Capcom at their Best...and Otherwise

One of my many seemingly random and certainly useless memories from my childhood comes from about the turn of the millennium; given certain aspects that I can piece together, I'd place it somewhere around mid-2000, give or take a little bit. My cousin was in high school and had been going through a rebellious phase, and I was lucky enough to be left in her care for an afternoon--whenever this had happened, I would always be a bit nervous, yet kind of cautiously excited. This particular time, she had taken us by bus to a downtown shopping center called Tower City, which is now rather hollowed-out compared to its former self, yet is fondly remembered by many Clevelanders as a vibrant hangout and host of plenty of cool shops back in the mall age of the 1990s. I don't remember having a particularly bad time while there, but what I do remember quite vividly is realizing that we didn't have enough money for the bus trip back and having to beg for money from strangers. I was kind of scared upon reaching that realization, but also felt kind of cool and rebellious; having been a mostly straitlaced kid up until then, being irresponsible and getting into trouble felt totally wild.

The other thing that I remember is, sometime during that trip, briefly visiting a now long-defunct video game store and playing the then recently released Dreamcast for a few minutes. I couldn't really get very far with it, but while there I did see a copy of Mega Man Legends 2 sitting on a shelf. I couldn't help but stare for a while at it; by then I was already a budding fan of the entire Mega Man franchise, so while it wasn't quite anything that I hadn't seen before, I was still enraptured for about a minute just gazing at it and musing on how cool it looked, or rather, how Mega Man himself looked: the all-blue color scheme, the odd but appealing armor design, and the style of CG that was still a ways away from photorealistic but had its own unique charm all enthralled 4-to-6-year-old me [for reference: http://www.legends-station.com/mml2/coverart/europe1.jpg].

The reason that I brought up this autobiographical monologue is because even if it may have happened after the decade had ended, to me this episode embodied a lot of the 90s with its display of casual "rebellion, I guess" through edgy irresponsibility and youthful attempts at independence (not to mention the setting), as well as summarizing a few key elements of the video game climate of that period--or perhaps better put, summarizing through my game store encounter and explaining with the trip as a whole.

For one thing, the Dreamcast, having been released in the phenomenon's twilight and its lifespan ending at about the same time, essentially summarized Japanese gaming around the late 90s era (which, of course, extended its dying grasp into partway through 2001). Though the trio of next-gen consoles that would follow it looked much more modern, seemingly attempting to symbolically bring gaming into the new millennium, the white, blocky, 1999-released Dreamcast looked like paraphernalia for a computer running Windows 98 [http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/9566/393626-dreamcast.jpg]. Its roster of arcade ports was a reasonable summary of the best games to come out around that era, with a number of shmups courtesy of SEGA themselves and a few others, as well as the best versions of a solid collection of fighting games from SNK and Capcom (including a handful that remain exclusive to this day). After the failure of the Saturn, SEGA had a hard time reeling in third party developers, but there was one particular company that had given them support throughout this period...

In addition to the Dreamcast, the encounter with Mega Man Legends 2 is rather poignant, for it represents a certain art style that became popular around this period. A lot of games were coming out with a bright and a particularly "cartoony" style of anime with a distinctive proportional canon, which was often translated into or even presented in 3DCG. Mega Man Legends is a solid example of both of these things in its concept art [http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mega-man-legends-key-art.png] and CG covers as well as polygon graphics respectively, as was Treasure's Mischief Makers [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Mischief_Makers.jpg], Namco's Panic Park [http://www.arcade-classics.com/panic_park/21021601.jpg], and many others. I can't speak with any authority on what was happening in Japan in the 90s that led to proliferation of this style, but I can make a case for why it caught on in the west around this time. In the 80s, lots of games from Japan had "Westernized" or "Americanized" box art for their target markets; Capcom was notorious for this, resulting in the original Astro Boy-inspired Mega Man cover [http://timewarpgamer.com/images/nes/mega_man/rockman_box_jp.jpg] being replaced by this infamous abomination [http://thegia.com/archive/features/boxart/megaman-tn.jpg] as well as some others that missed the mark [the mark: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/bof/images/4/42/BoFIIBoxArt.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130616155706] but were kind of fun on their own merits [http://i.imgur.com/aHx9404.jpg]. However, due to the wild success of games like Chrono Trigger that kept their original art as well as the growing market for Japanese animation, the west finally managed to start getting non-bastardized versions of box covers and arcade cabinet decorations. Not only that, however, but circumstances seemed to favor this style catching on stateside; the Cold War had ended, the economy was doing well, and 9/11 hadn't yet struck and ushered in an era of terrorist paranoia--all in all, it wasn't a bad time to be alive. Dominant youth culture spearheaded by Nirvana portrayed a generation that was bored and restless due to unfulfilling suburban lives, yet all the same, life was about as good as it ever has been in America (at least when visiting the arcade). During this period, bright and upbeat presentation, roundedness, abundance of primary colors, and armor designs that were intentionally big and blocky displays of polygons were par for the course for many games and their cabinets, and it seemed that people related to it.

A number of companies employed this style and general idea, but none did it quite like Capcom. Tons upon tons of such games with such aesthetics (and arguably the best of such games with the best of such art) came from this company, and they seemed to be leading the charge for this movement. Consider the following: [http://www.theisozone.com/images/cover/dc_1776.jpg] [http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/megaman/images/8/82/Mm8promomaincharacters.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100907195126] [http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/megaman/images/a/aa/Normal_mmx5promo.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100420002539] Though they look rather similar in style to one another, each of those was made by a different artist. However, as one will note upon inspection, they do retain a number of stylistic differences; the takeaway, then, is not that they were attempting to assimilate, but that they were on the same page. The three artists responsible for the images above (Bengus, Ishikawa, and Suetsugu, respectively) wound up characterizing an era; they were not the only ones doing promotional art and boxart for the company around then, but they were certainly to credit for the most fondly remembered, as well as some of the most important.

So, that's nice and all, but is it all just a matter of secondary, even tertiary elements like promo materials and cabinet/manual decorations? Certainly not; the games themselves started to adopt a similar aesthetic as well. In 1994, Capcom's second most beloved fighting game series saw its first entry: Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (or Vampire: The Night Warriors for our friends across the Pacific). Though this series is now merely a cult classic alive in the hearts of dedicated fighting game fans, it was a pretty big deal back in its heyday, with entries making names for themselves as some of the top earning arcade games at various points in time. Part of this was due to its fast gameplay and mechanics different from Street Fighter II, but an undeniable element of the charm was its visuals. SFII was a groundbreaking and terrific game mechanically and had a memorable cast of fun and wacky characters, but wasn't quite the best-looking game on the market--certainly not the worst, but still rather unremarkable [http://im.ziffdavisinternational.com/ign_br/screenshot/default/o-street-fighter-ii-facebook_eh5t.jpg]. Darkstalkers, on the other hand, had a new sprite style that was as detailed and masterfully rendered as it was bright and colorful (Does that phrase sound familiar?) [http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/8/c/b/gfs_2023_2_9.jpg], which seems to be an odd contrast to the horror theme of the game until playing it and finding out what a part humor and wackiness plays in it. In addition to being a great step forward in the general graphics department and being a pleasing choice in artistic direction, it was indeed conducive to goofy hijinx, all of which made the new sprite style a potent candidate for the new fighting game based on the X-Men series. X-Men: Children of the Atom [https://archive.org/download/xdemo/xdemo.jpg] wound up being such a success and its visuals so praised that Street Fighter had adopted the style for the Alpha spinoff subseries [http://s.emuparadise.org/fup/up/411-Street_Fighter_Alpha_2_%28U%29-1.jpg], which then contributed to the Capcom crossover series: X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom; it even spread to genres outside of fighting games, such as the action platformer Strider 2 [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MbDX5AKQsu0/TcMRkLkxTzI/AAAAAAAAAzw/A8VuKH3qDdA/s1600/sdc2722851af640649cb630aae835ba0b.jpg]. It would seem that this in-game artstyle that became Capcom's signature actually guided the promotional and cabinet/box art; to illustrate this, compare this 1994 Darkstalkers art [http://65.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb3debqquz1qcrzzno1_1280.jpg] to the 1999 Power Stone boxart from above. The latter was in what appears to be the characteristic style of the period and especially of his, while the former seems to point to it with its palette, proportions, and "explosive collage" presentation, yet doesn't quite seem to have fully broken from the early 90s style seen in the work of artists such as Akiman, who did the iconic poster for Street Fighter II: The World Warrior [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/SF2_JPN_flyer.jpg]. One may wonder if that's just a result of going for something different with different games; while it's true that he did seem to be going for a more "cartoony" look for the whimsical Power Stone, given that his work for later Darkstalkers [http://i.imgur.com/jE5fDMA.png] fell closer to the other works that he eventually did (and since Street Fighter Alpha found its way to this style as well [http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/4340/438995-27.jpg]), the correct conclusion is instead that the visuals and wacky gameplay introduced in Darkstalkers guided the artists to where they found themselves in this period.

This piece is indeed mostly focused on the art of the time, because it just happens to be something that particularly stuck out to me around this period. However, as always is with (quality) video games, the actual game itself is of note. If the art is a consequence of the in-game visuals, the in-game visuals are a consequence of the gameplay ideas. Street Fighter II had a goofy cast of characters based on ethnic stereotypes who threw fireballs at each other, yet the gameplay was meant to be straightforward and rather humorless. Darkstalkers was made to be over the top, and though the Marvel fighters and crossover series weren't meant to be as humorous as Darkstalkers, they did take note from the speed and combo potential of their parent series, and invented battle systems that, being essentially fanservice games for those who were into Marvel and/or various Capcom franchises, were designed primarily to be flashy and cool-looking rather than balanced and competitive--of course they did not eschew those elements entirely, it was simply that they were most concerned with just making something that rewarded full-on technical virtuosity instead of strategic play balanced with execution, and moreover just looked fucking awesome.

This, then, was brought about by the situation in which Capcom had found themselves around this time. After the release of Street Fighter II, they had encountered incredible financial success, with the consistently-selling Mega Man series buttressing them as well--having a deal with Marvel to make official games certainly didn't hurt either. Resident Evil dropped just a few years later and became a tremendous hit; it was as if they could do no wrong. They were incredibly popular, they were rich as they could be, and yet still gave a fuck--the video game industry was just mainstream enough that it had the money and userbase to do lots of really cool things, but not so popular that companies were guided only by desire for profit or looking to dumb everything down in order to make easy bucks from the casual market, AND games didn't have to be as huge budget as they are now, so companies were much more willing to take risks. Though they may have been on life support by the turn of the millennium, arcades were still around and thus so was the quality control inherent to them [read the section under the "Why are arcade games so good?" subheading http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/]; all of this together indicated that you had a company that was into making cool video games because they liked cool video games. So, we have this one incredibly popular fighting game series, we'll keep making new entries for it since it's profitable and, of course, high quality. It's pretty cool and all, but since we have money and ideas, how about a wacky, fast-paced new fighting game series with a horror theme? Sure, why not? Darkstalkers! We've been watching a lot of Gundam and JoJo, how about a mech-based one with a flamboyant cast and more of a focus on story? No reason not to! Cyberbots! We have some ideas, but there's no real way of telling whether an arena fighting game that plays more like a 3D platformer might catch on. Who cares, it sounds cool! Power Stone! Hey remember Strider? It's about a decade old, but putting Hiryu into Marvel vs. Capcom made us kind of want to revisit it. Do you even have to ask? Strider 2! Going into 3D adventure would be a tremendous departure for the series...but who cares! Mega Man Legends! Maybe you don't remember all of them, but they had thrown out a lot of new IPs around then, and most of them were really neat (not to mention had some bitchin' logos [http://i.imgur.com/xBJwXdT.jpg]); so what if they haven't gone down in history, they were rad ideas. Now, obviously any company is going to have to be businessmen first, yet Capcom managed to be businessmen just enough for them to allow themselves to be people who just wanted to make lots of cool things. Thus, since they were doing incredibly well financially and were as passionate about their craft as they were about their craft (and by combination of those two, were able to realize all of their dreams), it only makes sense that it would manifest in a general sense of style that was characterized by upbeatness and energy; in other words, the art of the time was so great because the games and the credo of the company were as well. Though Mega Man X [http://vgboxart.com/boxes/PSX/67426-megaman-x5.png] was meant to be grittier and less whimsical than the classic series (visible in the scowls and threatening poses, as well as harder-edges and jawlines compared to the more childlike predecessor [http://www.smbhq.com/users/sss/pics/megaman.gif]), it still featured lots of bright primary colors and cartoonish proportions. Even more "serious" and "mature" franchises like Dino Crisis and Resident Evil had a good amount of campy fun to them as well, to the point that it didn't seem jarring at all when Jill Valentine and the zombies appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in the sprite style described above [http://i47.tinypic.com/6xybkj.png] and with art drawn by Bengus [http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelvscapcom/images/0/0f/Jill_MvC2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120513221906] (MvC2's art may have had a duller palette, but still did retain the fun proportions and body language).

Indeed, it could even be said that Capcom embodied everything that was right about video games back then. Consoles did strike a blow against the existence of arcades, but they managed to exist alongside each other at least for the time being, which meant that Capcom was able to make easier, more long-playthrough-oriented games for home (Mega Man Legends, Resident Evil, Breath of Fire 3&4) and competitive fighting games (not to mention that in addition to the straight-to-the-point Street Fighter, meant to be a balanced and fully competitive experience, they were also willing and able to experiment) for the arcades (I've named enough already). They even could continue separately developing good console platformers (comfortably-paced and more precise with secrets and lots of content, e.g. Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X) and more arcade-style ones (faster, harder, more focus on enemies and combat, e.g. Strider 2). These, of course, were in addition to many others. Capcom had all of their bases covered at this point, and were on top of their game as far as nearly every single trend that was popular around the time. In short: Capcom were the masters of the mid- to late 90s.

Perhaps it's also worth noting the role of arcades. Again, though consoles and PC gaming had struck a major blow, the superior processing power of arcade cabinets still kept them alive. In addition, cultural factors likely impacted this as well; for one thing, arcades had a residual impression from the 80s as a haven for delinquents, and the aforementioned attitudes popular in youth culture at this time made them still hip in the public conscience. Furthermore, home gaming had been crawling further up the social ladder and was becoming more and more popular (the PlayStation had sold a whopping and unprecedented 102.49 million units in its lifetime), but was still not universal; plenty of people were still content to just blow a few quarters now and then instead of paying however much a console and games were. So, then, what exactly is the typical atmosphere in an arcade? Sad? Neutral? Boring and routine? Of course not; arcades were full of loud noises, flashing lights, and good times all around. The social aspect impacted things as well; you were essentially surrounded by like-minded people, and everyone had come there for the express purpose of having a good time. Even when playing something like House of the Dead, one couldn't help but feel elated. In that sense, the general atmosphere is quite conducive to the style of art that has been described throughout this essay; it may have been considered tough to sell something like [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc5YnbsW0AADLqP.jpg] to Americans at one point, but in an arcade, that's how everyone was feeling.

That essentially sums up what I have to say about Capcom around this period: they had really cool, distinctive art, lots of wild, experimental, and really solid games, and actually seemed like they gave a damn; they were one of the top contributors to what I might just consider to be the greatest era of video gaming. However, I'd like to take this further; having established them as the beacon of everything that was right about gaming back then, perhaps it would be worthwhile to examine how that role has changed and stayed the same over the years.

The aforementioned period is tough to confine; the writing was on the wall when they released Darkstalkers, with its new sprite style and zany ideas with regards to gameplay and setting, and Cyberbots, another highly experimental fighting game, hit arcades as early as 1995--it's tough, however, to judge where exactly the movement was in full swing. It's safest to just declare that it began some time in the mid-90s and continued until about the middle to end of 2001--in fact, the ceding of the Dreamcast--which served as home to many ports of arcades which prominently displayed Bengus artwork--to the PlayStation 2 is both an accurate approximation of the point of embarcation as well as a symbolic display of the change in climate; as was just stated, the Dreamcast was no stranger to bright anime boxart and arcade games from around that period (a number of experimental Capcom titles such as Power Stone, Tech Romancer, Project Justice, and Plasma Sword were its notable exclusives, many of which remain exclusive to this day). The PlayStation 2, on the other hand ushered gaming into its new era. The console's DVD functionality along with the meager price even further unprecedented sales, and games broke huge into the mainstream; before, they were something for nerds and for a bit of the nerdier end of normal people, with maybe a handful of jocks getting them for sports games. Now, video games were essentially universal; in the 2000s, EVERY boy at school had a gaming system, which, of course, was usually a PS2. Gaming, being less niche (especially in the west), saw a new and tremendous market to which to cater; one made up of more "normal" westerners who were going to prefer things that pandered more directly to their tastes. In addition, consoles had now struck the final blow to arcades by being more powerful; it was around this time that arcade establishments and even cabinets in local bars started disappearing. That, of course, removed the implications of arcades, which meant that people would be generally less ecstatic when playing video games. 9/11 had just gone down, resulting in a time of paranoia and grief, with war again on the horizon. Youth culture had departed from the raditude left over from the 80s and the casual slacker nature toward the """gangsta""" (I still can't even render that without feeling awkward) movement of the early 2000s. Ultimately, fun and happy things stopped being cool, and now dim, realistic, "badass" stuff was the new norm. Capcom again seemed to exemplify this trend, with new IPs like Onimusha and Devil May Cry being devoid of the whimsy and upbeatness, with darker color palettes and less cartoony anime designs in favor of more realistic proportions, and older series like Resident Evil were stripped of much of their camp in favor of such characteristics; compare the following art and gameplay shots with what you've seen up until now: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Onimusha_-_Warlords_Coverart.png] [http://www.cf-network.com/cfan/local/cache-vignettes/L500xH375/08-23-5e7ab.jpg] [http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/0/7/2/12072_front.jpg] [http://i18.servimg.com/u/f18/18/41/61/41/dmc1110.jpg] [http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/71525-resident-evil-4-playstation-2-front-cover.jpg] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/42/Resident_Evil_4_Ganado_village.png] So does this departure from color toward dim, gray palettes demonstrate a lack of creativity and decline in quality? Hardly; all three of those games are terrific, and the two new IPs were damn good for the most part (supposedly Onimusha had a stinker or two and DMC2 was just plain lame), and "realistic" RE resulted in a couple of other pretty good titles, namely RE0 and REmake. Unfortunately, fighting games were across the board in stasis, but Capcom did still manage to come up with lots of quality new franchises during this period, as well as new scenarios for their enduring mascot Mega Man.

The problem was, the issues that were sown in that generation were reaped in the next. The 6th generation of consoles (PS2, GameCube, and Xbox; the Dreamcast is kind of a 5.5th gen) was a pretty good time to be a gamer, with tons of great things on each for every taste, and an even better time to be a developer, as the industry had boomed and become significantly more profitable. However, this caused many to be distracted by the almighty dollar, and without arcades to demand quality control, that became less a matter of making things good enough to be hits, but simple, casual, and streamlined enough for mass appeal. Thus came the 7th gen, with more brown'n'bloom tuffguy first person shooters than anyone could possibly count, and yearly sports titles selling depressingly high numbers. Many a beloved franchise was whored out for casual appeal during this period, and nobody did it quite like Capcom. Resident Evil 4 had departed a bit from the previous, focusing on combat mechanics rather than atmosphere and horror, and wound up being so great that it sold very well on a few platforms; the problem was, Capcom saw this and put it in context of the manufactured first and third person shooters of the time, and made RE5, which had given up everything that had made the first few terrific in favor of cashing in on the rooty tooty point'n'shooty craze. Some defend RE5 as "okay," but nobody will speak in favor of RE6, which brought the awful casualization of the series to its logical conclusion. Devil May Cry, despite selling millions, apparently still wasn't satisfactory to Capcom, so they decided to give this anime-based series to a western studio (apparently company president Keiji Inafune had a fetish for the west (at this time the land of the angry bald muscular space marine gun guys) around this point, for some bizarre and insane reason), and not only was the beloved protagonist replaced with some prick designed to appeal to fratboys and Monster Ennergy Drink-chugging 13-year-olds, but moreover the combat--once heralded as the pinnacle that of the action game genre--was so casualized, stripped down, and neutered that one had to ask what the point even was at that point (to say nothing of the ankle-deep "social commentary" that was the focus of the reboot). These are merely two examples of such practices; going further would warrant its own essay altogether.

So instead, let's just go in a different direction, and bring up DLC as well as Capcom's practices therewith. At first, DLC seemed like a gift from heaven; more content for your favorite games easily available, what's not to like? Expansion packs are awesome, so wouldn't this be just that without the middleman? Well, it probably goes without saying that things went very wrong very quickly [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horse-armor]. Before long after its introduction, horse armor-tier packages abounded as cheap tactics for easy cash, and then became even more insidious, with nearly required transactions in addition to the $60 game. If it seems dastardly that companies would plan for DLC before the game was out or have it available on day one, imagine how folks felt when Capcom released Street Fighter x Tekken (which by all rights should have been amazing) with on-disc DLC--that is, content that was released in the base game had to be paid for to be used. Then you had solid games (or at least honest efforts) like Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 that, while not being quite as good as their predecessors, were still reasonable quality titles. However, each had better versions that released for full price mere months after release--several better versions, in SFIV's case. In the context of arcades, this is more understandable; a brand new entry in a fighting game series needs all-new mechanics and potentially revamped physics, a new artstyle and so all-new models/sprites for all returning characters as well as a bigger roster than ever, and THEN all of these things need to be balanced--that takes a LONG time! Thus, it's understandable that they may throw out new versions of existing games to keep people sated, as long as the arcade operator is down for getting a new machine, and so it's no loss to the players, who just keep putting quarters in as always. But putting out another $60 game to be the new standard barely three quarters of a year later? That's hard to defend.

There's one last fault of theirs that is truly disappointing. Remember that collage of logos from various fighting games made within the space of a few years? Yeah, Capcom were pretty down with taking risks back then. Now, when was the last time that Capcom introduced a new IP? I honestly couldn't tell you. At this point, graphics and presentation are expected to be on such a level that more time and moreover more money than ever are dumped into making a game look good than ever before. This, of course, comes at the expense of gameplay more often than not. Even more of an issue than that is that advertising is more cost-intensive and generally demanding than ever; in other words, due to big games one-upping each other, we've reached the point at which every game has to be a blockbuster in order to break even. Thus, companies can't take risks or do things just because they're cool like they once could. Now, this isn't something unique to Capcom, but again, nobody does it quite like them. The zillions of franchises that they once had are now almost all dead and buried--even Mega Man hasn't had a real game in years. At this point, Capcom has essentially become Street Fighter, Monster Hunter, and whatever Itsuno is doing at the moment (which I sincerely hope is currently Devil May Cry 5, but unfortunately that franchise is likely among those zillions), Inc.

It's amazing where writing will take one sometimes; this was initially just going to be gushing about a period that I really liked and why it was cool. Ultimately, it would seem that in the past few eras, Capcom has been the most exemplary company in the business, at times for better and at times for worse. Video games seem to have become too popular for their own good; Capcom went from having enough money to make all the rad games that they wanted to realizing just how much profit they that could make and draining all the rad from their games in order to mazimize that profit. Perhaps the death of arcades was the worst thing to happen to video games, and is to blame for the decay of quality control and rise of sterilization/casualization (well, okay, that's not true; it's DEFINITELY both of those things). It's tragic, but at the end of the day, we can still pop out or Dreamcasts, PS1s, and arcade emulators and enjoy what memories we may have of the glory days.

[WIP] Notable games that exude the mid-late 90s Capcom feel (I'd recommend the original hardware, but that's just me and my autism):

Cannon Spike (aka Gun Spike) [2000; ARC, Dreamcast]

Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness [1995; ARC, Saturn, PS1]

Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (aka Vampire: TNW) [1994; ARC, PS1, PSN]

Darkstalkers 3 (aka Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire) [1997; ARC, Saturn, PS1]

Marvel Super Heroes [1995; ARC, Saturn, PS1, XBLA, PSN]

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter [1997, ARC, Saturn, PS1]

Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes [1998; ARC, Dreamcast, PS1, XBLA, PSN]

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes [2000; ARC, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, XBLA, PSN]

Mega Man 8 [1996; Saturn, PS1]

Mega Man Legends [1997; PS1, N64]

Mega Man Legends 2 [2000; PS1, PC]

Mega Man X4 [1997; Saturn, PS1, PC, PSN]

Mega Man X5 [2000; PS1, PC, PSN]

Mega Man X6 (this one is BAD, but does have that art style...) [2001; PS1, PC]

Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (aka Vampire Hunter: DR) [1995; ARC, Saturn]

Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein (sequel to Star Gladiator) [1998; ARC, Dreamcast]

Power Stone [1999; ARC, Dreamcast, PSP]

Power Stone 2 [2000; ARC, Dreamcast, PSP]

Project Justice (sequel to Rival Schools) [2001; ARC, Dreamcast]

Red Earth (aka War-Zard) [1996; ARC]

Rival Schools: United by Fate [1998; ARC, PS1]

Street Fighter Alpha [1995; ARC, Saturn, PS1, PSN, PC]

Street Fighter Alpha 2 [1996; ARC, SNES, Saturn, PS1, Wii U VC, PC]

Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold [1996; ARC, Saturn, PS1]

Street Fighter Alpha 3 [1998; ARC, Dreamcast, Saturn, GBA, PS1, PS2, PSP]

Star Gladiator [1996; ARC, PS1]

Strider 2 [1999; ARC, PS1]

Tech Romancer [1998; ARC, Dreamcast]

X-Men: Children of the Atom [1994; ARC, Saturn, PS1, PC]

X-Men vs. Street Fighter [1996; ARC, Saturn, PS1]