We learned a few days ago with Capcom’s latest financial report that they have posted record profits for their latest fiscal year due largely to the massively successful February launch of Monster Hunter Wilds.
While that was the driving factor, the updated figures also placed a heavy emphasis on the continued stellar performance of Resident Evil titles, Street Fighter 6 and Dragon’s Dogma 2. Given that Capcom has had periods of time where it was one of the absolute biggest juggernauts in gaming, hearing that they’ve hit record profits definitely makes the imagination run wild… especially in regards to fighting games.
Although Street Fighter has always been Capcom’s most successful fighting game, back in the ’90s Capcom produced so many different titles in the genre that you could’ve filled an entire Super Smash Bros. Ultimate-sized roster with just Capcom fighting game characters and still have more to spare.
With Capcom’s recent fortunes, including the runaway success that Street Fighter 6 has proven to be both worldwide but especially in its home country of Japan, it’s hard to imagine that Capcom wouldn’t be looking back at some of those dormant franchises and wondering what else they could pop off with.
It’s also worth noting that it wasn’t that long ago Capcom did a massive poll asking fans to weigh in on which franchises they miss seeing and would like to see the return of, where the results included several fighting games as well.
There’s more than enough to pick from, but I decided to have a look at Capcom’s history and identify a few franchises I think would have a good shot of doing well if they were to be revived in the current day.
Let’s have a look at some potential hits Capcom might bring us if that fighting game urge has started to itch again at the company headquarters.
Yeah, let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. Everyone and their mother has been asking for a new Darkstalkers for ages now.
One of Capcom’s most ambitious projects back in the day, the Darkstalkers series (known as Vampire in Japan) wowed fans with its ridiculously good animations and appealed to a wide audience due to the characters being plays on common horror or ghost story tropes.
The games did well in the arcades but much like many of the fighting games of the era didn’t have particularly solid releases for home consoles so any sales numbers available for the titles weren’t too strong, though the profits from the arcades were enough to keep making several games in a row.
Back in the early 2010s, Capcom did a re-release in the form of Darkstalkers: Resurrection for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 which unfortunately underperformed and thereby laid any plans for a new game in the franchise, which had been teased by then-producer at Capcom Yoshinori Ono, on ice.
We later learned that current Street Fighter 6 producer Takayuki Nakayama at one point worked on a Darkstalkers project from which the Street Fighter 5 character F.A.N.G originated after the game ended up cancelled.
It’s clear that Capcom do have an interest in the franchise, especially with the heavy emphasis they place on it in their crossover titles and also when their 2022 Capcom Fighting Collection had 10 games included, 5 of which were Darkstalkers games.
While things fell short with revival attempts in the past, now that Capcom are seeing some greener grass in their profit reports, it might be time to take another stab at it.
One of the things which always sticks out with Rival Schools (also known as Justice Gakuen in Japan) is its colorful cast of characters, a few of which I delved into great detail on in an article a few weeks ago.
Having interesting characters is definitely a common thread for Capcom across most of their games, but the sheer creativity displayed in trying to get a bunch of typical school characters and their extracurricular activities to work in a fighting game was staggering at the time. There’s even a swimmer who does his maneuvers in mid-air to juggle combo you!
Rival Schools also had the interesting connection that Street Fighter’s Sakura Kasugano appeared in its roster, thereby linking the two franchises together by establishing them as taking part in the same world.
This was further elaborated upon during Street Fighter 5, first by including Rival Schools characters in the backgrounds of certain stages and then finally in its last season by outright having Akira Kazama join the roster.
With Rival Schools and Street Fighter now being intricately linked, it’s definitely possible that Capcom would prefer to simply keep introducing more Rival Schools characters to the Street Fighter series in order to keep them alive.
There’s precedent for this, since it’s just like they’ve done with Final Fight characters, but to be frank the gameplay of Rival Schools is just so different from Street Fighter that it’d be a shame to leave it there.
One of Capcom’s former bigshot developers agrees — Hideaki Itsuno who unfortunately left Capcom last year said way back in 2018 that he not only wanted to make Rival Schools 3, but that he had a great idea for it as well.
As Itsuno was potentially the main driving force for such a project, his departure from Capcom may mean that it’s less likely to happen, but it’s also possible to contract people for project work even after they’ve left.
There’s a tangible example of this — despite leaving Nintendo over 20 years ago, Masahiro Sakurai has returned to develop every Super Smash Bros. title after departing from the company as well.
Capcom could employ Itsuno to do something similar, or they could simply hand the project over to someone completely different to put their own spin on it.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that Capcom hasn’t forgotten about Rival Schools and given the massive popularity Akira proved to have in Street Fighter polls after her release, there might be hope for a new game on the horizon after all.
Star Gladiator is a very interesting one because while Capcom were basically the kings of the fighting game genre back in the day, they were predominately focused on 2D fighting games.
This series was an exception and moves into the 3D fighting game territory, even more than other titles they had like Rival Schools, and felt more reminiscent of Soul Calibur if anything with the emphasis on weapons and even featuring ring outs.
Originally inspired by Star Wars, it’s a sci-fi themed fighting game and a lot of players are likely to get their first taste of it when the Capcom Fighting Game Collection 2 comes out this weekend which features the second game in the series, Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein.
It would be an interesting time for Capcom to try their hand at a 3D fighting game in the current landscape of fighting games. Long-time mainstays like Dead or Alive and Soul Calibur are nowhere to be seen at the moment and while Virtua Fighter is gearing up for a comeback, there’s no telling when that project is actually coming out.
The only active 3D fighting game at the moment is Tekken 8, a title which has recently been mired in controversy after its Season 2 update.
Of course, this window of good timing would presume that Capcom had been developing a new Star Gladiator for a while which would be unlikely. It’s a more niche pick among their old fighting game franchises, so it being the first non-Street Fighter fighting game they revive in the modern era is just not very realistic.
However, it would be very cool to see what Capcom would do in the 3D fighting game space after so much has changed in the last 20-something years. Maybe if the reception to it is strong in the new Capcom Fighting Collection 2, we’ll see something down the road.
Today, most people think of licensed fighting games and their minds instantly go to Arc System Works and it’s no wonder — from Dragon Ball FighterZ and the inclusion of RWBY characters in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle to the mobile game adaptations of Granblue Fantasy Versus and DNF Duel, they’ve carved out their own area in that market very well.
However, back in 1990s making licensed fighting games was actually Capcom’s shtick. One of the most famous ones is the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fighting game, but what actually put them on the map back then was their Marvel fighting games which eventually developed into a full-on crossover series you may have heard of called Marvel vs. Capcom.
Now, I’m not going to keep singing the virtues of Marvel vs. Capcom specifically since it’s pretty much another Darkstalkers situation — everyone keeps asking for it and we all know that people want it.
My point is more that given how lucrative these licensed games can be nowadays with some of the absolute biggest hits in gaming (including the fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ, but also other genres like Insomniac’s Spider-Man games) being such licensed games.
With that in mind, it’s not without reason to think that Capcom might want to return to doing such contract work again.
It might be difficult to edge out Arc System Works of this market which they’ve been so successful in, but it’s also worth noting that Arc System Works currently have nothing on the docket that we’re aware of.
That doesn’t mean that they definitely aren’t working on any licensed projects, but it does leave the door open for someone else to swoop in. Someone else who could be Capcom.
Speaking of licensed games, that leads perfectly into my next and final spot on this list, which is…
The title that’s been on everyone’s lips for a while now is this one — Capcom vs. SNK 3.
For the longest time it was nothing but a pipe dream, but right now it genuinely feels like we might be closer to it than ever.
Not only do we have re-releases of both SNK’s side of their old crossovers but we also have Capcom’s titles coming in the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 this week.
More importantly, we saw Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui joining Street Fighter 6 and in exchange Street Fighter’s Ken Masters and Chun-Li will be added to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
It appears that the bonds between Capcom and SNK are just as strong as they were back during the height of their crossover projects which means that there just may be actual interest in producing a full-fledged crossover title once more.
Given that Capcom vs. SNK 2 is one of the most celebrated fighting games of all time and is getting some new time in the spotlight now with its re-release, as well as the characters already intermingling in modern projects, it’s clear that the idea has been at the forefront of both developers minds for some time.
Back in June of last year, Street Fighter 6’s producers Takayuki Nakayama and Shuhei Matsumoto had a translator transcribing their words as “in terms of a brand new [Capcom vs. SNK] game, that’s something that they would love to make. They would love to continue talking to SNK and see what they can do to make it happen.”.
SNK on their end talked about the possibility back in October where SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda said “to be perfectly honest, the hurdle for doing something like that is quite high, but we’re always in communication with the development teams at Capcom and we’re on very good terms, so I don’t think it’s impossible.”
The fact that both developers are so open and candid about the possibility is a massive indicator that Capcom vs. SNK 3 or a similar project might actually be a reality within the next few years.
For those who remember the golden age of fighting games back in the 1990s — there’s a very real possibility that it’s coming back. I, for one, am ready for it.