Capcom Fighting Collection’s success will pave way for more collections

Devilotte with her underlings and you probably will never get to play as her in Capcom Fighting Collection

Capcom Fighting Collection is almost upon us, with the usual marketing heads and Internet influencers having early access codes to showcase and market the title for you. In effect, you’d get the same experience from watching captured footage from a CPS2 arcade board, or just random Fightcade streams. There’s no reason to assume the Collection won’t have equally as competent emulation as what you have access to now. This makes the Fighting Collection a nice collection for arcade purists for sure, and online for some of the games is nice, but the reality of competition is that you can already play all the games in this collection in the aforementioned Fightcade, or FC for short. Sure, it’s illegal to download ROM files and all that, but again, not many really give a damn. As these are direct ports of the arcade games, Capcom is fighting their own shadow here. Not all games have online in the Fighting Collection, something FC provides, and if they’re raw arcade ports, they lack options and additions some titles got with their home ports. For example, Cyberbots had three additional playable characters, Chiyomaru Kagura, Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IX (a fan favourite), and SHADE, that weren’t accessible in the arcade original. They also added full-voiced dialogues to the game. If you’d be going with the Saturn port of the game, you’d get a nearly arcade-perfect port, something Capcom had a knack for doing for the Saturn. Few cut frames of animation here or there because the hardware is a fair trade in exchange for more content and voices. We may disagree on this, but seeing Capcom already has done all this work for the previous port, there should be no reason to have their subcontractor do any less than their best to match up against these older ports. Of course, arcade perfection will be used as an excuse and some will buy it. Capcom has already made their money on these arcade games though. CPS2 encryption wasn’t broken until the millennium had changed, and at that point, Capcom had moved on from the system and wasn’t making profits off of them.

 

Shuhei Matsumoto had an interview with John Carson of Gameinformer about Capcom Fighting Collection, which of course serves more as a PR fluff than anything else. Though not just for the customer, but also for the industry as well. While fans have seen this collection more as a Darkstalkers collection with some other games thrown in, the reality seems to be that KOBUTA and MUUMUU, long-time programmers at Capcom, finally wanted Warzard/Red Earth ported to home consoles. Matsumoto confirms that the versions will be arcade ports and specifies that they’ll be versions used in tournaments. While it is nice to see these titles preserved for modern consoles, the fact that emulation and gaming archiving scenes have already done that. All these versions, and many others of these titles, have already been preserved for future generations. It may be through emulation, that has been more of a necessity than anything else. Game companies themselves have been notoriously bad at archiving their own code and artwork, something that Sega is infamously bad at; they’ve lost all the masters and source codes for Saturn games. This is why all Saturn games’ ports, like Princess Crown on the PSP, are running through Saturn emulation. Emulation which isn’t exactly accurate still. Saturn’s architecture wasn’t exactly orthodox and is a challenge to tackle properly. While we can discuss whether or not emulation is a proper contender against an official product, the question of how these have been ported to modern systems does make it relevant. If these are running on an emulator, then the comparisons should be completely relevant. If they’re proper ports made to run on modern hardware, then we should give them all the support we want. I’m guessing all the games in Fighting Collection will run through emulation, so in practice, there shouldn’t be any difference in you choosing between Fighcade and Fighting Collection; you’re getting the same shit anyway, except FC can update its emulators for even more accurate results.

 

Matsumoto: I genuinely want these titles to be played once again on current gen consoles. I also want people who may have seen them but never had the chance to play them to get this opportunity. That said, we do not think that this will necessarily increase the possibility of these series being revived.

This quote also damns the whole Capcom Test, an old thing they’ve done and which I discussed two posts ago. Matsumoto lays it down nice and flat, something that game companies don’t really like to do. Transparency is a positive thing and grows trust with the customer, but that also means competition sees what you’re doing. Take the quote as it is; game series will not see a revival from you buying Collections. This will, at best, see Capcom putting out more collections. A few years ago I went through Capcom’s Investors report, which mentioned the revival old of IPs. This is the route they’re going with it, packaging old ROMs with emulators. Things like Mega Man 11 and Street Fighter IV were only possible due to these games having an internal champion that took it upon themselves to see pitch the title and take all the heavy glory. These games may make or break them. The future of old Capcom IPs is a zombie state in collections of all sorts, repackaged lovingly with bare-bones ports with bells and whistles added to them via picture galleries (of artwork you can track down on the Internet in higher quality thanks to scanners [I doubt there’s going to be much new content in this regard]) and online play (which is already provided by emulators that are probably more accurate than what Capcom is packing in.)

Old fans and customers had hoped for new entries in long-sleeping IPs, but ‘lo, just pay for ROMs and emulators.

This isn’t bashing Capcom or telling you not to buy the collection. This is more about whether or not Capcom is giving you any better options than what is currently available for all, piracy or not. Capcom could take some actions if they wished to do so, but that might sour the relationship with the hardcore fighting game fanatics that play these games all day around. This barebones collection is for the people who want to play certain titles online in an official capacity, Capcom enthusiasts, and new fans who just can’t be arsed to track down the proper ROM file and an emulator. Capcom’s fighting an uphill battle against an enemy of their own making of sorts, and with the promise of this Collection not affecting any future game developments and being just the raw arcade ROMs with their usual unrealistically high expectations for sales numbers, all this is so goddamn awkward. The Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, while admirable in scope in most cases, suffered from games stuttering, game dropping inputs, input delays, bad online code, the game volume having issues, and stuff like that. There’s no promise of Capcom, or their subcontractor, making things any better, except for online play. That’s what the talking heads and PR always seem to go towards nowadays and how online play has to be 10/10. There’s never a moment given that the games themselves need to be more than what’s already out there, especially when you can go for a better online play for all these titles now with FC and other alternatives.

What is the supposed reason for this Collection to even be? Maybe people will buy it and play and for an hour or two, then move onwards to something else, because that’s how things just seem to work nowadays. Hardcore fighting game players probably will throw in the money and never even touch the game because Fighcade exists. I’ll probably buy it just to get a legitimate version of Red Earth to play at home. That’s as good a reason as any. Putting this kind of thing together probably is relatively cheap, and can give support for future Collections as well as bring in some cash into Capcom’s coffer. If this Collection’s core reason to exist is to celebrate Capcom’s fighting game history, it’s not doing so well. While I’d like to see Capcom doing collections of games that haven’t seen wider ports from the original arcade and one-console-ports, that might not be the most sensible in terms of marketing and sales. Bolting all these one-time titles with Darkstalkers is a good move, something they probably could replicate by using the clout Rival Schools has among Capcom fans and throwing in Star Gladiator games and Kikaioh to form a theoretical Capcom 3D Fighting Collection. Power Stone has its own collection on the PSP already, which honestly is superior to the original games in many ways. It having an anime and all other stuff might just make the Capcom executive veterans nostalgic enough to try to put it out as a digital-only upscale for Steam. I’m eager to see what’s it gonna be when the game launches tomorrow, and despite all the perceived negativity I have here, there’s always a slimmer of hope its (hopeful) success just might give Capcom some ideas to try out something else that isn’t Street Fighter when it comes to fighting games. That’s a one-in-a-million chance though, so don’t rely on it.

The CAPCOM Test Collection

The Capcom Test is an old term dating back to the 1990s, though the practice probably dates well into the 1980s when Capcom was becoming an arcade powerhouse. Capcom used to rent yellow arcade boards to arcade operators for a time to test the game among consumers and to encourage the operator to make a full purchase of the arcade title. With consoles, this had to change, especially with the death of rental stores. Now the method is to put out a collection or a limited-budget production title, like the numerous Darkstalkers collections, to see if sales would be generated to ensure a new, higher-budget title. Often the sales number and the revenue these Test games have to make is unrealistically high, as Capcom moved towards a high budget, high-revenue model with their mainline games since the early 2000s. Personally, I would put the shift starting from the original Resident Evil to Devil May Cry 2. DMC2 was developed by an ex-arcade development team that was out of their depth in making a console game of this calibre. It is a lynchpin game, where Capcom would slowly, but surely, move their focus further on bigger-than-life titles with grandiose visuals. By all means, titles like Monster Hunter were part of this, as the franchise had grown bigger and bigger in terms of how grandiose it is despite the play part subdued. Hell, certain elements have been completely excised from Monster Hunter World. There has also been a further focus on the framing story sequences, which have slowed Capcom games down quite a lot. Mega Man is a good indicator of how Capcom sways. Aside from Mega Man 11, things have been very quiet, baiting with nostalgia via licensing.

The very recently announced Capcom Fighting Collection is, by all means, a Capcom Test. Social Media has people asking others to buy the game as it is seen as a Test for Darkstalkers series, a series that has already had more Tests than most other franchises. While yours truly is a fan of the series and would love to see a new entry, I also highly doubt this collection will yield any positive results for the fans. Capcom often has unreasonably high expectations of their titles, as any title is more or less expected to make Resident Evil or Monster Hunter tier revenue. That is not going to happen, as there is a finite amount of money the consumers can shell out and Capcom’s competition is harsh. Street Fighter 6, which got a teaser, too, did not exactly lit the audience. Simply displaying a fujoshi’s wet dream Ryu in RE Engine is not enough to make out what the game will be like. Sure, most people who have been in the arcades or given a glance at the fighting game scene know how a Street Fighter generally functions, but as usual, the core audience wants and needs to see and know more.

Would probably do good to showcase what’s been talked about

This Collection probably is not testing just Darkstalkers in a vacuum. While there is an obligatory Street Fighter II thrown in there, the rest of the titles are peculiar. Warzard/Red Earth is a CPS-3 system game that has not seen a homeport until now. Should’ve included all three Street Fighter III games while they were at it. Cyberbots is a cult game with little to no audience or live scene. Pocket Fighters is mostly a throwaway, it is not going to make any ends or means. What is peculiar about this collection is that it only has 2D fighting games. There is no Rival Schools, Star Gladiator, Power Stone or Tech Romancer. Not even a word is being whispered about Street Fighter EX titles in a collection, and I am sure Arika, as the developer of the games and owner of the series original originals, would be willing to cooperate. The reality probably is that this is a reasonable budget title for Capcom to test waters whether or not there is an audience for a new fighting game to go alongside Street Fighter but yet is distinctly different in visual and style. Darkstalkers still retains a very unique look, with the whole Western cartoon animation thing going on with its Universal Horror monster closet, while Cyberbots is strong mechanical mayhem to a tee. Red Earth is deeply rooted to its character growth system and will offer only a limited interest due to its low number of four playable characters. However, I believe this is the only way we would have ever got Red Earth ported; as a port of a collection.

Nevertheless, the styling is clear; a standard and safe Street Fighter II fair, a horror fighter, an SF mecha fighter, and a fantasy-themed fighter. All titles are going to use rollback netcode, so at least online play should be nice and nippy. If I were somebody at Capcom looking whether or not to greenlight a new project based on one of these games, I would have a line of code that would record how many hours each of the games are played to see what series, and what iteration in case of Darkstalkers, is the most popular and go with that. For better or worse, statistics still rule.

Maybe we’ll get at least a Capcom 3D Fighting Game Collection if this one sells reasonably to justify porting their 3D fighting games to modern platforms. I

The other side of the coin is that we are on Mega Man‘s 35th anniversary year as well. We have yet to see any kind of title being announced. Sure, it’s late February and there is a lot of year left, but there is not much Capcom can do in regards of collections. The latest Collections are not very old and are still in circulation, so putting out a new one wouldn’t be the best move to pull. Sure, something like Mega Man Legends collection would be nifty, but that’d also put the lens on the cancelled Mega Man Legends 3, and that’s something that probably salted the ground with Mega Man quite a lot. Mega Man is the other side of the coin due to how it depicts Capcom’s priorities. The best we can expect is a game during the Blue Bomber’s 40th anniversary. I honestly don’t expect a full-fledged Mega Man game on our shelves in the next five years.

There is no definitive way to say whether or not past Capcom Tests have been successful. When it comes to arcade games, we definitely can see how certain games floated to the top and became the cream of Capcom history. We can mostly point to Darkstalkers as a prime example of how the Capcom Test has flunked a series. I would say that the same can be appointed to the Mega Man series, which is now in the mobile game hell with Mega Man X DiVE. However, looking at a certain lack of titles that have come from Capcom’s collections as of late, chances are that even if the Fighting Game Collection sells, the hopes for new Darkstalkers should not be raised. Vote with your wallet and showcase the game, if you want to make your voice heard.

Though there’s always the question if modern Capcom can actually produce a new fighting game that isn’t a hyper-realistic million-dollar piece. All this sounds nice, but seeing how Capcom is doubling down on making the most Hollywood-like top-tier graphics experience with their RE Engine, the question that has to be asked is whether or not there is anyone who could head a cartoony horror fighter. Darkstalkers is very much a cartoony fighter with bright colours despite its motif. While Darkstalkers themselves are serious things. While the story hardly comes through the games themselves, their background is rich and gives all of the more than just that one shade of blood red. There’s whole mythology you can only see in sourcebooks. While the story and the result of these matches were equally as serious, the animations were always tightly knit to the Tom and Jerry kind of gag animation. You could cut your opponent open mid-fight, but he’d just flip back together and get up. It’s tons of fun, and in my older days, I’ve slowly come to appreciate the craftsmanship the series has in terms of animation over titles like Street Fighter III and King of Fighters XIII. If Capcom would be making a new entry, I hope it’ll be colourful fun, filled with cartoony gore. I hope my fears are crushed and Capcom can actually rip themselves off from sticking to either anime or hyper-realism.

The second bit is that Darkstalkers is known to be a hard as hell game to get into. While the first and the second game are relatively easy and simple, that’s only by comparison to modern mechanics in fighting games. Then you have Darkstalkers 3, or Vampire Saviour, a game that has people who want to get into it, and people who have played it for good two decades or so. There’s very little middle-ground when it comes to skill ceilings. The game’s speed is still unmatched, and the mostly polished mechanics make a game that’s very hard to get into. Sure, there are a few bullshit regulations and rules on how some of the mechanics work and Dark Force is utterly useless with some characters, but those mostly add to the meta-skills the player has to learn. It’s easy to say that Guilty Gear is a poster boy for having a gimmick with each character, but Darkstalkers did that first by having the first character to airdash. One character in the original game’s cast could airdash as we think it nowadays, the others couldn’t. Sure, Morrigan’s forward dash would actually lift her off from the ground, but that’s not the same in function. Other characters have long hops that force them into an aerial state. All this is to say that while the very core basic walking might’ve been shared with all characters, characters would also have different ways to do more advanced movements, like dashing forwards or hopping or just disappearing for a moment while sliding forwards. I take that back, actually. Guilty Gear is still the poster boy for gimmick characters, Darkstalkers has characters that are built around certain unique options only accessible to a single or limited number of characters.

In the modern environment, where eSports is a thing and has to drive sales, I can’t see Capcom putting an effort into making a game that has a high learning curve which is also further affected by each character in a heavier manner than in Street Fighter or King of Fighters. Guilty Gear mostly has bullshit single-character mechanics that might as well be a whole different genre. I can still hear Jack-O playing tower defense in my head. Heavily in-depth and complex fighting games don’t seem to make good sales or nice eSports titles, especially if the game’s emphasis is blitz-speed with no pause of any sort for Super Moves. The cartoony animation has to carry that wow factor. Perhaps it’d be better if Capcom would make a new Cyberbots instead. Their realistic approach could work very well for that game, and there has been a serious lack of quality robot fighting games as of late. Alternatively, a new Red Earth title could emphasize player-build characters through an easy interface with expanded RPG-like growth mechanics and elements thrown in, but that’d be effectively Soul Calibur. 

I’ll most likely be picking up this collection on launch day just to be able to play a legitimate copy of Red Earth without resorting to emulation. That’s a sticking point with some, seeing this collection moot because all the titles innit can be played through Fightcade. While an option, emulation doesn’t really showcase Capcom what the customers would like to have as it doesn’t show up in their revenue tape. In a sorted twisted sense, it can also show that people are completely fine playing the old games over and over again. All Capcom needs to do is to release a new collection every decade or so to test the waters. We’ve been through this a few times already. That’s kinda sad innit. Here we are, getting a collection of games we’ve played tons already throughout the years, just to test waters with if Capcom might want to make more money in making a new entry. 

Capcom fans are weird beings. On one hand, the fans want new entries for their old games. On another, there’s always a want for something new. It’s just Capcom wants to test first if there are enough existing fans to justify making a new entry. God only knows how the hell Capcom ever manages to produce new IPs, but they really need to get on that boat too in the near future.

Mega Man Legends Series Homepage image gallery

Capcom Japan used to run their website like they were fans of their own games. Contrast this to whatever modern corporate website you have now that is largely impersonal and doesn’t give you anything but the minimum. Certainly, you can still find businesses running websites that want to approach you as a person and as a fan, like Falcom’s in most cases, but more often than not they’ve become cold. Capcom’s http://www.capcom.co.jp/newproducts/consumer/dash, or Mega Man Legends Series’ Homepage, used to be a website that I visited numerous times during the first tens after stumbling upon it, but nowadays that link goes directly to a 404 error site. Luckily, someone managed to use the Waybackmachine to archive the site multiple times, but as with usual, a number of the images have their hyperlinks dead.

Seeing as I started my hobby of saving a lot of images from the Internet in case sites or users would vanish, this Mega Man Legends page was probably my first attempt at archiving images. Needless to say, a lot of images without their proper content are jarring, but gladly text is easier to archive than images. This post contains all the most relevant images regarding illustrations and similar stuff, with marketing material and such still being mostly available at Waybackmachine.

Battle Network’s near perfect combat

Mega Man Battle Network is known for its unique battle system that hasn’t been replicated outside its sequel series, the Lego Ninjago: Spinjitzu Smash Flash games, with one of them outright ripping sprites for testing purposes, and to a lesser extent in One Step From Eden. All these mentioned titles don’t really replicate the polish Battle Network had, mostly because the team went through numerous iterations during the first game’s development and managed to polish it up in the second and third game. The three last games in the main series sadly don’t do justice to the combat system, and it’s all because Battle Network‘s combat system maintains a very delicate balance that’s very easy to break in terms how well it works. Think of the many versions of Tetris that change the shapes and number of tiles per shape, and you get the gist of it.

A standard field layout, with red being the player side and blue the enemy side

At the base of the Battle Network combat experience lays two elements; movement and resources. As every game’s battlefield is a grid of 3×6 panels, most often initially split as 3×3 for player and opponents, movement becomes impossibly crucial. The 3×3 area is a combination of multiple factors, one being that it is both claustrophobic and roomy enough to allow swift motion from one panel to another. Motion between panels is animated through a zip, where the characters sort of teleport between the panels. While you could have a character jumping or running, or just doing away with the animation, the zipping has a small frame of animation that deactivates and actives the hitboxes on each panel.

Timing becomes incredibly important, as in some games successfully avoiding enemy attacks might require high-level of movement management, though rarely frame accurate. Because of this the play often gets hectic as the player is required to navigate panels, or whole lines and rows of panels, to which opponents’ attacks land all the while trying to land your own hits. The 3×3 panel layout is perfect for this, as it keeps the area wide enough that going from one corner to another requires moving four panel’s distance, as there is no moving in angles. It allows wide enough variety in enemy attack patterns as well as options to escape to enforce quick movements without necessitating for the player to move too far. Perhaps it’d be better to showcase a video, and then go deeper why the system works the best in its most famous form.

A very simple, very easy battle, where the player still has to mind the Mettaur and Ghost’s movements. Instead of using Battle Chips, he chooses to delete the Mettaur by Buster. While doing this, he blocks the Ghost’s attack, in which it moves in front of the player and licks him, By positioning in front of the Mettaur, the Ghost has to retreat. Longplays are a nice way to grab a small segment and just embed from a certain timecode onwards.

4×4, the layout One Step From Eden uses is one panel line and row too big, as traversing the area becomes too large for fast-paced action. Even if movement speed was raised, it’d still be an extra panel to traverse Not only that but the balance breaks as there is no longer a central panel. All attack patterns can become far too widespread. 2×2 would be too small on the other hand and too limiting in every sense, which is the case with Mega Man Star Force, as it effectively butchered the play by limiting the player to one row of movement while enemies have 5×3 area to cover. Moving only left and right is not nearly as engaging as full-range of movement. One of the main issues that end up popping up also from a larger grid stems from the player’s need to scan a much wider area for enemy action. With 3×6 you have large enough space to keep an eye on everything that’s happening, yet with larger fields require splitting attention due to wider spread space, enemy patterns and landing attacks. The issue is inverse in smaller grids, where you end up having less space to keep an eye, which also has to simplify the patterns.

While One Step From Eden flows well, it’s hampered by its expanded field

The full range of movement there is with the caveat that the player can only move in X or Y axis in Battle Network. Allowing the player to move diagonally would break the balance, though in larger fields it might become a necessary addition. The 3×3 layout and up-down, left-right movement offers a balance between the player being able to effectively navigate all those safe zones while leaving the chances of player cornering himself by mistake or making bad judgement calls. 4×4 or larger does contain the same thing, but again that extra low and line build that safety margin too much, making balancing the attack patterns and movements that much more difficult.

The 3×3 panel is perfectly balanced to offer tile-based movement that isn’t too widespread or too tight. It’s an optimal solution.

All this of course can only be supported by the resources, which are aplenty. First is, of course, the selection of weaponry in form of Battle Chips, which go from single-row attacks to multi-panel X-shape shots. A standard Virus opponent often has only one form of attack and defence, though sometimes this defence is just moving. The Viruses are thus paired with other types that either compensate each other weaknesses or pose a challenge for the player in terms of panel navigation. Some Viruses have passive defences that must be circumvented in an indirect manner, some have none. For example, there is a Virus that has a shield in front of it that prevents direct damage from ahead and moves towards the player area. Once it reaches its area limit, it puts the shield on the player side and causes gradual damage via Poison. Early on the best method for the player to deal with this Virus is to use a Wide Sword, a close-range attack that does 1×3 area of damage in front of the player, the player being in the centre. Other times the player finds himself against a tree Virus that recovers HP faster than the player might be able to dish out due to the panels having a beneficial element. Thus, either cracking or literally burning the grass off from the panel the tree is standing of negates this effect.

Bosses often had extra shielding or similar gimmicks. Here, the player probably tries to limit the Boss’ movement through cracking the panels

Resources like these change how the player must meet the battles, at least until the player unlocks game-breaking combos and other fun post-game content. Combining action games’ fast movement, albeit in a more limited sense, to an RPG standard rock-paper-scissors Elemental system makes the resources an essential part of the play, and managing to design and develop these resources makes or breaks the whole system. Not only does the player have to have access to a wide variety of solutions to a single combat problem through the selection of Battle Chips, but also have them balanced so that these strategies must be changed from time to time.

The Battle Chips selection changes as the series grows, and many of the staples get dropped in favour of new Chips. This has caused numerous balance issues, as many high utility Chips are dropped in subsequent games and their replacements are not nearly as useful. While this forces the player to adopt new tactics for each game, the truth is that the selection of weaponry does determine how well the battles are fought, and how enjoyable the play ends up being. While there are a couple of hundred of listed Chips and their combined Program Advances, the majority of these Chips end up being copies of each other in different strength. This is of course to give the player chance to use the same family of Chips in stronger form as enemies become tougher and acquire more HP fat. This is another standard RPG mechanic though, much like how Final Fantasy has Fire, Fire 2 and Fire 3, so does Battle Network have Cannon, HiCannon and M(ega)Cannon.

The selection of these battle resources allows the players to express themselves and their favourite ways of battle. While others prefer the straightforward Cannons, others might aim for more damage with combinations of Chips. One method would be to use Area Steal, which takes one 1×3 area from the enemy side and turns it into area player can enter. This temporary steal deprives the opponent panels to move in and greatly expands the player’s movement options. This disrupts the opponent’s movement options while greatly increasing the player’s. Either side can, in effect, steal all of the opponent’s side bar the one they are standing on, causing what’s called an Area Lock. This is extremely useful in games where Battle Chips randomly hit enemy panels for damage multiple times. Area Locking an enemy to a single panel forces all the hits to concentrate on one panel, causing e.g. a hit worth of 80 repeating on one panel five times, causing total damage of 400. Add Chips that increase damage per hit, and the damage increases significantly.

Battle Network needs to limit access to these resources so that the player can’t have the perfect build all the time. This is realised first in making a Folder with a set limit of 30 Battle Chips. You can’t have less or more. By doing this, the player is forced to insert multiple different strategies into the Folder, often in a way where combinations of Chips can also work on their own, if necessary.

An example of similar Chips and Codes in a Folder

Secondly, all Chips have a letter code that limits what the player can choose in one go. Unless multiples of the same Chip is selected, no Code can be mixed and matched, outside the *-Code. For example, the player could have Cannon A and Cannon B or Cannon B and Bomb B, but not Cannon A and Bomb B. This locks the player from having all the strategies at his and at the same time but also introduces the chance of having only one Chip they could choose of they build their Folder without much thought. The amount of same Chips per Folder varies between games, with the first game allowing ten of the same, second game dropping this to four, third game rising it to five, and the sixth game introducing the idea of each Chip having a megabyte size, with larger Chips only be allowed a lower amount. Higher ranking Chips are more limited, with Giga Chips only allowed one entry per Folder.

Thirdly, the player can only access five Chips from his library via Custom screen at the start of a battle by the standard. The importance of having a Folder with large amounts of the same Chips, or same Code letter, becomes pressing depending on the player strategies. The player has to live with the selection the random number generator has given him until about ten seconds pass as dictated by Custom Gauge. At this point, the player can access the selection screen again, where he can choose another set of Chips, with the used one replaced with Chips from his Folder. The cycle between Custom screens is called a turn, though by standard a turn can last as long as the player wants. Under certain conditions, the Gauge can be fastened up or slowed down. In certain games, it becomes a puzzle element, where specific battles must be done under a turn limit and the Custom screen is opened automatically when the Gauge has filled up.

Custom Screen open at the beginning of a battle, with BN3’s Boss visible

The player can affect the number of Chips in their selection during the Custom screen by using the Add command rather than selecting any Chips. In the first game, it adds five more Chips to the Custom screen, with another use adding another five. This wasn’t the best system, as you’d lose all the additional Chips the turn you chose to use something. It wasn’t much fun. The second game introduced a change to the Add system, where the player had to sacrifice up to five Chips in the Custom screen to gain access to additional Chips. This Add system totalled to a maximum of ten, but the addition was permanent for the rest of the battle. This made the risk and reward already presented by the random choices as you might find it necessary to sacrifice stronger weaponry for a wider selection. It also expanded turn-by-turn options dramatically. The number of Chips available could be affected with outside effects, like Styles that changed the player’s element and weapons, but also via Customisation blocks that would become available in the third game. These ended up as the only options for the player to expand the selection, as the Add function was removed. However, this also removed the added risk and reward option, and further limited the maximum amount of chips from 10 to 8, drastically changing the nature and the balance of the battles themselves.

The balance in a combat system that heavily relies both on certain kind of spatial movement and a large variety of resources and conditions. The first game doesn’t exactly use the system the best, with everything being more or less unpolished. By the third game, the balance between damage output, method variety, hit patterns, additional conditions, panel elements and more extensive character customisation that affects all these directly made the balance stand on its tiptoes, but perhaps ultimately also showcased how well the developers understood it all.

The Navi Customizer from BN3 further expanded how the players could play and with what strategies

All these things have to tick in proper sync to work, something that the staff of the later games didn’t understand as well as the previous team. For example, removing the Add option might not seem an important decision, but it nevertheless favoured few types of approach more in character customisation and Folder building over others. Chip selection, or rather designing how the Chips would work is nothing short of do-or-die, and sadly from the fourth game onwards, the Battle Chips were never quite balanced, often teetering on practically useless to game-breaking on their own. Of course, the enemy selection had to be on par with this, which again became an object of inquiry as the games went on, with some enemy patterns being simply not fun. The system lends itself for challenge battles well enough, though it became questionable when Battle Network 5 introduced Liberation Mission, a combination of turn-based strategy with turn-limited battles. While others enjoyed the challenge they posed, its attempts to shake the combat experience by putting the player in the middle of the field, sandwiched by two enemy sides, didn’t work out all that well. These combat scenarios became janky and even more dependent on proper Chip selection that forced players to farm certain kinds of resources, putting far too high emphasize on the Chips themselves rather than having a combination of player’s action parts and collecting.

Some of the higher level player-VS-player battles showcase strategies that aren’t used all that much in single-player campaign, and they can end up being relatively boring to watch and slower-paced than in-game matches. Balancing the Chips selection between single and multiplayer play is rather hard, as some Chips ended up useful only in one area or the other

The system itself is nearly perfect. At its core, it’s something that only a video game can do, similar to Tetris. However, because it is reliant on how the resources are designed and managed, it is very easy to screw up. Despite the first and the last three games managing to screw up this balance nicely, the wide variety of Battle Chips and their combinations despite other system changes also means the players can and will find ways to cheese the system. As such, the best way to expand the system is not to change the absolute core of the system, that is the movement and the 3×6 grid, but to expand on resources and the ways all the combatants can make use of them.

This is probably one those things where Battle Network truly failed in its play. While most of the enemies were Viruses, majority of the standard Bosses didn’t utilise Battle Chips until later on. Instead, they all have their own gimmick and are designed around them. However, if the Bosses would’ve had similar access to at least a proper Folder of their own in addition to their specialised field, the games could’ve been a step more challenging as well as throwing a wrench to the player’s gears at times. This might’ve taken away from the uniqueness of each of the bosses, though evidently, developers agreed the Bosses should use Battle Chips at least to a limited amount.

Secondly is that most storyline End Bosses simply don’t conform to the established rules. They are largely inanimate and despite their hype, end up being lacklustre due them becoming an issue of hitting their weak point, which is often covered until certain phases. Incidentally, post-game Bosses end up being far more entertaining in their difficulty and methods, as they break the rules just enough to be unique all the while having all the same benefits most other characters, including the player’s, have on the field. Bass is probably the best example of this, as his level of strength is relative to the game he is in. Initially being covered by Dream Aura that requires 100HP worth of damage, Bass gains new patterns and strikes in each subsequent title relative to the overall balance and content of the game.

While BN3’s Bass BS isn’t the most difficult version of him, in many ways it is one of the more iconic ones. This Japanese voice-over here describes its attacks and a method to beat him. The battle here showcases some creative use of Battle Chips, as well as FolderBack, a Giga Chip that restores all used Battle Chips back to usable state. It happens to be the most broken Chip across the series

The system doesn’t lend itself to be modified and replicated in large fashion without a complete overhaul. Any change to the core requires a total change to effectively every part of the system to achieve a similar balance. This is one of the reasons why Battle Network didn’t spawn copycat series despite its popularity, as any game that might use a system derived from it would instantly be called out. Star Force tried to adapt some of the core mechanics, but it didn’t pan out all that well. Player movement is one of the most fun aspect of the system, and reducing it to one dimension made everything else having to compensate for this, which they can’t. The system was already robust in the first game, though unpolished. Be it by design or happy accident, this prevents similar iterations and alterations that something like Dragon Quest would lead to.

For better or worse, Mega Man Battle Network combat is still unique since nothing quite like it has turned up. Perhaps it’s better that way, as the system was already explored and almost broken under Capcom, and variations of it have not succeeded to the same level. This, combined with the whole thing not being to everyone’s taste, probably means we’ll never see it outside few oddities once in a decade until Capcom decides to re-release or remaster the Battle Network games. Here’s hoping for that Phantom of Network remake.

Another’s World

I can’t decide whether or not we live in an era where we are demanding authors’ and artists’ works to be untouched by outside forces, or we demand changes to these works for whatever reasons. I don’t really care either way, but the blog’s standpoint is that if a work is by one primary author, it should be left alone by external forces and be allowed to contest in the marketplace just as any. If the work is by a team effort, then it is subject to the hierarchy and decisions of that hierarchy, for better or worse. In video games, it’s rather common to see consumers demanding one of a game’s creator’s position to be the highest priority, that a game franchise should not continue because its perceived primary force is either in a bad position or abandoned. At the same, the same consumers keep consuming games that have the original teams long gone and don’t give a one damn about who’s in charge and what’s being done by whom.

Mega Man as a franchise is a great example of this. The first game’s original team effectively broke away, with only the core who wanted to do a sequel worked on the second game on their free time, and the third game had a producer who didn’t know what was going on so Keiji Inafune had to pull triple duty. The rest is history, with Inafune effectively being the only guy who worked on the first game and was coined as the Father of the franchise, until Mighty Number 9 hit the corner and the consumer opinion changed vastly. Still, the franchise has numerous games that have been worked by stupid amount of different people and some of the most acclaimed games have been developed by someone else other than Capcom, namely Minakuchi Engineering and Inti-Creates.

The Game Boy Mega Man titles, or Rockman World titles, were not developed by Capcom. Outside the second game, they were handled by Minakuchi Engineering, a game developer that mysteriously vanished around 2002. Due to developers going uncredited as part of branding and recognition, their website could only claim to have worked on over forty titles, including Mega Man X3. It wasn’t a practice to showcase who developed the game in the Japanese game industry, and as such none of the games until Mega Man Zero show any names or branding that would contradict Capcom. As far as the customers and the reviewers knew, the Game Boy games were developed by Capcom themselves. The second World game (I’ll just call the GB Mega Man games as World games from hereon) was developed by Japan System House, another dead developer, but one that has less favourable reputation. They later restructured into Biox Co., Ltd, and then into JSH Co, only to change back to Biox in 1997. GDRI has a list of titles confirmed they worked on.

We’ll never know the real reason why Capcom switched their developers for the World games few times around, but looking at the quality of World 2 game, it’s most likely that the sad quality of programming and designing was the main reason. The game was put into developed right after the first game and released five months later. Programming is one thing, but sound effects being completely off, sound being tinny hell and the whole package smelling like cheap chop job, it’s no wonder Capcom would turn back to Minakuchi Engineering. They became Capcom’s most important second team with Mega Man then, handling the rest of the Game Boy games, The Wily Wars and the aforementioned MMX3 before Inti-Creates took their spot. While World 3 is still about as uninspired as the previous games on the Game Boy, the fourth and fifth games have been praised for their quality and design, as well as taking some steps to try innovating with the franchise a bit.

I doubt anyone will contest me too eagerly if I claim Mega Man to be rather static franchise. For each series entry, there’s not a whole lot room for innovation as much as there is for improvement. Giving Mega Man a charged shot was more or less a natural evolution of ramping up his ready arsenal, with Rush being normal evolution of the Item Weapons. Giving Mega Man a a slide improved his mobility, but also allowed more complex stage designs and enemy patterns. Small changes like these seem that much more significant, when the core game play was effectively perfected on the first go. Understanding limitations and how to work with them isn’t anything special for original creators, as pretty much all of the changes Mega Man has seen in its franchise run are by from other than original creators. They’re also an example how someone else, like a third party developer, can understand the idea better than the originator, and understand the customer wants and needs that much better. Mega Man (World) 4 has two things that elevates this title above its three predecessors; Item Replicator is a way for t he player to gain items that would might want and need, alleviating the lack of resources with new type of resource in P-Chips. Collected Chips can be turned into Lives, different kind of restorative Tanks and so on. Item Replicator would go down as something that would appear in later games, like Mega Man 7. It’s a surprising major change, but not as major as the second improvement; proper cut-scenes with higher production values than most in the series. While Mega Man games have had introduction and ending sequences, in-game cutscenes have been rather sparse. World 4 had short, to the point scenes moving the game along in certain points. While nothing world changing for video games, Mega Man always asked for something like this, and after this the series would see far more of these story sequences, for better or worse. There are other small tweaks that change how the player has to approach the game, e.g. the charged shot now has a kickback that will mess with jump trajectories and can push Mega Man off a ledge.

Even a small thing like completely changing how the Stage Selection screen looks and functions gives a massive change in tone. Rather than presenting a static four faces (or the standard eight in NES games,) Mega Man (World 4) opted to use a selection wheel with the stage view underneath. This is one of those small improvements that stack upon each other, until few games later the you have completely different kind of game in your hands. The core of the game hasn’t been touched, but everything else has been improved in a way or another.

Minakuchi Engineering understood after their first take how Mega Man games are at their core play out, how the stages need to be structured to present the player a puzzle-like challenge that more often than not requires dexterity and action. Perhaps even better than Capcom did, as after World 4 Capcom was more or less gearing up for the SNES entries. The last portable hurrah for the original series of Game Boy games would end up being the best in the franchise, with Mega Man (World) 5 changing some of the series’ established structures more Capcom has done at any point in the franchise history to this point. If Capcom wanted to shake things up drastically, they’d make a new series. Minakuchi Engineering understood how Mega Man functioned and now they could go and break it.

World 5‘s largest change is straight on the box itself; Mega Man now had a rocket punch as his main charged weapon. Dr. Wily didn’t end up being the villain of the game and the robots you fought were aliens. While the game plays like a Mega Man game in two dimensions should, it wasn’t chained down to the small progression any more. The Mega Arm, or the Rock’n Arm, doesn’t function like other standard weaponry. With purchasable upgrade it can grab items and enemies, meaning you can launch it to an enemy and keep causing it extra damage it would otherwise not receive due to the invincibility flicker. The Arm also has to return after being launched, meaning the player has to mind themselves for that period when they can shoot anything. While on the surface this seems like standard small addition, in a Mega Man game it breaks the slow gradual change in design, and the same applies with the Special Weapons, which now have far more wildly different applications. Both World 4 and 5 have some stages that you can tackle through different paths, and NES games already introduced few select hidden rooms for items, but Minakuchi Engineering ramped this up, and Capcom ramped this up again in Mega Man 7. Hell, if you look things in proper light, you’ll see that Mega Man 7 was very much influenced by the Game Boy titles. Starts with four stages selectable at the start, hidden room galore, Item Replicator, Mega Man has access to a weaker Rocket Punch with his armour, more and more cutscenes and more attempts to break away from the established moulding.

This is applicable to whatever form of entertainment. As long as you have someone who understand the underlying functions and structure, the original creators/authors are not required. That’s a big caveat, but something that anyone willing could be able to pull off as long as they’re willing to learn the ropes. World 4 is like a safe bet, not shaking the boat and showcasing a well-made meal everyone can enjoy, though it won’t blow anyone’s taste buds. World 5‘s meal would be still as expected, but the new chef prepared it with ingredients and new preparations methods that heighten the taste and texture.

I can’t wait to see when will Konami finally produce a new Metal Gear game to see how the franchise will be handled. Give it five or six more years, the Japanese game industry seems to have a habit to let a franchise lay silent for a period after some kind of hard negative event has taken place. Nevertheless, perhaps a Mega Man -like game with the grabbing mechanics and all that which World 5 made itself so good would’ve been a better option. There are always more room for more 2D action games.

Capcom’ next year’s plans is to continue on the same path

Capcom’s yearly integrated report was out at the end of the quarterly year, so nab yourself a .pdf copy if you’d rather read it yourself. Otherwise, let’s see what this year’s report says and how the year has come to pass. Grab some snacks and a drink, this’ll be a doozy.

Right off the bat, the report states two thing; Monster Hunter World has been Capcom’s most successful game to date, though the state the number of shipped units rather than sold units. Shipped units just sounds better, as it always is a larger number. The claim for the game’s success is twofold; Globalisation and Digitalisation. The aim for Iceborne, the Ultimate or G expansion to the game, to push further sales. It should be noted that the two games are treated as two separate entities, as this sort of updated version of the base game has been the standard for Monster Hunter since the first game.

MHW made the series a global success. Despite 4U selling well on the 3DS, the truly wall-breaking moment was MHW. The game’s overseas sales ratio increased to 60% of total sales compared to previous 25%. Bulk of Iceborne’s sales are expected to be digital, and whatever data they gather from that will determine Capcom’s future plans. Considering how well the game has been doing on Steam alone, it’s probable that Capcom will push more of their games on digital frontier and cut down production of physical goods. This has been a trend for a while now, but this most likely will only matter for the Overseas markets, as Japanese markets still prefer physical goods over digital. If MHW was offered as a physical product for PCs without any ties to Steam, it’d sell just as well there.

The report starts properly after this, listing Capcom’s Capcom’s method of business and ideology. Capcom shows itself as Creator of entertainment culture that stimulate your senses. Bits like this should remind you that company indeed is Japanese. Their net sales for the end of the year, that is March 31st, was 82.9 billion yen. This is their main bread and butter, counting home video games, PC online, mobile titles and DLC. Their multimedia net sales, that is all the merch in books, toys etc, movies, their arcade games and Capcom’s own arcade centres, events and eSports, netted then 17.0 billion.

Here’s the kicker though; Capcom lists four of their major franchises next, the ones you should consider to be the essence of Capcom at this moment; Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Mega Man’s sales are listed, tho after the report Mega Man reached another million units sold. The sales numbers in respective order is, 42 million, 91 million, 54 million and 35 million, now 36. Fiscal year 2019’s biggest hits were, unsurprisingly, Devil May Cry 5 at 2.1 million units sold, REmake2 at 4.2 million and MHW at 4.5 .MHW is noted to be a catalog title, meaning it is a game that was published earlier and not during the fiscal year, showcasing that a game can continue to sell for a long damn time as long as it is available.

The core idea of Capcom’s Single Content, Multiple Usage is effectively effective franchising. It all starts with digital content and with a popular video game. The core of this digital content can be expanded to PC online gaming, via multiplayer modes or similar as well as create spinoff titles or additional tools, wallpapers or whatever other applications for mobile devices. The base concept of something like Resident Evil can be put into use in arcades by using the same world and characters in different pachislot games or similar arcade games. Other business section is major, as that mostly includes third and second parties using that core game to expand the amount of uses. Books, comics, character toys, events, tournaments, eSports, television shows and movies are all part of this extremely expansive Other Business section Capcom is not directly involved with in most cases. All this leads into creation of a new game, that will be used multiple times over. The importance is in having strong IPs that can be used multiple times, that the titles have global popularity to ensure that these franchised elements will sell (though if we’re completely honest, most of the franchised stuff Capcom puts out stays in Japan) and then you have the movies. It is probable that Capcom has the most games made movies out of. We can question their quality in many ways, but they still make money. Every time Street Fighter the Movie is shown on telly, Capcom gets about a million yen.

This method of using single content is nothing special in of itself, yet the whole movie business makes it a bit special. Konami, for example, has a very similar multimedia approach to their business, though they are rather separate in most cases. Konami can have a successful toy franchise going on, but no real game or other media of it. Capcom recognises their main point is the games, and they aim to make a mass-appealing game they can franchise further. This ideology probably permeates the game design at its core level, where designers at Capcom have to ask themselves How can this be used multiple times down the line? This also explains why certain IPs, despite being strong previously, have not appeared in any modern form outside ports, as they can’t be used multiple times nearly as easily.

This method of franchising is dependent on the core quality of the game, however. Capcom’s quality in games was all over the map during 00’s and early 10’s, but after some financial problems they’ve managed to level out with increasing sales. Their Operating Incopme is up 13.1% from last year, Margin is 1.1 point up, a slow but steady rise from 2016. Their net sales are 5.8% up, continuing the trend from 2015, where their sales dipped. It should be possible for Capcom to reach their 2014 level of sales during this next fiscal year. After the slump of net income from 2013, Capcom has been doing much better with 14.8% rise from last year, about triple the amount since 2014. Research and Development costs have gone down a bit, mostly thanks to establishing their new engines and streamlining development, but it is expected to rise next year. The balance of work in progress for games went down major 34%. This was gained by closing down overseas studios and release of games that requires lots of works, i.e. REmake2 and DMC5. This is interesting though; Capcom split its stocks 1:2 last fiscal year, meaning the payout was decreased, but dividends increased. They’ve been managing to pay out dividends 29 times in a row. More people may have access to stocks, but payout per stock is smaller. Might’ve been a good chance to jump into the bandwagon at that point. Return of Equity, a.k.a. the  measure of how effectively management is using a company’s assets to create profits, is up one point. Should be noted that it barely beat 2009, meaning ever since 2010 Capcom was in a rut and had to fight hard to get back up.

With WHO recognising gaming disorder, something I’ve covered few times already (it has no basis), Capcom has Sustainable Development Goals, effectively meaning Capcom wants to showcase themselves as a company that balances their own economic growth with the sustainability of the society. In short, Capcom is supposedly trying to showcase themselves as a company that would not take advantage of people with gaming disorder. EGS, Environmental, Social and Governance form EGS material issues that come in four sections; Securing and Training human resources, Promoting diversity, Development of Solid Relationship with Society, and Enhancement of Corporate Governance. This needs a bit breaking down, as EGD and the four spots mingle slightly. All this is according to UN’s goals, which Capcom wants to go by. Furthermore, Capcom is to continue their 2011 program of supporting educational themes whenever a classroom requests such, meaning that Capcom has a program that would educate students about video games and career opportunities. However, this is largely Japan-only, though with Capcom wanting to globalise themselves further, they might want to tackle most major schools around the world in some manner, and maybe even send e-mails to smaller schools around the globe, offering some assistance in game studies.

Capcom is tackling Environmental issues with the usual fashion, like changing old light bulbs to LEDs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and reducing paper resources by digitalisation. This has reduced costs, but also means that Capcom can showcase their push for further digital sales as part of ESG. Energy conservation will be their future goal.

For Social, Capcom is aiming to hire more non-Japanese employees and increase the number of women in management position, but an approach like this won’t serve well in of itself. All these people need to be competent in their work, as companies that will hire or kick up people into the higher up’s board for the sake of diversity does no good for the company itself. Whether or not this goal will be healthy on the long run will be seen. Forced diversity is not a solution, but that is the wind of the era. Capcom has been increasing the amount of women workers in their ranks, though in reality it shouldn’t matter what junk the employee has between their legs, just the quality of their work. It should be noted though that Capcom’s Relationship with Customers has a spot mentioning how they’ve monetised DLC without high-pressure microtransactions, something that a company like EA can’t say with all the lootboxes and whatnot. According to Capcom, games should be enjoyed for the entertainment value they provide with gameplay, not fir the thrills associated winning a lottery. Capcom intends to deliver core content for free for their games, with DLC being its own thing at a low cost. With their mobile games, they supposedly intent to continue have small as possible gacha elements. Localisation and culturalisation gets mentioned as well, and rather than talk about translation or localisation, Capcom wants to culturalise games so they’d be enjoyed in whatever locale. This sounds highly suspicious, but it also explain why mention of dragons got removed from Monster Hunter World in China.

Capcom is surprisingly effective when it comes to Relationship with the Regional Community, as they Capcom is involved with number of events in Japan, offering possibilities for cities and municipalities to make profit off of their own from these events and whatnot. This also doubles as an effect of Capcom getting their name out there to people who wouldn’t recognise it otherwise.

For Governance, Capcom has been increasing ratio of external directors and increased dialogue with the shareholders. Basically, Capcom wants to have more openness with their shareholders as well as be more transparent all around. Capcom even lists reasons why external directors have been selected, e.g. Masao Sato is expected to be able to contribute to the auditing and supervision of the Board of Directors via his experience and knowledge from serving the police administration. This is part of the whole “visible” governance, and we’re even given a third-party assessment of Capcom’s corporate governance. Capcom’s strength lies in capital efficiency and information disclosure, with Effectiveness being the lowest. This is pretty much as expected, as per the business culture Capcom resides in.

Rather surprisingly, Capcom has an increasing number of annual discussions regarding the market opinion. Whether or not these discussions with take true market opinion into count, or just what the gaming press wants the opinion to be, is wholly another question.

Regarding Capcom’s achievements for the year, there’s nothing much to cover. Their catalog titles i.e. older titles continued to sell decently, with MHW being still a top seller. Their two new releases, DMC5 and REmake2 sold extremely well, and apparently Capcom is satisfied with the sales of ports and such. As for arcades, Capcom apparently started an online crane game, and have been aiming to expand their target market towards middle-aged and the elderly. Plaza Capcom was opened in Hiroshima, which probably explain why they closed down one arcade and opened two new ones at different locations. Despite their five different Pachinko and Pachislot models sold reasonably, the changes they made in testing their equipment meant lower overall sales; 3,422 billion compared to last year’s 7,803 billion. Numerous events were held to maximise sales of games, as well as further use of eSports like Capcom Street FIghter League powered by Rage. Net sales increased and operating margin was 31.5%.

Capcom’s intention to build a strong business portfolio hasn’t changed any. Their aim, after all, is to make games they can make multiple uses out of. For the next year, Capcom seems to intent promoting their mobile games more and explore possibilities more, which is why we’re getting Rockman X DiVE rather than a home game release. Standard consumer releases are abound from major IPs. We already know REmake3 has been in the works for some time and will be out somewhat soon. Whether or not something else like DMC5 will be out is another question, tho Capcom would count MHW Iceborne on Steam a new title, and the base game a catalog title. Capcom also has to restructure their development to handle the new regulations Japan has made regarding gambling, as it impacts their pachinko and pachislot business. Business as usual, and in hindsight, REmake2 and DMC5 last year was Capcom reviving old IPs for new generation. Much less than what was expected, but the reception and sales of both titles speak for themselves.

Kenzo Tsujimoto’s section is up next, which is more or less a view on Capcom’s CEO’s commitment and look at the company’s history. Without much going in too deep, Capcom has six points in their philosophy, something we’ve already seen; Aim to become the best in the world, Compete with strong IPs, Stable long-term growth, Managing their IPs and companies properly to ensure the two aforementioned, enforce and encourage relationship with societies locally and globally as well as with stakeholders; and avoiding management risks with transparency. We’ve effectively covered most of these spots, but I’d like to give some spotlight on the third bit about stable long-term growth.

Capcom struggled most of the new Millennium to find their spot in the gaming market after the crash of the arcades, but their long-term growth has been better than most of their competitors. Their Operating Margins have been overall better than their main competitors’ with +66% operating income and margin being +7.9 points. While Konami may have +90% income, their margin is just below Capcom’s at +7.5 points. Contrast this to Square-Enix, who has -8% income and -3.3 points in margin. This of course could change during next fiscal year, when Final Fantasy VII Remake hits the store shelves. Neither Sega Sammy or Bandai-Namco can really compete with Capcom or Namco, as their respective numbers are -53% and +41% in Operating Income, with +1.8 and +1.1 points in margins. Effectively, Capcom has been making most of their last financial year’s success with just three titles, one of which was a catalog title. If they manage to keep both REmake2 and DMC5 selling well as catalog titles all the while rolling new titles as part of their main growth driver as per their management strategy, they should see further increases in profits and margins during 2020. Nevertheless, it seems that their most stable source of profit is still in arcade and amusement equipment with no real changes how well they’re selling.

Capcom will aim to increase profits with three-angled long-term plan. This plan consists of increasing digital sales on the global marketplace, preparing for the next generation of standards that will be rolling around during the next few years as well as focusing on eSports and aiming to popularise a new culture for content. First part is easy, overall speaking. All Capcom needs to do is release their new games via Steam alongside the usual home console market. That’s effectively what it amounts to. Capcom’s overseas games sales have increased drastically since 2015, while homeland sales have not really changed any. You could say that Capcom’s secret of being successful is to have IPs that are globally attractive. After all, Japan in itself is a very small market compared to the Americas, Europe and Australia, and the rest. China is of course a place they’d like to gain a strong foothold, but that’s going to be difficult still. Make digital the first option, and you’ll save in manufacturing costs. Capcom is also taking note of both Cloud gaming and Subscription services and are exploring ways to enter both of these. Cloud gaming, however, is still a pipe dream, while subscription services should be nothing new to them, technically speaking.

With new standards like 5G wireless, Capcom can’t help but make use of third-party outsider know-how. This is mostly for mobile market and most likely relevant only in Japan, but the underlying message does touch upon upcoming Microsoft and Sony consoles as well.

eSports was a major thing for Capcom last year, and apparently it netted some 1,096 million USD for them during 2019. That’s nothing to be scoffed at, and it is estimated 2020 eSport scene would net some 1,790 million USD. This is through the usual establishing of new leagues, analysis of trends and then promoting regional developments. As long as Capcom manages to establish a profitable and sustainable ecosystem, they should be able to maintain their practices. I’m sure this is part of the reason why Street Fighter V is the way it is, where the game is stable and easily accessible in various regions. The Marvel VS series, while superbly popular in the US, didn’t exactly have the same position in Europe, for example. Street Fighter V aimed to be very safe game and something they can build further revisions on easily, and it has been that. Certainly a success in financial terms, but not really a loved game in the series. However, in the next five years Capcom will assess if there is any more growth in eSports and whether or not it is profitable to continue promoting sales through it.

All this really amounts to Capcom’s plans to effectively follow 2019’s lead in terms of business. MHW has made them recognise that games can, and in future will have, longer sales periods than before. This is partially because digital marketplaces don’t run out of copies and are constantly available. On the long-term, if Capcom is to keep their current standards in visuals and sounds, the Hollywood look in their games, it will cost them more to research and develop. Something they are well aware. This probably means Capcom will put out only few new games per year, which most likely will be sequels or remakes, that they will bet on as their heavy hitters all the while ports and catalog sales are supporting them and making the risk of these big titles slightly smaller. Digital, however, is the thing that is being pushed further.

Interestingly enough, Capcom seems to aim to have their younger employees work on their popular IPs, meaning legacy IP in Capcom is a living thing. If there are more people like Yoshinori Ono, who want to revive a sleeping but still popular IP, in principle we could see some level of resurgence of some IPs down the line. This might be wishful thinking, but history has shown how legacy IP under younger employees can bloom like no other. Take Mega Man and Street Fighter as examples.

Rather than establishing new IPs, Capcom intents to expand new markets and find new customers. You can expect to see more remakes in the future, as games are considered to be obsolete after some time have passed. This seems to be their long-term plan; remakes and ports. At the same time, they aim to curb sales of used-games somehow as well as address piracy, especially in the Asian markets. Capcom loves to talk about their IPs, but at the same time the they’re not having new blood in their library. In the end, their aim is to expand into new territories they’ve yet to make an impact and raise global earnings. This applies to their arcade business as well, where they aim to attract new customers and enhance their lineup of titles.

Their analysis of game industry and market hasn’t changed, with general consumer and PC market overlapping somewhat and offering the most balanced place to be successful in. Mobile market may have large sums of money moving about, but the competition is extremely intense. Consumer market is 77% of all of Capcom’s net sales, followed up by mobile with 2%. PC online, like the crane catcher, makes double that at 4%. While they are in a good position to expand, Capcom currently has mostly high-risk options in their Value, Rarity, Inimitability and Organisational evaluation. Capcom doesn’t have as high competitive edge as they want to believe, as other companies possess all the same external edges as they do. Capcom being slow at making quick decisions probably have already bitten them in the ass couple of times, but the lack of direct competitors to their main selling IPs should be a concern. In Mobile market, however, Capcom is still at a complete loss. Then you have their directors competitors still rolling their IPs in the media and can easily overcome Capcom.

What is Capcom’s plan for the future then? To use their existing Intellectual Properties to make games and leverage them into further franchising. They are no intending to make new IPs at the moment, but deliver further remakes. REmake3 is the direct result of this. Long-term and steady growth seems to be their aim. Expanding their target market and find some new regions in Asia to make some more money. While all this probably will continue to continue kicking just fine, Capcom is not offering anything that could add to their existing strategies or IPs. Perhaps it could be said that Capcom intents to keep their current core customers happy while offering new generation of players the possibility to play classics in a remade fashion and in modern terms. Their plant to “make use of sleeping IPs” ultimately ended up being a remake and DMC5 with some ports. Maybe they could follow suit with some other of their sleeping IPs, like Commando and turn it into a generic Call of Duty clone or something similar. I don’t expect Capcom to expand IP library anytime soon. Now if they’d begin to remake games that would need them, like the original Street Fighter, rather than games that were already well made.

I mentioned Capcom Hollywood games, because it sounds what Hollywood blockbusters are doing; one or two big budget titles per year by using well established IPs carrying the whole studio. Smaller games are not even a thing really with Capcom anymore. Mega Man 11 seems to have been a sort of fluke, as the franchise was moved to mobile once again. All the small titles Capcom has been pushing out as of late have been ports and re-releases. Currently, it seems Capcom is not intending to launch a new IP anytime soon, but in long-term, that should be one of their priorities as well. After all, all of the IPs they like to talk about has to be established at some point, and it is necessary to have something that’s designed from the ground up to the current generation. However, the global popular culture has been marred with rehashes, remakes, adaptations and reboots for good two decades more than previously. Sadly, it must be admitted that relying on existing franchises and IPs with a built-in fanbase to revitalise business has been successful. However, as of late we’ve seen big franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek faulting during the run with lessening revenues and falling consumer interest. Capcom’s management has to work hard to avoid the same pits Hollywood studios have stumbled upon. Capcom has a history of falling on their face and success with this kind of approach, but there’s only so much they can use as existing material for remakes, unless there’s going to be complete and utter reboots.

Old, reheating Capcom

Despite Capcom having big hit titles in the few recent years, mainly Devil May Cry 5, Monster Hunter World and Resident Evil 2 Remake, that’s pretty much it. Street Fighter V has been extremely safe game for them, the SF fandom can be very, very tribal about their loved title, and Capcom fighting games overall are still considered the golden standard. For a good reason too, but that’s not the main topic here, maybe we’ll revisit that a bit later.

For 2019, Capcom has released no truly new game. Everything Capcom has released this year has been either a remake, sequel or a port. 2018 was the same deal. Back in the day in the late 1980’s and 1990’s Capcom was blamed to rehash the same game over and over again with new sequels. This isn’t true, despite it feeling like that with a new Mega Man game almost every year or yet another variation of Street Fighter II. The Golden Age of Mega Man was a wild time in many ways, but at the same time Capcom kept pushing out new franchises to expand their library and offering. If there wasn’t something new on a console, the arcades probably had something interesting to check out, like Darkstalkers.

Modern Capcom is satisfied with the status quo they have going on now, at least on the front. Capcom is relying on their big-name, big-business titles. While SNK wants to become Marvel of video games, Capcom used to have this spot. I say used to, because as we are now, Capcom has become the company that does nothing but sequels or rehashes. Even Mega Man, franchise that used to renew itself every few years to some extent, is effectively buried again. Capcom lost all the momentum they gained with Mega Man 11 by not publishing any solid information of a new Mega Man game being developed. Well, there is Rockman X DiVE, but as with every other Capcom franchise, they go to die on mobile. DiVE is far from being a new Mega Man 11 in terms of impact and presence, mostly because the title is competing in a different market from the main bulk of Mega Man games. In the end, it is still a sequel, or rather a spinoff, to a well known franchise.

Has Capcom abandoned making new and strong IPs? In business, especially in Japanese business, sticking to what you know best and what has already established market slot and pull is the way to go. The reason you don’t get new sequels to long-dead franchises all the time or new IPs to bolster the library is because the current corporate culture in Capcom is not there. The young Capcom needed to expand and make new titles all the time. Not because they threw everything a the wall to see what stuck, but because there was that drive. The people who work in Capcom now are not the same people who launched these game IPs originally, and it’ll take someone exceptional, like Yoshinori Ono, to suggest and bear the weight of reviving an IP.

You would think that reviving an old IP with strong history would fit the category just fine. Reviving, however, means that the IP is dormant or dead, often because it has either seen a slouch in sales or the driving force behind the franchise is missing. Resident Evil has consistently seen good amount of sales and is considered Capcom’s modern mainstay franchise next to Monster Hunter. Both of these series are old, but have been reinvented as they’ve come along. They’re also consistent with Capcom’s changing image, with new blood coming in and tasked to make a new game for the series. Capcom shows that you can live off a limited amount of IPs under your belt just fine, as long as you keep quality high and the number of releases constant. A stagnant series that doesn’t have the drive behind or, or the corporate support compared to the other projects that are going on at the same time, doesn’t have much chances. As much as Final Fight plays an important role in Capcom’s history, it is a legacy series they can use to promote themselves and other titles for the old guard that’s out there, but Final Fight has been superseded by Devil May Cry as the action game.

At some point, old IPs become new again after they’ve been dormant long enough. Street Fighter IV is a great example of this, and we can see Toho doing the same thing Godzilla periodically. Capcom still intents to revive some of their old, sleeping IPs (just like they said last year) but what are the chances of that happening? Perhaps what they mean by reviving they mean remaking old games that were big hits for the modern generations that hear the legends of these old games but won’t play because they’re too old. Maybe it means more ports upon ports. Probably both, as rumours say Capcom is already working on Resident Evil 3 remake. Understandable, considering how well REmake2 was did in sales and reception. While Capcom has loads of legacy franchises under its belt, they’re intentionally not making any use of them outside collections and re-releases. All the R&D goes to big name titles, which is closer to putting your eggs into one basket rather than betting on multiples. It seems to be working for Capcom just fine, but as argued last year, Capcom has both the manpower and economic capacity to develop smaller titles with smaller teams. They sort of are doing this with their mobile department, but that’s a different market from home consoles, and arguably different from PC market as well.

There’s no reason for Capcom to change their pattern right now, their big budget titles sell well and they are successful. Their caution is to back these up with re-releases. It’s safe and sure way to make business, and business is their main thing. Capcom wants big titles, big revenues. Small titles with meager sales won’t make that cut, but putting some money on re-releases, that’s a different thing. I wouldn’t expect Capcom to actually revive an old IP that doesn’t have some presence already. Sad to say, but at the moment, Capcom truly is the company they were joked to be, rehashing everything and unwilling to bring anything new to the table.

Grave of the Darkstalkers

With it being Halloween season and all that, I’ve been on a small Darkstalkers bend. Going back to my source books, playing the games, remembering there was a terrible television animation and somewhat decent OVA that looked pretty damn nice with plot being somewhat nonsensical. Darkstalkers is a fighting game series I used to play more than any other, despite starting with Street Fighter II. With the third game being the last in the series, and Guilty Gear X hitting the scene, Darkstalkers went into a limbo only pop up whenever I wanted to something gofast from a fighting game, or roll out Q-bee once more.

Perhaps the most atmospheric intro a fighting game to date, outside the first game’s

It’s no secret that Darkstalkers as a fighting game franchise never really hit through the masses. Morrigan may have eclipsed the franchise as a whole in popularity, and nowadays the franchise itself is probably known for her rather than for any other reason. It’s rather funny, perhaps even rather pathetic, to consider how the series’ main character, Demitri, was dropped to a second place by the time Darkstalkers 3 rolled around and was seemingly killed off in an audio drama. I remember some fanfare for the games when fighting game’s golden age was still going, but after that the only people who kept the franchise alive to any extent were the fans. Despite it being recognised as a watershed moment for fighting games in terms of visual design, animation, speed and gameplay, all those reasons probably were also the reason why the series is now in the grave.

The above tournament video shows off Darkstalkers 3 at a decently high level of play. The series was never a Street Fighter clone in itself, unlike some SNK creations. No, Darkstalkers was as high production fighting game you could have at the time. While the first game was more experimental than the its successor, being slower in pace speed and trying out to find its footsteps, the second game, Vampire Hunter, brought in the blazing speed. Third game would take this and make a game that ultimately hard to get a proper controlling feeling of. It’s one of those games when you learn to play it even to a small extent feels like a massive reward, as it feels like you’re in control of something wild and dangerous, something that any moment now could go out of control. Out of all fighting games, Darkstalkers has tight timings, unconventional projectile mechanics (you don’t even use the fireballs the same way to control space as you would in almost any other fighting game) and attacks that simply defy normal comprehension. All this is of course by design, which makes the series something an anomaly, especially the third game; you’ll find a lot players with low-skill or high-skill. There really aren’t all that much people in the mid-skill tier, because you either know how to play the game or not. Part of this is that it takes dedication of get good at Darkstalkers, and the second part is that the core fans have been playing these games since the late 90’s and never really stopped.

Darkstalkers had some of the best promotional and production artwork made for a fighting game to date

Then you have that the fact that Darkstalkers suffers the same fate as Street Fighter III; Third Strike – Fight for the Future; only the third game seems to matter. This is apparent how most fans treat the series, and how Capcom themselves pretty much ignored all other titles in their latest attempt to resurrect interest in the series with Darkstalkers Resurrection. It didn’t go so well, with low sales ultimately being the deciding factor. When it was heard that a new Darkstalkers game would be in the hands of sales numbers, I didn’t even bother. Seeing how the franchise’s history was of neglect to that point, there was not reason it to sell or Capcom to put the effort in. Both were the case. Resurrection is effectively a port of the third game for the PS3, which also means some of the cast members are missing. Darkstalkers 3 is a rather peculiar case, where characters from previous games had to be cut out because of memory limitations in Capcom arcade system of the time, CPS-2, and thus Capcom opted to make two further versions, Vampire Saviour 2 (Vampire Saviour being the Japanese title for Darkstalkers 3) and Vampire Hunter 2, both of which were remixes of their numberless predecessors with characters and mechanics switched about. You wouldn’t even know these existed outside Japan, and the game’s name change, as well as some of the characters, ultimately confused some for a long time. Sometimes you can see articles and videos discussing Darkstalkers 2 when it should be Vampire Saviour 2. There is no Darkstalkers 2 per se, that’s Vampire Hunter. Nevertheless, despite Capcom releasing a versions for the PlayStation, Dreamcast and PSP where you could play all the characters, and even systems and movesets in later games, Resurrection was aimed at the tournament scene players only and lacked all the cut characters. This was Capcom’s best chance and spot to rebalance the game, include all the characters into the game and effectively rework the title with old assets without losing anything. Of course they didn’t, that’d take time and money, and it wouldn’t be ‘arcade perfect.’

Despite Darkstalkers being largely designed around Western character archetype and animation was based on old Warner-Brothers and other cartoons, it mostly found its place with the Japanese audience, who embraced it fully. It doesn’t help that the game’s humour and core is still very much Japanese, and very 1990’s in a good way. I keep misspelling good ans goof, but maybe that works when talking how humorous Darkstalkers really is at face value. The sheer visual prowess may fit the 1990’s Capcom, with all jokes hidden in there, but if they were to make a new entry nowadays, Capcom would be royally screwed. None of the 3D models of the characters in Marvel Vs Capcom or Tatsunoko Vs Capcom had the same charm, the same level of care and animation, as the 2D sprites. 3D models simply can’t represent the 2D in the same manner, and Capcom argued so during Street Fighter IV’s releases, that the technology to warp 3D models on the fly the way Darkstalkers requires didn’t exist or was far too taxing and hard to do. The sheer amount of unique sprites and animations in Darkstalkers is insane and is probably the reason why the third game hit memory limitations so damn hard. Just take a look at the EX Special Moves collection and consider how so many sprites are just thrown around that don’t get used anywhere else. Lilith’s standing sprite is also a sight to behold.

This might be cartoony violence, but it wasn’t exactly accepted back in the 1990’s either. The blood effects were changed to white, which made it kind of worse. Lord Raptor, the rock zombie that quotes Michael Jackson, has a throwing move where he jabs his spiky ribs into the opponent before tossing away. The blood’s colour was changed to white, and now it looked like he’s cumming buckets while penetrating the opponent. Not only the animation is cartoony, exaggerated and over the top to the point of being incomprehensible to some, but it is also gruesome and violent. If we’re completely honest, the visuals of Darkstalkers does not fit with current Capcom. Capcom used to be 2D sprite king back int he day, but nowadays they are all about pushing the limits of realistic 3D. Resident Evil 2 Remake, Devio May Cry 5 and Monster Hunter World are the trifecta of modern Capcom style, and Street Fighter V fits that look perfectly. The company culture of mid-90’s Capcom doesn’t exist, and Darkstalkers probably embodies that era of Capcom the best. We can entertain the idea that Capcom would put the money and effort into making a whole new 2D fighting game, seeing Skullgirls was heavily inspired by Darkstalkers in style; characters have unconventional ways of attacking, body morphing all around the place and excessive animation wherever wanted. Capcom could showcase that they could put the effort and money into making 2D game to beat all 2D games in terms of animation and visuals. They wouldn’t want to do that, mostly because it wouldn’t sell the amounts modern Capcom expects their highest-end titles to sell, and they wouldn’t want to dethrone Street Fighter III from the animation throne… despite Skullgirls already done did it. There are even Motion Collections on Youtube just to see what sort of bullshit is hidden in Skullgirls animations. The same can’t be said of most other fighting games.

Then you have the point of Darkstalkers isn’t really fit for what the eSports scene likes at the moment. Some character designs are intentionally risque and sexual undertones are as intended. Be it the flat-chested Lilith trying to be playful, Morrigan rather direct with her nightly pleasures of Felicia having her tits bounce, some of the characters probably would need to be redesigned in order to appease a minority. If Rainbow Mika’s standard costume is too sexy for ESPN, so would be Morrigan’s and Felicia’s. Not only that, but in terms how Darkstalkers is all about that uninterrupted play, it makes a poor spectator’s sport in the modern era. Most modern fighting games have that element of visual splash, the Cinematic Moment where audiences and players are intended to be hyped. When you pull off a super move in any of the current fighting games, the screen freezes, you get a huge ass close-up and camera going every which way. You get those slo-mo effects in Tekken and Soul Calibur too. Darkstalkers is very much the opposite, where the only times there is any pause is during throws is very rare special move, like with one of Jedah’s.

For an outsider there’s not much on the offer here. It’s extremely heart-pounding for the player, asks a lot of concentration, but the general audience who isn’t into this particular game, it doesn’t offer the same Cinematic hype Moments. The speed also probably also means people will miss numerous points of attacks and reversals, meaning some can’t keep up with what’s happening on the screen. At least on the surface and at face value. If we’d take the series and fit it to the current mould, it would need to be slowed down a bit with more planned Moments. Not to say Darkstalkers couldn’t be that, though that frantic pace has always been part of its soul. When you see a Darkstalkers represented in a VS game, it always plays a bit flaccid. There’s none of that heart in there, as the characters have fit some other, foreign mould. It’s like shaving a square peg down to fit a round hole. Sure it goes in there after that, but the nice parts are gone. A new Darkstalkers would be like modern F-1, where all the things that would make the cars go faster are banned. Capcom’s current concentration on eSports would make Darkstalkers dull and generic.

Perhaps it is Darkstalkers’ uniqueness that doomed in the first place. It’s not historically a lucrative IP, and despite Capcom saying they want to revive old IPs, they’re looking into something that doesn’t take whole sections of their budget, like Mega Man 11. Capcom released their business-year end of reports, and I’m intending to cover this year’s Integrated Report like I did last year. Part of the report is about Capcom having a hold on eSports via Street Fighter V, and another title from them might sway that boat. Spectators are made a big point, and as we’ve discussed, Darkstalkers isn’t the best spectators’ game.

I would still recommend you to fire up a Darkstalkers game, be it via emulation or that Resurrection pack. It might feel weird at first, but after you’ve gotten used to the game system and get things roll, you’re ending up with an enjoyable game that won’t take too much of your time, but to which you want to return again and again from time to time.

Collections, collections, collections

So there’s a new Mega Man collection coming out, this time adding the Mega Man ZX games into the Mega Man Zero collection. I’m not sure how many remember, but the Zero games got a collection on the Nintendo DS, for better or worse, and they contained a mode that made the game easier across the board in order for the player to have an easier time so he’d see the story from start to finish. The original games were more or less intact, except with the connectivity thing with later Mega Man Battle Network games. Throw ZX games and you have a set of games people have been asking for some time.

What’s to write about this? Capcom has been collecting Mega Man games into bundles for a solid decade now, excluding the few earlier Anniversary collections that we got for PS2, GameCube and Xbawks. No, scrap that, let’s count them in. Ever since those collections, Capcom has been releasing old Mega Man games collected in each generation, except the Battle Network and Legends series. Legends is stuck with copyright hell thanks to Capcom using licensed drinks and labels in it, and due to Sony’s asinine Classics line rule, they can’t just remove these from the games and release as-in; they need to be as they were when they were first released on the PlayStation. Sure, we got the DASH games for the PSP, but only in Japan, hence the use of DASH instead of Legends. Without the two extra shoulder buttons, there’s some wonky controls about. We’ve never seen DASH since in a compilation, just as digital downloads, and Battle Network hasn’t been around at all. Maybe that series is stuck with license hell as well, considering the TV show and shitloads of other stuff regarding it were tightly wound together those (glorious) years. A compilation of sorts with online play would surely make many fans happy enough to blow their loads.

I bet your ass there are people who want that Zero bust just to hotglue it

Capcom Test is a term used when people assume Capcom is throwing something cheap out to test waters. While this has some credibility, the fact is that Mega Man doesn’t need its waters tested. They already know that there is demand, at least towards collections. Mega Man 11 showed that a game with relatively low budget compared to their hard, big hitters can and will make its money back as longs as it is competently made. Capcom hasn’t come out with any news whether or not they’re even considering developing Mega Man X9 despite teasing it in that one remix soundtrack CD (that was a letdown.) While some would argue that Evil May Cry 4‘s re-release was to test waters, we know from the director that he had made an ultimatum; he was given DMC5 or he’d walk out. At that point there were no waters to test, but perhaps what Capcom was testing was if there was enough demand for a higher budget. Game itself would’ve been made anyway. RE:make2  on the other hand needed to testing, after all Resident Evil is pretty much second only to Monster Hunter and even that is debatable after World, which in itself was carefully testing waters by dropping numeric from the title and opted for a subtitle instead, just in case if the game would crash and burn, meaning they could do a “real” Monster Hunter 5.

Let’s pose the question; if Capcom Test is a real thing, what are they testing with Mega Man Zero/ ZX Collection? The first answer might be that they testing whether or not there is enough demand for a new ZX game, as some would argue that the story needs to be concluded somehow in order to tie it properly to Legends. That really doesn’t hold much water, as Legends itself was left unfinished, and Capcom never greenlit Legends 3 despite all the public shit that was going on about it a decade ago. Theoretical ZX3 or whatever bullshit they add to the end (ZXA is ZX2 by all means) and would let the developers almost complete free reign to take the whole non-linear format to new directions. After all, these Montezuma’s Revenge-clones are still very popular. This collection won’t test how much demand there is for the Zero series, I doubt any of the fans would like to see Zero revived again for a fifth entry.

No, if they’re testing anything it is how much fans are willing to dish out, testing out how much pain carrying that loaded wallet causes. For this particular release Capcom Japan online store is going all out and releasing the previous Collections again in a box that has a separate space for Z/ZX collection. Y’know, get all the games (except Legends, spin-offs and Battle Network) in one major box.

Classics Collection, those X Collections, MM11 and free slot for Z/ZX. PS4 has its own as well, but Japan only, as usual with these

Capcom hasn’t really overstayed its welcome with these constant Collections yet, but they’re at the utmost limit now. If they were to publish a Legends Collections, they really should make it a complete package with all the missing titles, like Mega Man’s Soccer, Mega Man and Bass and its WonderSwan sequel, translated Rockboard and why the hell not throw that Chinese-only Rockman Strategy. I’m sure you can already tell that I’m not exactly looking for this particular release, but it does support the notion that Capcom is still riding on nostalgia wave instead of putting their goal to produce a new, high caliber Mega Man for whatever real reason. Inafune’s shadow can’t be that long, that there is nobody willing take the position and say We have a classic, long franchise with a ready install base we can easily expand by hitting some of the current trends all the while pushing the envelope on the franchise.

Mega Man innovated themselves from time to time. X, Legends, Battle Network, Z and ZX are all significantly different from the Classic series, and even then each sub-series changes the formats game-by-game basis. While I fully expect some kind of Mega Man game to be made based on the current cartoon, it seems Capcom is treating it like they treated Street Fighter The Movie in that it works as a promotional vessel rather than an adaptation. I would like to say that Capcom can’t coast on collections much longer, but the reality is that fans and consumers interested in the franchise will buy these collections every time a console generation shift hits around the corner, and if a special version like the above or the one with all the trinkets, there will be customers buying it. Fans find themselves in a vicious cycle of thinking that if they don’t show support, no more future entries in Mega Man will be made, but at the same time, you’ve already bought and played these games two or three times over and Capcom still isn’t putting out anything new. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The customer loyalty is still there and that probably is ultimately what will keep all these afloat for now. Special edition packages with craploads of stuff in them have always been a thing, slowly I have to question if that is becoming the only reason Mega Man collections are selling? Despite the franchise now lacking a face, the emotional contact is still there. Zero series has especially fanatic cult following, claiming it being the height of the franchise’s 2D game play design. They’ve been asking for ports of the series ever since the last collection on the DS came out, but apparently the originals and that port aren’t enough. Then again, maybe that goes to the other collections as well. Perhaps people really are just abandoning their old machines every single generation. Maybe Capcom should just start releasing collections every generation and never make a new game, as they seem to make a decent buck with each of them.

Capcom is coming out with Rockman X DiVE that’s making its rounds, but goddamn if people aren’t sick of beloved franchises getting a mobile game rather than a full-blown, big budget title. A proper entry, if you will. Just look at how happy Breath of Fire fans were about BoF6. While mobile titles can be massive successes, thus far none of them have been considered as “true” installments into a franchise. Then again, we did get that social mobile game Rockman Xover, which was less than ideal entry in the series, and was largely lambasted people who didn’t end up sucking on Capcom’s dick. Only so many companies have managed to strike true with their mobile games, and the Big C is not one of them. X DiVE has budget behind it, it has good assets and lots of work put to make it the best kind of mobile Mega Man X game it could be, which kinda says to us that the hinted new entry in the series rather than X9.

Capcom really lost the ball by not announcing a new Classic or X series game. They didn’t even need to have it released yet, just have the info out, some concept art and nothing else. Keep the heat going on, but often fans will just take anything they can grab and roll with those, but only for so long.

Two-One Punch of Mega Man Million

Capcom recently updated their sales data in their Game Series Sales section, and with that we saw Mega Man gaining one more million units sold from 34 million to 35 million units since February 2019. That’s three million more units since June 2018. Their Annual report from the end of last, year, which I have a post about, stated that Mega Man 11 performed well. We could read between the lines that they were expecting it to perform worse, but the Blue Bomber still has some pulling power. With the cartoon series running, though not exactly making the biggest splash out there, the franchise has resurfaced again, much like how Devil May Cry made the news once more. Devil May Cry 5 performed a lot better, and if we’re completely honest, is the better game of the two. It was ambitious project that was true to the core gameplay but also pushed the 3D Action games just a little bit further once more. Mega Man 11, as much as the game is loved, did end up somewhat a shelf warmer. Compared to DMC5, MM11 is a lacklustre title. It was too safe a title.

It is because of Mega Man X Legacy Collection that the series gained one more million sales. Mega Man  11 sold some 870 000 units, so previous digital titles and X Legacy Collection must cover the rest. This is how Mega Man ultimately worked ever since the X-series was released. The Classic-series may have solidified the series’ status as an icon. Good games, to which Capcom would churn up sequel after sequel year by year, until they put the franchise in ice.

Neither Mega Man 11 or Mega Man X Legacy Collection sold one million units, as they don’t appear on Capcom’s Platinum million titles sold list. I don’t know Mega Man Battle Network 4 has sold so many units, it’s the very bottom feeder of the franchise itself. However, outside the NES era of games, most of Mega Man had one more or more sub-series running side by side. At best, Capcom offered 2D Action, 3D Action and RPG under Mega Man brand name during the busiest days of the franchise, and even more if you were in Japan.

If you were wondering, Mega Man 2 is the best selling title in the franchise

I would argue that outside the NES days of Classic series, when it showcased quality game design and tight controls in comparison to some of the schlock the NES and (especially) Famicom had, Mega Man‘s strength later on relied on its multiple approaches and titles on the market at the same time. Capcom did manage to avoid brand confusion by clearly having different kind of visual flavour across the board. The core mistake between Mega Man and Mega Man X is, really, that the two look too similar. X simply looks an older, edgier take on Mega Man. Which he arguably is, but that was the 1990’s. That was par for the course and I love it. Each subsequent Mega Man was different enough to tell the difference, even at their games, but recognisable enough to say that they were, indeed, a kind of super fighting robot.

Mega Man is a multimedia franchise, make no mistake about it. Despite the games are its main product and lot of the side pieces like comics and toys were there to support the sales of the games themselves, Mega Man saw its most success when you had a little bit of everything out there. Mostly in Japan, sure, but that really reflects the nature of the franchise world wide; the little bits of that everything that West ever got was cherished by the fans like nuggets of gold. When Hitoshi Ariga’s Mega Man Megamix got its English release, the fandom celebrated like no other. This wasn’t the first bit of comics Western world got from Mega Man, but it sure was one of the most wanted.

How did Mega Man gain all those millions of sales since the last update without neither of the two big releases hitting platinum sales point? I told you that already; combined sales of multiple products. Whether it is because 2D action games just don’t have the same market pull they used to, or because Mega Man had become such a standard for the genre that despite their high quality they’re seen as run-of-the-mill titles or just because the franchise’s envelope can’t be pushed all that easily like DMC’s, one Mega Man title hitting that platinum point in the current era of video game market must have something significant behind it.

On the other hand, Capcom could go the true and tested route, put together a standard Mega Man title like MM11 and comp it with something that’s a bit different. If they were brave, which they might actually become with these increased sales, they might even try to make a new sub-series that would break the mould. Love it or hate it, Battle Network was a smash hit. Legends, not so much. Still has a stupidly dedicated cult following, who still keep hope for Capcom reviving Mega Man Legends 3. 

Maybe that would be a decent pull, start the project from scratch and make it play better than what Gaist Crusher did. If you didn’t know, Legends 3‘s engine and very basic gameplay was more or less directly lifted and heavily adapted for two-part game series, which never really went anywhere despite having a cartoon and toys that interacted with the games. I’ve got few posts from 2013 (Christ that’s old and they’re terrible) about Gaist Crusher but never got around getting the second game and reviewing it. I guess I lost my interest in seeing how the series did, just like the Japanese kids it was aimed at.

Capcom could just go full stupid and release Mega Man titles like usual, throwing compilations left and right all the while not really considering how to grow and further the franchise. You know what? Give Mega Man Legends the REmake2 treatment. Take the base elements of the game, expand on the whole connected underground tunnels concept, polish and fully upgrade the gameplay, add more optional parts and possible modifications, explore further the concept of Rock being able to turn black rather than just have it a an interesting joke element (I’m pretty sure this ultimately evolved into the whole Black Mega Man and Synchro concept in Battle Network) and make the game look like a real Saturday morning cartoon it was clearly mimicking.

I can always dream.

Still, with these sales, Capcom probably will be making few Mega Man titles in the future, that much we wager to be certain. If they want to revive Mega Man properly rather than just with one game and collections, Mega Man X9 is probably high on their to-do list.