Capcom is one of those gaming companies we barely tolerate, much less respect. After the infuriating debacle that was Darkstalkers Resurrection, whatever respect I personally had for Capcom has flown out the window. With its continous abandonment of non-Street Fighter and Resident Evil franchises, Capcom has become nothing more than a shell of that gaming giant that was once known for being top quality gaming. This is the story of that special age.
The Golden Age of Capcom began in 1988 with the release of that gaming classic, Mega Man 2. Said game, considered by many gamers to be the BEST Mega Man game ever, if not one of the best, is also widely considered a classic of the NES, as well as one of the defining games of late 80's gaming. In the year 1990 Capcom released a third game in the franchise, which OTHER gamers (myself included) consider the best game of AT LEAST the classic Mega Man era: Mega Man III. But it was the year 1991 which proved to be Capcom's FINEST, for it was the year they released the one of the finest fighting game ever made: Street Fighter 2.
The year 1993 saw the release of Mega Man X, which contrary to popular belief, is NOT the tenth game in the franchise. This was Mega Man for the (then) new Generation: darker, edgier, faster, more action packed. With some of the finest sprite work seen on the SNES, as well as some of the best Soundtracks of said system, the Mega Man X series would prove to be a memorable series of games...all the way to Mega Man V on the Playstation 1. More on that in a bit, though.
As the 90's continued Capcom saw many new franchises released. The most well known of these, doubtlessly, is the Resident Evil series. One of only two Capcom series to spawn a movie series (and the more successful of the two at that) Resident Evil has gone on to become one of gaming's most beloved franchises.
The 90's may well have been Capcom's finest decade; it seemed that nearly EVERYTHING with the Capcom logo on it was pure gold. Capcom didn't just make three of gaming's finest franchises in Platforming, Third Person Shooting, or Fighting; they also made a series of solid (if sadly underrated) RPG's called Breath of Fire. And like most of Capcom's franchises, the series got MUCH better after the first game. Another fantastic gaming series from Capcom was the surprisingly difficult Ghosts and Goblins series of games, which also included the side series Gargoyle's Quest. Though said series began in 1985, and could in fact be seen as Capcom's first TRUE golden game, you just can't compare the success of Ghouls to Mega Man or Street Fighter.
Likewise, the 90's also saw Capcom release other properties. Of these, I believe the most memorable would be The Magical Quest series, which starred Disney's very own Mickey Mouse. This series, in my opinion, was the BEST Disney based video game series until the orginal Kingdom Hearts, released a decade later. Three games were released; the first one had just Mickey, the second had Mickey and Minnie, and the third had Mickey and Donald Duck.
The last GREAT stand-alone franchise from Capcom had to be Devil May Cry, a fantastic hack-and-slash game released in 2001. This series saw 5 games released, of which 2 are considered fantastic (DmC 1 and 3), 1 is considered great (DmC 4), 1 is considered "OK" (DmC 2), and the fifth game (DmC: Devil May Cry), well... it did better than the fandom expected. We'll leave it at that.
Of course, Capcom's OTHER gaming franchise was Capcom vs, a fighting game franchise where several Capcom characters would duke it out against characters from some other company. The best known of these is, of course, Marvel vs Capcom, which began life as X-Men vs Street Fighter. This was during the 90's, when the X-Men were enjoying reasonable popularity with the kids thanks in no small part to the cartoon shown on Fox Kids.
With some of gaming's greatest franchises under their belt, including the one to REDEFINE the Fighting Game, what exactly ended Capcom's Golden Age? And of course, WHEN did the Golden Age end? Because it is unquestionable that the Golden Age ended.
We go back to 1991. You have Street Fighter. The next year, you have a NEW version of Street Fighter, which makes the four boss characters playable. Then the next year a NEW version of the game is released with 4 new characters, doubling the playable roster from 8 to 16. It was ALL still the same game, but just different speeds, 8 new characters, and 4 new locales.
Then in 1995 you have Street Fighter Alpha, which was a new game in the franchise. Street Fighter Alpha featured 10 characters; 2 more than the original release of SF2, but 6 LESS than the then latest re-release of the game! The name was new, some of the characters were new, but this STILL felt like a step backwards! Worse still, there weren't any substantial changes made to the franchise!
Mega Man, the franchise that started it all, also began to suffer from stagnation, and was in fact the first franchise to signal Capcom's biggest problem. After Mega Man 4, the series would stop evolving its gameplay, simply rehashing the same formula with different bosses: each boss defeated grants you a weapon, and that weapon makes one other boss easier to beat. It was the same for Mega Man 5, 6, 7, and 8! And as if that were not all, the Mega Man X series ALSO began to suffer from stagnation following X5!
Capcom's biggest problem has always been and CONTINUES to be that it milks its franchises bone dry, not giving them time to properly evolve, or worse, continuing them long past the point they peaked. Once gamers lose interest, said franchises get the axe. This is terrible for gaming because it creates Franchise Zombies, which is when a franchise is obviously creatively dead, but keeps on living for the sake of earning the big bucks.
The first Capcom Zombie was Mega Man, as I said before. Fitting, as Mega Man was the first Capcom money making franchise. The Street Fighter franchise would stay strong all the way up to Street Fighter V, whose miriad of troubles have spelled gloom for the future of said franchise. However, while the SF series had always sold well, it had LONG gained a reputation for being grossly excessive in its number of remakes, re-releases, and updates. To wit, Street Fighter 2 had no less than SIX re-releases, of which I had already mentioned 2. Street Fighter Alpha had 2 sequels, meaning that Alpha was a mini-series in the SF franchise. Then Street Fighter 3 came out, with 3 (!!!) re-releases.
While we certainly cannot fault Capcom for knowing which series are good money makers, we CAN point out to these business practices being the killers of their franchises. Darkstalkers, a fairly succesful franchise of Capcom's, was killed off in 1997 due to the excessive amounts of pointless re-releases that added NOTHING to the franchise; the LAST game released for the franchise was nothing more than a rehash of Darkstalkers 3, a 1997 game re-released 17 year later! It's gotten so bad that gamers have made JOKES about Capcom's sequelitis!
One of the most memorable criticisms of Capcom I had ever heard was from Morgan Webb's review of Mega Man X8 on her show, X-Play. Her critique was summed up beautifully with her tired, "you heard it right, folks" way of simply saying "Yup. Mega Man X8." Emphasis not added.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Capcom killed itself. Capcom had this habit, this once-admirable habit of releasing a new game, one that was imperfect but showed potential, only to have the sequel SHOW OFF that potential. This is what separated Mega Man 1 (a good game) from Mega Man 2 (one of the greatest games of all time). It's what separated Resident Evil (a memorable if not silly game ruined by its voice acting) from Resident Evil 2 (one of the scariest games ever made). And that's not even getting into the difference between Street Fighter (an OK game) from Street Fighter 2 (A LEGEND!)
Capcom's problem is that it's a game company that ACTS like a COMPANY. What I mean is, they care more about the bottom line than about the quality of their product. With all these constant re-releases, Capcom attempts to milk gamers out of all their money, just like a company does. It's capitalism at its most honest, really.
And as Marvel proves, this tendency is self destructive. Once gamers catch on to your little trick, they'll stop supporting you and move on to the next thing. Capcom's BIGGEST, most disrespectul act of re-releases came in late 2011 with Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, which was released a mere 5 months after the original edition of Marvel vs Capcom 3. In other words, you have two versions of the same game, both at full price, but one is the superior version. Imagine being a gamer in 2011, one who bought the original MvC3, only to find 5 months later that a NEW version came out, but the difference was 6 NEW CHARACTERS! WOW! (He says sarcastically)
I can't pinpoint an exact year in which Capcom fell from grace, but if I had to guess, I'd bet on anytime between 2003 to 2005. The former year was when Devil May Cry 2 was released, pretty much putting the kibosh on the age-old wisdom of Capcom games getting better after the second game. The year 2004 saw the release of Monster Hunter, a profitable, if irrelevant series for Capcom. Finally, 2005 saw the release of the last great Resident Evil game, Resident Evil 4. Although Capcom continued to release some good games (Okami comes to mind) the days of Capcom=good were long over by this point.
Capcom continues its practices to this day. The heartbreaking fact is that Capcom continues to create GOOD franchises every now and then, only to proceed to milk them dry and abandon them later on. Capcom was as much my childhood as Nintendo was, so to see what it's become, it breaks me. A pity, as some of my all time favorite franchises are Capcom franchises.
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