Showing up in quite a few of Capcom's earlier games, the Yashichi, which looks like a pinwheel with an orange (or red, depending) circle behind it, is one of Capcom's oldest and most useful powerups.

However, it wasn't always a powerup. In Capcom's very first arcade game, Vulgus, the Yashichi was a deadly enemy. Now, to those who played Vulgus after playing another game where it shows up as a powerup, it probably came as a huge shock to see that something so useful could be so.....painful!

In Exed Exes, a later Capcom game, it fulfilled the same role. Capcom would break this tradition with the release of SonSon in 1984. The Yashichi in that game gave you bonus points. Another benign role would be taken in Gun.Smoke-- that game actually offered two types of Yashichi, the red one, which gives you a free life, and the blue one, which gives you invincibility for a few seconds. Pirate Ship Higemaru's version gives you bonus points, but in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1, it also unlocks Higemaru's art gallery.

There are many games in which the Yashichi shows up. Many, many games; probably too many to list here. It appears in Mega Man as an item which gives you all weapon energy and life back, which is probably the most-known appearance of it. Other Mega Man games like 8 and Battle & Chase would have cameos from it. Games like Final Fight and Street Fighter II would also have appearances from this elusive icon.

The last documented appearance of it in a more recent game so far (as in, not a ported game) seems to be Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge. It shows up as a menu icon.

Now, why am I doing this blog entry? It's basically because the Yashichi was the first memorable icon of any Capcom game, especially if your first Capcom title was Vulgus. For others, they may remember it from another early game. In a way, them putting it into so many games is a reminder of where and how Capcom had started in the video game industry (before they were a game company, they made coin-op games). Its appearance usually does have a meaning behind it.

So next time you see one in a game, think back to the first time you saw one and what you felt when you picked it up. You knew that it wouldn't be an ordinary powerup, and that it would become an icon for the company itself.

-capcommunist