Mega Man artwork ‘discovered’ in Duke Nukem years ago. Still no one cares.

Thanks to the hard work of Internet researchers, bits and pieces of one of the better-left-forgotten Mega Man conversions for the PC have been found in Duke Nukem 1, the original. Thus proving originality was never a strong point for video games (Capcom excepted):

http://www.student.tue.nl/p/f.a.m.smeijers/sfp/games/duke1.htm#copied_art

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Posted in the internets, General, PC, Mega Man® | 1 Comment »

Have you heard? We love golf! And so does Gametrailers!

Capcom’s own Takeshita-san and the awesome Takahashi Brothers from Camelot spent last week running up and down the California coastline on press tour for We Love Golf, which will be out here in the US in July. They met with Gametrailers and things went swimmingly, as you can see in the following game demo.

Note: Godzilla-style VO dubbing in English courtesy of Capcom Japan localization team member John Airhart, who wins this week’s award for “Name Most Likely To Appear In A Future SquareEnix Game.”

Posted in We Love Golf!, Interview | No Comments »

KEXP: the world’s greatest (online) radio station

I gotta tell you, I would go completely insane if I couldn’t listen to music while I work. Considering the vast majority of my day is spent feeling my backside slowly and inevitably widen while snapping out email after IM after phone call, a steady stream of new and awesome music is all that keeps me from going absolutely and finally bonkers. God bless the geniuses that program music at publicly-funded KEXP in Seattle; their streaming connection is the third thing I activate when my computer starts up in the morning (IM, Outlook, KEXP, in that order) and it’s usually the last thing I turn off at night before going home. I stream the station all day, every day, keeping me in the know on new and emerging AWESOME artists like The Blakes, Hot Chip, The Ravonettes, playing new tunes from Radiohead, Wilco and the Drive-By Truckers, and classic alt/indie nuggets from the Replacements, Husker Du and The Clash. They even drop in a smattering of hip-hop throughout the day, including local Seattle acts like the Blue Scholars or jams from Public Enemy, Wu Tang and Gangstarr. This radio station is the sound of my music collection on shuffle, with the added bonus of emerging new bands that I usually end up loving. If you’re into music at all and you’re not actually within range of KEXP’s towers, do yourself a favor and listen online. And give them some money, fer Pete’s sake; they’re rocking this hard for you!

Posted in general awesomeness, music | No Comments »

Shocking! MSN’s article on biggest game surprises wouldn’t be complete without Resident Evil

As soon as this article popped up on my Google News alert for Resident Evil, I knew exactly what the screen shot would be, without even checking. True story: back in 1995 or so (back during my first stint at Capcom), we were receiving monthly code updates from the RE team and showing them to anyone and everyone to get them interested in this weird new game. I was in Texas at a superlame retail show, of all places, playing the latest build on a monitor in front of a crowd of about 25 - 30 interested gamers. I was so absorbed in the game that I totally tuned out all the folks behind me and entered this hall for the first time (it had been locked in previous builds). When those goddamned dogs crashed through the windows for the first time ever in the US, I literally dropped the PS1 controller on the floor, causing the crowd to laugh and Jill, regrettably (as the save system had yet to be implemented), to be eaten. MSNBC busts plots wide open, leaving spoilers in its wake like drunken wakeboarders in Lake Havasu during Spring Break, but it’s certainly an interesting read.

Posted in Capcom® | 3 Comments »

Capcom’s European Staff Briefly Exposed to Sunshine, Fresh Air

With the recent announcement of Capcom and MotoGP’s glorious 5-year partnership, it was safe to assume the deadbeats from Capcom Europe would be at the big MotoGP event in Jerez Spain, cluttering up a perfectly good motorcycle race with videogames. Pictured above is Capcom Europe’s Michael Pattison trying unsuccessfully to get an autograph from Dorna Sports (they own MotoGP) CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta.

Check out the flickr pool (thanks Ben!) for bikes, babes, and shot-cluttering bald heads, and pick up MotoGP 2007 here.

Posted in Those crazy Europeans!, MotoGP, Event Pictures | No Comments »

MotoGP: Capcom can has exclusive license ’til 2012? YES!

MotoGP is the most exciting thing on two wheels, hands down. If you’re not familiar with the sport, you need to get onboard posthaste, as it’s growing faster than a hopped-up Kawa on a straightaway. With 18 Grand Prix races in 16 different countries, MotoGP is truly one of the most international of all motorsports. 800cc prototype bikes blasting sparks and melting rubber onto some of the hottest tracks on the planet, including Laguna Seca’s infamous corkscrew turn and (new this year) the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, aka “The Brickyard.” And now it’s all ours, for the next five years!

On Sunday, at the Circuito de Jerez in sunny Spain, Capcom announced that we have struck a licensing agreement with DORNA, the MotoGP organization. Capcom will be producing games for all platforms from now through 2012, from mobile straight through to PS3 and Xbox 360 and everything in between. In fact, we’ll be releasing a game for the 2008 season for 360, PS3, Wii, PC, PS2 and mobile this year.

We knew last year that we were going to be locking up the license, but we had to sit on the news as a few other MotoGP licensors finished their runs with the sport. This year, however, we’re going to be going all-out on the new game unchallenged by any other titles, which should hopefully knock out some of the confusion in the interactive space that we ran into last year. We’ll be bringing you more news on this year’s game soon!

Thanks to Ben L from Capcom Europe for the sexy pics from Spain!

Posted in MotoGP | No Comments »

“Gamers Day” is dead, long live the CAPTIVATE08 Media Summit. Plus: How do YOU score a Golden Ticket to attend?

I just responded to a thread in the forums asking about Capcom’s annual “Gamers Day” and when it will be happening this year. Based on the amount of views and responses in the thread, I thought I should jump in to clarify. Then I ended up writing 800 words. Much like Ryan Adams, I really need an editor to keep me on track. Enough interesting info poured into my post, based on several random things I’ve got cooking here, that I thought I’d also cross-post here on the blog.

Officially, we have killed our Gamers Day event. Dead, like doornail. We’ve moved instead to a new media summit format, which we’re calling CAPTIVATE08, and holding in Las Vegas at the end of May. You might not really care, but there’s a bunch of information about the event after the jump, hints towards what’s coming/being shown, vaguely ramblings on the next phase of Capcom Unity and the tantalizingly-dangled news that members of our community are going to have the opportunity to attend our media summit. Got some time to kill? Follow the link to more words!

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Posted in Community, Capcom News, News | 5 Comments »

N+ Devs Get a D- in Logic 101

I was reading the recent blog post from the N+ developers Metanet regarding how on XBLA ‘Now there’s like a hundred games, and they’re all $&*%.’ and it got me a bit pissed. No, not because they hate Rocketmen (others do too), but more because I think they’re wrong - not about their opinion, but more about their solution.

From independent music to independent movies to independent games, the same theme runs through them all – Only a very small percentage of them are any good. Most of them (to use the Metanet dev team’s phrase) “are utter $&*%.” The Metanet guys even mentioned in their interview that when you go to GameHippo, only one out of every thousand games is good. So their solution to the ‘problem’ of XBLA is to open up and allow thousands of $&*%%y games to be put on XBLA without any oversight from anyone? Huh? How does that solve anything?

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Posted in Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3, 1942, general awesomeness, general cluelessness, Capcom® | 13 Comments »

Monster Hunter Portable 2G on sale in Japan; productivity declines nationally

Monster Hunter Portable 2G went on sale in Japan yesterday, causing the country’s educational system and productivity levels to momentarily dip as players of all ages lined up to get their mitts on the latest portable party hunting madness. Famitsu sent their reporters out into the streets of Tokyo, where they snapped photos of crazy lines in notorious otaku havens like Akihabara and Shinjuku. Famitsu also grabbed video of Capcom’s big 2G launch event in Shibuya, which you can see in the YouTubery above. Highlights include happy words from producer Ryozo Tsujimoto-san (son of the CEO, Kenzo, and brother of the President, Haru), introduction of a new Monster Hunter drink by two cute campaign girls, an appearance by a popular Japanese comedy duo and an amazing Monster Hunter 2G costume! Big ups to Famitsu for taking so many pictures!

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“5 Reasons You Suck if you Don’t Play Okami”

Cheerleading and gentle cajoling doesn’t seem to have worked, so now the world’s enamored press has turned to open abuse of you, the “not-buying-Okami-for-some-impossibly-dumb-reason” public! As author Tyler Nagata explains, “This isn’t tough love, it’s a friggin’ INTERVENTION. Don’t miss this game.”

Actually, while it sounds like this GamesRadar piece is yelling at you with their “5 Reasons You Suck if you Don’t Play Okami,” they actually just end up sort of swooning about the many awesome things about Okami, ending on this important note:

The best reason why you should pick up Okami is that games like Okami can’t exist without you. If we don’t support games that break away from the beaten path and succeed, we’ll have nothing but more sequels and recycled games based on past financial successes. Yes, we want to play Gears of War 2, StarCraft II and GTA IV. But without surprises like Okami to mix things up every once in a while, the world of gaming will become as predicable and dull as the next Dynasty Warriors.

Click here to read more reasons you suck.

Posted in Okami | No Comments »