Feature: Capcom

Somehow it feels like Capcom were always destined to be my favourite games developer, some of my earliest memories of my first real machine (the Commodore 64) involve playing the port of Ghosts & Goblins at my sisters house in the mid 80's which prompted my parents to stump up for my own machine for my birthday that year.

My obsession grew from there when Final Fight was released in 89’ and i played the game religiously every weekend with friends at my local arcade. From there i moved onto Ghouls & Ghosts on the Amiga, then a couple of years further on Street Fighter 2 obsession hit me big time and this lead to my purchase of a machine that is still my favourite to this day - the Super Nintendo.















In more recent times Capcom captivated me with it's Resident Evil franchise which is undoubtedly my favourite "modern" video game series.

Capcom have always been renowned for producing innovative franchises with high levels of playability and a decidedly “old school” sensibility about them, however.........

They seem to have kinda gone off the rails recently, as have a couple of Japanese companies,

Over the past few years numerous visionaries have left the company for pastures new, leaving a large talent hole behind them – The departure of Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami and the closure of Clover being two very big examples of this.















Firstly by lowering the difficulty and simplifying the mechanics in a few games (Street Fighter IV & Devil May Cry 4 spring to mind instantly) to appeal to the mainstream market. The success of Street Fighter IV does indicate that this was at least a good move financially for Capcom, although neither of the mentioned games are as good as the previous high points in their respective franchises.















Also due to western gaming franchises such as Call Of Duty & Gears Of War rising to the forefront, Japanese companies are unfortunately having to appeal to a different market to try and regain their stature. This has lead to franchises being developed by western companies (Bionic Commando, Dead Rising 2 etc) and even worse, fucking around with their biggest franchise, Resident Evil to make it seemingly appeal to western fans of games like Gears Of War with the dreaded phrase “online co-op”.

The early previews of RE5 alluded to innovative gameplay elements involving Chris Redfield having to deal with a hostile changing environment as well as being mobbed by up to double the amount of enemies at one time than RE4, but in reality by the time the game was ready it had undergone a number of changes, one of which practically breaks the game (I will delve into this in a separate article)













With more and more Japanese developers taking this approach to try and secure a grip on the worldwide market again who knows where we will end up, I always thought that Capcom would be the one developer I could rely on to still be churning out classy, deep games stooped in a Japanese flavour.

Time will tell I guess….