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‘Dark Souls’ and ‘Cuphead’ mash-up is a masochist’s dream game

Gabe Gurwin
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64 Bits - Cupsouls (Dark Souls animated like Cuphead)
Praise the sun and curse your controller. The Dark Souls series — and its first game in particular — are considered to be among the hardest games of the last decade, with brutal boss fights, an unforgiving checkpoint system, and a complex animation-driven combat system. But StudioMDHR’s run-and-gun shooter Cuphead gives Dark Souls a run for its money, and the immensely talented team at 64 Bits imagined what the two games would look like combined together.

Specifically, 64 Bits showed what the Dark Souls games would look like if they were animated in the classic style of Cuphead, and the result has us hoping the game becomes a reality in the future. We see the player attempting to take down Ornstein and Smough using lightning bolt attacks from his fingertips, and Sif, the Great Grey Wolf, transforms from an adorable woodland creature into a vicious beast carrying a sword in its mouth.

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Perhaps our favorite boss fight included in the video is High Lord Wolnir from Dark Souls III. The massive creature’s wristbands can be seen on each arm, and it vomits toxic gas.

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64 Bits even created the game’s bonfires and environments using a top-down perspective similar to Cuphead‘s overworld, as well as chase sequences which utilize an isometric view. Naturally, the two adventures are eventually squashed, resulting in the classic “you died’ message displaying on the screen. Anyone who has ever played the Dark Souls series or Bloodborne is quite familiar with these two words, and likely cursed at their television when they saw them appear.

This actually isn’t the first time we’ve seen Dark Souls make the jump to 2D. To promote 2016’s Dark Souls III, Bandai Namco released a mobile endless-runner game called Slashy Souls. Unlike the game on which it is based, it received horrendous reviews. Still, we’d love to see a proper side-scrolling game in the series at some point. The closest thing we have right now is Ska Studios’ Salt and Sanctuary, which uses a similar combined currency and experience system, as well as open-ended environments and brutal bosses.

Cuphead is available now for Xbox One and PC. Dark Souls III is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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