Capcom has revealed a new website, simply named Capcom Town, to celebrate their 40 year anniversary.
Is Capcom really 40 years old, though? We’ll go through some apocrypha here because there’s something here you might find interesting.
See, Capcom was originally not Capcom. On May 30, 1979, Kenzo Tsujimoto founded I.R.M. Corporation. A few years before this, Tsujimoto also founded Irem, and he served as president for both companies for some time.
However, in 1982, he was ousted from Irem. Irem had seen declining sales of their video game machines, and somehow the blame fell on the company founder himself.
And so, a few months later, Tsujimoto took I.R.M., establishing it as Capcom Co. Ltd on June 11, 1983. In fact, Tsujimoto convinced one of his earlier game designers, Takashi Nishiyama, to jump ship with him. And so, Nishiyama left Irem right after his team was finishing work on Kung-Fu Master, AKA Spartan X. He would go on to make games like Trojan and the first Street Fighter for Capcom, and then Fatal Fury and King of Fighters for SNK, before eventually starting his own company, Dimps, which would eventually go back to making Street Fighter IV for Capcom. That’s 25 years of fighting game history, tied to a single man, because he left his old job.
But getting back to Capcom itself, you can view their 40th anniversary website here. You will be prompted to choose to play the site with sound or not. If you choose to have sound, make sure to lower the volume on your device of choice, as the site does not have volume control itself.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the website features several sections honoring the companies’ history, including a museum, a ‘merch factory’ where you can make yourself Twitter icons, and pages on Capcom’s current CEO and COO.
The museum features, as expected, hundreds of artwork, but also pieces of music and video, and design documents, from games from throughout the company’s history. You can expect selections from their greatest hits, including Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Mega Man, Devil May Cry, Ace Attorney and Ghosts ‘n Goblins.
Interestingly enough, they have these games live now on their retro games section:
- Final Fight (SNES)
- Mega Man X (SNES)
- Street Fighter II (SNES)
- Mega Man (NES)
- Mega Man 2 (NES)
They can also be played with either the US or Japanese ROMs.
That’s a decent collection, though one wonders if Capcom will rotate them out for other classic games, and/or bring up some deep cuts. I’d personally love to see the NES/Famicom version of Little Nemo, or maybe the Wily Wars on the Sega Genesis. Or maybe even something completely crazy, like Saturday Night Slam Masters from the Tandy?
You can see Capcom’s 40 year anniversary website here.
