge that mostly makes a player competitive is kept in the minds of a handful of people who have accessed the game.

This is mostly evident in casual play, and I no way mean that as a knock to casual fighting game players. These players have familiarity in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games, where jabs fly out in minimal frames and jumping is exaggerated to give air maneuvers a familiar utility. Dark Presence is more methodical and is overall much more grounded in its combat. This is likely why the game feels “slow” or “unresponsive” to this crowd as surveyed at the 2018 Midwest Gaming Classic.

I have personally followed the game for a decade, I’ve spoken to Doc multiple times about Dark Presence and I’ve had a hands-on experience with the game that few others can match. Because of this, I understand what the team is trying to do, and what Dark Presence offers at this time makes sense to me because I’ve long been privy to Doc’s vision of a fighting game. Obviously, other players in an arcade will likely be more than willing to help other players through the learning curve, but I’m hoping the game itself will offer information as the user interface develops so new players don’t immediately drop the game because they have different expectations of it. The tablet screens on the deluxe cabinet seem like a very proper outlet for this, but we’ve yet to see any additional information on those screens’ implementation.

The event also featured the debut of the single-player arcade mode, which featured the expected bouts against the cast of fighters, climaxing with the face-off against the dreaded Mind Master. This mode worked as expected, and, on my personal Twitch channel, I mobile streamed some single-player gameplay. The challenge was set – if someone could 1CC the game, they would win a statue of a character from the game. No one was able to collect, and the closest I came was in a 3CC play.

Before the event, I was able to see some work done on the CPU, and, at the time, the developers were using a breakdown of the character’s moves, and assigning values that determine how likely the CPU is to use a move based on their distance from the player. The majority of the CPU characters were challenging, but very reasonable to fight against. However, Trenton had just been fully implemented into the game, and, with only a short time for the developers to adjust, his CPU AI was absolutely brutal.

Trenton has a sliding kick that, during the event build, was insanely fast. On top of that, the slide allowed him to easily switch sides. Because of the separate left and right stances, this forced players to adjust their strategies on the fly, and it was seemingly a task few players could handle.

Mind Master’s very difficult AI is intentional by design, though, as he is very aggressive, quick and has very safe move strings that leave very little room for counters if he gets you cornered. He also has tricks like the aforementioned mind control move – Mind Master reaches forward and executes a moderately-ranged invisible attack that leaves the player stunned if they don’t block the move. It can be a frustrating move, but it is fairly telegraphed once the player knows what to look out for.

Overall, conquering the CPU in the arcade mode once again boiled down to knowing when to attack. Going through routines, the CPU was a bit more predictable over time than a human opponent, so players can learn to time certain attacks as the CPU approached for an attack or predict when the CPU would try to counter following blocked attacks. It’s a learning experience, as, on my first playthrough of the arcade mode, I had to continue 14 times. In this beta build, none of the character endings were intact, but it was still a worthwhile playthrough to see more of the roster’s possible moveset and learn some of the timing of your character’s most useful moves.

The event was very well attended, and it did gain attention through the Twitch stream. Those at the arcade seemed to respond to the game very well, but I have a feeling the repeat players were following the game just as I have been, meaning their expectations of the game were in line with the product presented to them. With a fair number of players on the machine, the event didn’t allow me much time to sit and have the cabinet to myself. I spent most of my time playing as Veil, but I think I would very much like to sink some time into learning Kin Kade to have a different playstyle, as well as a pocket character.

It’s too early to “review” Dark Presence, but, in beta form, it looks great, has a great fighting game mechanic foundation, and, most importantly, puts something out there that convincingly shows the game is on its way to being a finished product. It’s a game that is about 15 years in the making, but the dedication to the project by Galloping Ghost Productions is really showing. The game will theoretically only get better from this point as the characters get fine-tuned and the team starts applying polish to the overall package.

WHAT’S NEXT?
What is the next step for the game? Galloping Ghost Productions/Arcade will once again be on location at the Midwest Gaming Classic. This event runs from April 12-14, 2019, in downtown Milwaukee, and Dark Presence will be a huge focus for the company at the event. Of course, I’ll be attending the event once again, documenting the progress made on Dark Presence, as well as everything happening at the retro gaming event.

On a personal level – thanks again to Doc and everyone with Galloping Ghost Productions and Arcade over the years. It’s been a fun ride seeing the game through, and I wish the team the best of luck on its eventual release.