Capcom commemorates its 40th Anniversary with the launch of the Capcom Town website. As a special treat for fans, some classic retro-games for the NES and SNES are available to play for free directly from the browser.
Founded on June 11, 1983, Capcom started as a company that produces arcade machines. The name literally is a portmanteau of the words "capsule" and "computers", referring to the arcade games the company manufactured. While its first game was the coin-operated Little League, Capcom’s first true video game was Vulgus, a vertical scrolling space shooter. Since then, Capcom has become one of the most successful video game companies in history, with multiple blockbuster franchises, such as the recently released Street Fighter 6.
What can fans expect to find at the Capcom Town website? Read on for the details.
The Capcom Town website was officially launched on June 12, 2023 and announced on Capcom’s social media channels.
Happy Monday everyone! We've just launched Capcom Town, our 40th anniversary website!
Come visit and discover lots of cool content, including free retro games and game development documents from past titles! 🎉✨ #Capcom40th #Capcomtown
👉 https://t.co/mGuXXJuj4Q pic.twitter.com/YNnxwc8gQB
— Capcom Europe (@CapcomEurope) June 12, 2023
Visitors to the Capcom Town website can navigate via the radio button on the top right corner, or they can choose the interactive map. The animated map features familiar Capcom franchises, including Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Mega Man, Devil May Cry, Street Fighter, and many more.
There are also sub-categories of links, such as the Museum, office of the CEO and COO of Capcom, and a Capcom Elections. The Capcom Elections itself is essentially a poll for fans to participate in. As of the time of this writing, the poll is for determining which is the most iconic Street Fighter special move between the Hadoken or the Shoryuken.
But perhaps the best feature fans can find at the Capcom Town 40th Anniversary website is the retro games section. Visitors can play classic games like Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, and Mega Man X. These games are emulated and can be played directly on the browser, without the need to install a plugin.
Control options include keyboard, gamepad, or touch (for mobile devices). There is a default key mapping for the controls, but users can also manually change and assign buttons themselves. We tested the games with an Xbox controller for the desktop version, and they all work very well, with no noticeable input lag.
In a nice touch, the available retro games at the Capcom Town website include both the English and Japanese versions, as they were released on the appropriate Nintendo consoles. Thus, the English-language versions are identified as NES and SNES versions, while the Japanese versions are under the Nintendo Famicom and Super Famicom groupings.
Aside from the games themselves, each entry on the Capcom Town website includes a brief description, game cartridge art, and PDF versions of the instruction manuals that were originally included back when they were released.
According to the Capcom Town page for the current roster of games, Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Mega Man X, Street Fighter II, and Final Fight will be available until September 28, 2023. No official word has been released on whether other retro games from the Capcom library will be rotated for free online play in the future.
