What happens when you combine Cuphead, ragtime music, and Dark Souls? Why, you get Cupsouls, a 64-bit parody. No really, there's a mashup video from the 64 Bits YouTube outlet that combines the aesthetic of Studio MDHR's Cuphead with the unforgiving nature of From Software's Dark Souls, and it's fantastic.
The minute and a half video posted up over on the 64 Bit channel is a pure delight. Game journalists have regularly been comparing Cuphead to Dark Souls -- even though the two games are absolutely nothing alike, beyond having epic difficulty -- but the gaming community took the comparisons literally and now we have a mashup video featuring a look at two doomed knights attempting to battle their way through the villains from the Dark Souls trilogy turned into 1930s style cartoon caricatures. It's brilliant.
We see a couple of the Eldritch-style warrior abominations in the beginning, with a 2-vs-2 fight against some deformed bronze warriors and the two hero characters. The animations here are quite astounding, not only capturing some of the moves and mechanics from the original Dark Souls, but also managing to translate them into the bob-and-weave animations that saw the characters in Cuphead rhythmically bounce to the music.
The two main characters shoot lightning bolts and fireballs at the enemies, while the background manages to capture the dire-Gothic atmosphere that From Software's titles are renown for.
Other bosses like the spider/scorpion is given a classy makeover, with macabre jewelry around her neck, high-heels on her eight legs and a prickly, folded umbrella to match. It's rather obvious that this is a nod to the one mermaid boss in Cuphead near the end of the game.
The barking wolf that eventually transforms into a giant beast with a sword in its mouth under a full moon is easily one of the more impressive feats of animation featured in the video.
But they the team at 64 Bits didn't stop there.
A mockup of the overworld was created, using the same isometric navigation as Cuphead. What's neat here isn't just how it looks but how it sounds. You have a crow perched atop a crumbling wall, cawing into the sky while a sobbing prisoner sticks their head out from one of the cells south of the heroes' position. A sullen soldier sits on a bench by a campfire with a sword sticking out of the wood. A barren tree sits by its lonesome at the edge of the corner tower. Despite the cheery colors and bright water-painting look, the atmosphere itself is drenched with the aesthetic dread that From Software managed to capture so well throughout the Dark Souls trilogy.
Unfortunately, this isn't a real game, but there are plenty of people who would probably pay an arm and a leg to get their hands on it if it were. Instead you can purchase Dark Souls or Cuphead separately for the respective platforms where the games are made available.
