Racketboy

Capcom’s Past, Present, & Future

During the 1990’s, Capcom fueled many of my game cravings with their two-dimensional beatemups such as the Street Fighter, Final Fight, and Darkstalkers series. Many critics complained that they milked the Street Fighter series too much, but in reality, Capcom tweaked their popular franchises to perfection while still developing some original fighting games on the side such as Red Earth/Warzard, Cyberbots, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Even though many of their games had many overlapping character gameplay mechanics (Ryu clones, anyone?), Capcom has introduced some innovative gimmicks such as combos, super combo meters, and parrying. The designers have also came up with some creative character designs over the years.



A great deal has happened in the gaming industry during the first seven years of the 21st century in terms of trends and innovation. During that same period, Capcom has transitioned well into the 3D action world and moving away from its dependance on fighting games.

At the same time, Capcom knows that their is still a retro scene with a heavy demand for high-quality two-dimensional fighters. The first sign of this realization is the development of the High-Definition remake of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

While keeping these developments in mind and hearing some recent announcements and comments from Capcom staff, it is interesting to see where Capcom is going the 2D fighting genre.

More High-Definition Remakes

First of all, with the enthusiastic buzz going around the net after seeing the new High Definition Street Fighter sprites, it is no surprise that talks of further HD remakes has already started. SF HD Remix producer Rey Jimenez has already commented on the idea of similar projects in the future,

“The chances of this kind of treatment (“HD Remix”) being done on another Street Fighter game will depend on how SF HD Remix does…. There have been many comments on why were not doing SFIII instead. This is the first time were doing something like this and we wanted to give a graphical improvement to the oldest, but best title. And thats Super Turbo in our opinion. Also, theres just a huge amount of frames in SFIII, much more so that Super Turbo. Trying to take that on for our first project such as this would be like jumping into the deep end of a pool when you’re just learning to swim.” (source 1, source 2)

I don’t think there is much of a doubt that this first HD Remix will sell well on the XBox Live Arcade and Playstaion Store, so simple logic tells us that another remake will be on the way as well. Now the question is, which one?

Taking the “oldest, but best” reasoning that Jimenez used, the next logical installment would be the Street Fighter Alpha series. The most popular in the series is obviously the third as it boasts a very large character roster. However, because of the variety of characters, this would prove to be quite a challenging task for the artists at Udon. On the other side of the spectrum, the original Alpha title would be very manageable (less characters that SSF2T), but it would be missing many popular characters such as Sakura and Rolento. Perhaps my personal favorite, Street Fighter Alpha 2 would be the best candidate as it has the best balance of characters and simplicity. But I can guarantee if Capcom did remake SFA or SFA2 first, there would be a great outcry that Alpha 3 wasn’t tackled.

The next logical choice would be the Darkstalkers series (Udon already has developed Darkstalkers comics as well). While not as popular as the Street Fighter series, it does have a number of fans and has a fantastic artistic style that I think would succeed on XBLA and the PS3. As I mentioned a while back in my Franchises That Deserve A Resurrection article, I would personally love to see this as a HD remake and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Beyond the Alpha and Darkstalkers series, it would be interesting to see how far Capcom could take this trend. How obscure are they willing to go? They have a number of quirky fighters (and other two-dimensional classics) out there in their back catalog, but many may not be worth all the effort? (Which franchises would you like to see remade?)

A Brand-New 2D Fighting Franchise

I know we have seen rumors about Street Fighter 4 and DC Comics vs Street Fighter, but I couldn’t help but take them with a grain of salt. However, Capcom has a teaser site up that declares (translated from Kanji)…

“For the first time in three years, an original Capcom 2D fighting game… Coming Soon!”

After reading the word “original”, I initially thought of a brand new set of characters, storyline, and such, but then I looked at it again and saw the “three years” part, and had to think twice. According to my memory, the last completely original 2D fighting game that Capcom published is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which was released in 1999 (eight years ago). So I did some digging around in Wikipedia and it seems that Capcom’s last 2D fighter was indeed released in 2004 (three years ago), but was none other than Capcom Fighting Evolution. Evolution was notorious for being quickly slapped together and being about as un-original as can be.

However, I would like to think that after the mediocre success of their last few mashup games, Capcom realizes that they will need to go back to creating original content that is highly polished in order to be successful.

Even though there haven’t been a lot of 2D fighters released in the 21st century, Capcom has been able to sit back and observe some other developers put a newer spin on the 2D brawler from Sammy’s well-known Guilty Gear series or lesser-known, but impressively beautiful Battle Fantasia. The interesting thing about these two fighters is that they are developed by Arc System Works. Of course this is just a rumor at this point, but I have heard rumblings that Capcom might actually be teaming up with Arc System Works to develop the next Street Fighter game (or whatever the next project is). With Capcom’s intellectual property and Arc technical skill, we could witness a truly fantastic fighter in the near future.

Anyway, whether Capcom does the project themselves or hands off some of the duties to someone else, it is exciting to think of the possibilities. There is already an interesting discussion going on in the forum about what everyone would like to see in this new title. Here are just a few ideas…

• Simple fighting system that rewards practice and dedication but that is easy enough for anyone to pick up and have fun.
• Single-player missions for each and every character that reveal their personal story arch through the overall game.
• 30FPS, High Definition graphics resulting in a comic-book setting in motion
• Rather than using sprites, or even polygons, I’d like to see a fighter that uses vector art and a vector engine.
• Multiple, dynamic background for each character
• Awe-inspiring super combos

Needless to say, I will be keeping a close tab on Capcom’s developments over the next few months (and years) and will be eager to see what they have up their sleeves. The 2D fighting genre may be next-to-dead in the eyes of the mainstream gaming world, but there are some exciting things ahead.