Last Blade and Darkstalkers

More history on each than you can shake a stick at.

• Last Blade - My favorites? Yuki (a girl with a polearm), Kojiroh Sanada (a slain Samurai's twin sister who pretends to be her late brother) and Hibiki Takane (a slain swordmaker's daughter).
• Darkstalkers - My favorite? Morrigan the Succubus.

Two of my favorite 2d fighting games, I experienced Darkstalkers in arcades here in the States, but Last Blade I came across only while emulating the NEO GEO on my Pentium II 200MHz PC, and thereafter. Of the two, Last Blade is phenomenally superior, even to my beloved Samurai Shodown II.