Game Histories

When Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo reached the Famicom in Japan in December 1988, Capcom did not yet know […]

By 1989, DuckTales was already one of Disney’s most recognizable television properties. Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Webby, Launchpad McQuack, […]

In 1991, an arcade cabinet could still become a gathering place. Players might crowd around a new machine to watch […]

By the time Capcom announced Capcom Arcade Stadium in December 2020, the company had spent decades returning to the arcade […]

In an era when platform games taught players to run toward a gap and press the jump button, Bionic Commando […]

In February 2013, Capcom asked players to look backward before the company celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. Instead of beginning with […]

Eleven days before Square released Final Fantasy for the Famicom, the company put another game on Japanese store shelves. It […]

In 1987, months before Final Fantasy established Square as one of the most important names in role-playing games, the company […]

In 1985, an arcade player approaching Space Harrier could understand that something unusual was happening before a coin ever entered […]

On December 18, 1987, Japanese players could walk into a store, purchase a Famicom cartridge from a relatively young company […]

When Square released Final Fantasy II for the Family Computer in Japan on December 17, 1988, the company faced a […]

When Final Fantasy III appeared on the Japanese Family Computer on April 27, 1990, Square was approaching the end of […]

When 1941: Counter Attack reached arcades in 1990, Capcom was returning to one of the series that had helped define […]

A year after 1943: The Battle of Midway sent arcade players over a fantasy version of the Pacific War, Capcom […]

By the middle of the 1990s, Capcom’s long-running series of vertically scrolling aircraft shooters faced an unusual problem. The games […]

When Resident Evil arrived on the original PlayStation in 1996, it opened with something closer to a low-budget horror film […]

Long before Ryu threw his first Hadoken, before Mega Man stepped onto a Nintendo Entertainment System, and before players entered […]

Long before Monster Hunter became one of Capcom’s largest franchises, its creators were trying to solve a problem that seemed […]

In 1982, an arcade player stepping up to Time Pilot was given a premise that could be understood almost immediately. […]

Before Street Fighter II filled arcades with crowds waiting to challenge strangers, before Hadoukens and Shoryukens became part of the […]

On December 17, 1987, Capcom released Rockman for Nintendo’s Family Computer in Japan. It arrived during a period when the […]

By 1983, arcade players already knew how a space shooter was supposed to work. A ship usually sat near the […]

The opening of Ghosts ’n Goblins wastes almost no time. A knight and a princess sit together in a cemetery […]

In 1985, a lone soldier dropped into enemy territory and began running north. There was little time for explanation. Soldiers […]

By the time Midway Arcade Origins appeared in November 2012, the company whose name was printed across its cover no […]

By 2003, the classic American video arcade was already becoming a place of memory. The great rows of cabinets that […]

When Marble Madness appeared in arcades at the end of 1984, it hardly resembled the games surrounding it. There was […]

Few arcade games could explain themselves as quickly as Paperboy. There was no galaxy to save, no maze to memorize, […]

By the time Adventures of Lolo 3 reached American players in 1991, the Nintendo Entertainment System already had a crowded […]

At first glance, Adventures of Lolo 2 looks almost impossibly gentle for a Nintendo Entertainment System game released in 1990. […]