The project I described in my last blog entry is somewhere around half done now. It's a blue/white quadruple-paneled catalog with the website name, an eye-catching picture of the logo, and a description of some of Capcom's products. So far I've had a ton of fun with it. It'll be posted up after it's done, but I think it looks pretty good so far, if not a bit bare. Has a nice little picture of X & Zero in there, some of their games such as Breath of Fire III, Capcom Puzzle World, and more.

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

I know nearly all of us here have some really good memories of playing Capcom games, or maybe even finding a game that you wanted but could never find before. Here are some of mine.

First is how I found out about Project Justice. About May 2001 or so, I went to the newsstand with my parents to pick up some new comics. They had the new Tips & Tricks issue there; I forget exactly what games it covered that month but I remember the Project Justice logo was on the front cover. When I saw the logo, I thought, "oh great, another lame shooting game."

Of course, I'd played Rival Schools extensively by that time, including the most recent one (that I knew of), Seishun Nikki 2, but plumb forgot that the credits of Rival Schools said Project Justice on them (I'd never known that a true RS sequel had been released at that time in Japan), so I was in for a huge surprise once I got in the car.

Okay, so I open the magazine, and start flipping through it furiously. I catch a short glimpse of who I thought looked like Shoma from Rival Schools. Sure enough, I flip back to that page and it was indeed Shoma I saw! And all the other Rival Schools characters! And a girl wielding a violin as a weapon, which was the funniest thing I'd ever seen!

I freaked out right then and there. My parents thought I was being killed or something. The English Dreamcast release was coming in June or July, apparently, according to the guide. We get home, and I just keep looking the article/strategy guide over wondering if I'm dreaming or not.

My best friend at the time had gotten a crapload of money somehow, and wanted to get me a birthday present that week since my 13th birthday was in three months. Remembering that Tips & Tricks said that PJ wouldn't be out for a while, I asked him to either get me Power Stone 2 or Skies of Arcadia. He said "okay" and hung up.

A few days later, he calls back and says that the store he went to didn't have either of those two games. I groaned at this point. But then extreme happiness came later when he said he picked up a cool-looking fighting game called Project Justice. I thought I'd misheard what he said, so I stopped him and asked him to repeat the name of the game. "Project.....Justice." I really wigged out when he said this and thanked him profusely!

The next day came and he brought the game over. We spent all day playing it and unlocking characters, laughing at the new team-ups and party-ups, and the new characters like Yurika and Momo. I was so grateful I even let my friend do the majority of the play by himself that day since he wanted to unlock people. That was truly the best memory I'd ever had of a Capcom game. I got the Japanese version later just for the board game mode.

Breath of Fire III I had a weird history with. Around September '98 or so, five months after it got a US release (and exactly a week after my tenth birthday), I saw the game at Blockbuster for--wait for it-- only 6.99! Needless to say, I picked that up with the quickness for I loved the first two games.

I take it home and have fun with it, the characters, the gameplay, everything about it was captivating. It made me wonder why Blockbuster sold the game for so cheap. But at first, I had a ton of problems trying to beat the first parts of the game (especially McNeil's mansion which gave me the most trouble when I was younger), and ended up restarting it once I got to the lighthouse because I didn't know how to power it.

Once I restarted it, I stuck with it and eventually beat it and it became pretty much my favorite Playstation title so far. I had a lot of great memories of both playing it and from actual events that happened in the game. It remains my favorite RPG ever.

Playing Street Fighter III: 2i was somewhat of a love/hate thing for me at first. I loved the new, even deeper gameplay (that was improved from New Generation), but hated how I'd either get whooped by the AI or by other players. I stuck with the game, though, and became a bit better. My main characters were usually Sean and Ibuki, who coincidentally were found later on to be two of the best characters in the game.

Learning how to parry was somewhat of a milestone for me, especially since I was only 10 when I learned how to do it. I knew it was in NG too, but never really learned (mostly because I didn't get to play NG so much). I'll never forget the first time I parried a Hadoken using Sean. A few months later I'd go on to parry a full Shinku Hadoken out of reflex with Dudley. That blew me away.

It made me want to practice my parrying and combos even more, the same way SF2 and SFA make you wanna learn their respective systems. Needless to say, when SF3TS came out one-and-a-half years later, I was willing to try to learn the new characters, and later, how to kara throw (found out about kara throwing thanks to a Tips & Tricks issue from 2001 or so). Third Strike became one of my favorite SF games, and one of my favorite fighters period.

These are just a few of my best memories of playing Capcom's games. If anyone has any to share, feel free to. :) I'll add more of my own later.

-capcommunist

When Capcom put that five-word phrase onto the front of the American BoF3 box, they sure as heck weren't kidding.

Ah, Breath of Fire III. What can be said about it that hasn't been said already? Beginning development in late 1996/early 1997, this game marked a time in which Capcom's ingenuity in the RPG genre would pay off for once. BoFs I and II were severely underrated, but at least this one got its due as time went by.

Released in 1997 for Japan and 1998 for America, this RPG was notable for quite a few reasons, including:

-Lush graphics in which the characters were 2D and the backgrounds were 3D. Capcom made sure they could pack nearly every detail needed into every inch of the graphics.

-The Master System gave players a new way to train up their characters. Do you wanna sacrifice magic power for brute force, or will you take a more balanced approach? Want certain characters to learn certain moves? Apprentice them under different masters for tons of different options.

-The Dragon Gene system, which allows players to make all sorts of dragons each with their own stats and special attacks. This truly added kind of a curiosity element to the game.

But all this was bundled together with a deep story, great soundtrack, and awesome characters. Seriously, this time the saga of Ryu and his pals was truly a cut above the rest, especially for its time. Eschewing the standard "burning town, chosen one" story you can find in just about any other Japanese RPG, BoFIII told the story of Ryu and how he got through his hardships, figuring out more about himself and his clan (the Brood) over a number of years (all of the young characters become grown up about halfway through the game, after the fight between Ryu and Garr).

And what hardships! The game starts off with two guys talking in a mine, riding a mine cart. They find a baby dragon encased in a crystal (this turns out to be Ryu). The two guys, Gary and Mogu (you may recognize the name Mogu from the first BoF game, but this isn't the same one), use some dynamite to blow up the crystal. Ryu awakens, gets mad, and pretty much burns them to death while being controlled by the player. Ryu's only mission at this point is to escape the mine. As a cute, green baby dragon, no less.

After passing all sorts of scared miners (one even wets his pants as he mentions himself in the game), he ends up near the end of the mine, but ends up fighting a builder (at the player's control). Before he can use Whelp Breath to finish the builder off, somebody in the mine distracts him by yelling, and he's hit with a crane, caged, and put on the back of a train.

Outside, Ryu wiggles free of the train and he and the cage fall an indeterminate amount of feet to the ground. Rei, a Woren tribe warrior, finds Ryu naked in the forest. He carries Ryu back to his house, where his cohort, Teepo, lets him become a thief along with them. Ryu finds out his own name (and has a rather weird, elaborate prophetic dream), and the three go to start committing crimes.

One rather memorable crime they commit is when they try to mug someone on Yraall Road. Specifically, they have Ryu do it. Of course, he's reluctant to do it; however, Teepo pushes him out into the road from the bushes. Ryu stumbles and runs into Bunyan, a big, menacing lumberjack (who oddly enough looks like Hagrid from Harry Potter, or rather Hagrid looks like him). After a rather unsettling threat towards Ryu and his thieving buddies, Rei decides they'll pay Bunyan back for the threat, so they break into his house to get food. Once they get their spoils (a pack of beef jerky), all three hear the door opening. Rei, being somewhat scared, decides to check out what's going on.

A very funny yelp later ("BUHIIIIII!") Teepo and Ryu go up to check on Rei. Instant blackout. Total flipping darkness for two seconds. When Teepo and Ryu come to, they notice that they're tied up and that Rei's gone. Bunyan explains that he sent Rei to Mt. Glaus, and tells Ryu and Teepo to chop wood to pay off their debt and to "do some honest work for a change." After this, Teepo decides they'll go to Mt. Glaus to find Rei. This is one of my favorite parts of the game 'cause it definitely shows how long Capcom had to think about writing a great story, and how far they were going to go to write one.

Of course, just because I stopped listing hardships doesn't mean that there aren't way more of them. After going to Mt. Glaus they kill a Nue, a chimera-like creature and find out it was just trying to feed its babies. Ouch. There's also the part after this where they break into Mayor McNeil's mansion at the request of a cloaked fellow named Loki, which turns out really bad as they earn the distrust of all the villagers, and get stalked by these two crazy horsemen for a good chunk of the game.

Outside of the one part that I said was one of my favorites, I have a slew of others. Training a lanky bookkeeper named Beyd to fight a sailor named Zig to earn his childhood friend Shadis' hand was very memorable for me. Also, the Contest of Champions was well-done, and the fight between Ryu and Garr much later on before the time skip is another point of interest for me. If I rattled off every event I liked, this post would be far too long. :P

Aside from the story being on point, the characters are awesome too. You have Ryu, of course, who's of the Brood clan and basically a silent hero outside of having a few yells in battle (though he speaks in the game, it's not seen or heard by the player, yet the other characters react to what he's saying), and has a ton of dragon transformations. Rei, the thief from the Woren tribe who can turn into a Weretiger and has a will of steel, Teepo, the mysterious warrior whom actually is the basis of one of the best plot twists in the game, Nina, a cute little princess who's hankering for some adventure, and you meet other cool characters like Garr, Momo, and Peco throughout your adventure.

My favorite characters besides Ryu would have to be Nina, Garr, and Rei. Garr is my standout favorite because of what he was sent to do: kill Ryu. As one of the Four Guardians, it was his job to kill Ryu as Ryu is a member of the Brood (the Four Guardians specialized in killing the Brood). In a twist of delicious irony, Garr beats Ryu to near-death in the tournament, joins up with him to fight Balio and Sunder, and stays pretty much an MVP in your party for most of the game, then it gets to a certain point and he decides he wants to test Ryu's power (basically his own roundabout way of saying he's gonna kill him). Some circle of life, huh? Where's that song from The Lion King when ya need it?! :P

And yet another great point to the game is the gameplay. The new additions make the battles great. The new Dragon Gene system allows players to pick and match up to three genes to make any of a wide assortment of dragons. This keeps battle fresh and is actually quite useful at certain points of the game. And I just love the designs of the dragons, specifically Tiamat, which IMO is the coolest-looking one out of all of them. In addition to this, there's also the Master system, where one can apprentice any character under any of them and their stats raise or lower depending on the masters themselves. Characters can also gain new moves this way. This makes the game nearly infinitely replayable. The boss fights are just awesome. I remember the first time I fought the Dragon Zombie in the Dauna Mine. Good times.

The soundtrack is one of the best I've heard. There's a dichotomy of opinion as to whether the soundtrack is genius or it sucks, but I'm personally in the former camp. I love this game's music. The boss battle theme is one of the very best I've ever heard, and In The Morning, Nina's theme, is one of my favorite character theme songs ever. The whole soundtrack just sets the mood for the entire game.

All these things culminate to make Breath of Fire III my favorite RPG ever, and one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. I know when I'm bored or depressed, I pop this game in for a good time. It truly is the classic role-playing game.

-capcommunist

Just some random Capcom stuff I scanned a while back.

From EGM August '93:

The SF2 Turbo American ad.

A preview of Mega Man 6. Interesting to note is that on the second link there, the elusive Mega Man X beta is shown. The Mega Man X game we ended up getting was much different than the beta. Much different.

From Video Games April '95:

A pictorial tour of Capcom USA. This article has a weird history because it chronicles a trip to Capcom USA to see a preview of the new (at the time) X-Men game called Children of the Atom. It also shows former Capcom USA president Ryuichi Hirata, the mini-arcade they used to have, and more. This is from before they relocated to San Mateo, California.

From EGM December '01:

A three-page interview with Hideki Kamiya on his inspirations for the Devil May Cry series. He mentions some interesting stuff, such as some DMC game mechanics being inspired by bugs from other Capcom titles like Onimusha.

That's all I have right now to tide you guys over, and it's a small preview of what's to come!

-capcommunist