Street Fighter X Mega Man released as Mega Man NES games hit 3DS

Mega Man's been throwing fireballs since the early '90s, but today marks the first time he can ever thrown down with Ryu. Street Fighter X Mega Man hits the web as Capcom announces a new slate of re-releases, but the series remains in limbo.

As promised, Capcom extended an olive branch to fans of its quarter-century old action series Mega Man on Monday morning, giving an official publisher-release release for the fan made Street Fighter X Mega Man. Seo Zong Hui, the man behind the new downloadable, wanted to make a fitting tribute for both of Capcom’s series that turned 25-years-old in 2012, pitting the diminutive Mega Man (or Rockman for Japanophile purists) against eight world warriors from Street Fighter. Each fighter, including the original fireball thrower Ryu and relative newcomers like Street Fighter IV’s C.Viper, wait at the end of platforming stages styled after the original NES Mega Man games, much like the last Capcom-developed Mega Man game, 2010’s PSN/XBLA/PC/Wii release Mega Man 10. The game is free of charge.

Capcom also announced that it would be offering fans of the series some additional downloadable titles, albeit for tidy sums of cash. Starting Dec. 27, Capcom will start releasing the Mega Man 1 through 6 on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in the US. The NES games have already hit the eShop in Japan and Europe, but now Americans will be able to slowly enjoy those games over the next year. Mega Man 2 will follow on Feb. 7 and the others will be released bimonthly throughout the year under the guise of a prolonged 25th anniversary celebration for the series.

There is a pattern within these releases: Each of them cost Capcom nothing to distribute or develop. Hui actually developed Street Fighter X Mega Man for his own edification. “I wanted some practice with game programming, so I decided to make something for practice,” Hui told Kotaku recently, “I managed to find some images online for Mega Man, and made something from it just for programming practice. At the that time, 8-bit pictures were popular so I made some gifs of Street Fighter in the same style to test the response from the community and used Ryu as a test on the game engine I was building on. The results were great so I decided to continue working on it.” Ultimately Capcom didn’t need to put any effort or resources into the game’s creation. A low risk way to keep the brand around.

Capcom Japan’s unwillingness to recommit to one of its most famous series persists in the wake of series creator Keiji Inafune’s abrupt departure from the company in 2010. Multiple Mega Man projects, including the ambitious free-to-play, community based MMO Mega Man Universe where people could create their own Mega Man levels and characters, were unceremoniously cancelled following his resignation. Pride, not profits, seems to be keeping the series down.

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Street Fighter: Capcom expands in its bid for international success

Capcom continues to look abroad to find its future, expanding its localization process to include fifteen languages in 2013. That means DmC and Street Fighter X Tekken for Russian and India, but what does it mean for the publisher's identity as a game maker?

Capcom’s consumer games business chief Katsuhiko Ichii illuminated plans for the company behind Street Fighter and Mega Man to continue expanding into new markets around the world. Creating games for an international market has been a priority for Capcom in recent years, but Ichii’s statements show that the company is planning to extend its reach into growing game markets. For the first time, the publisher behind Devil May Cry is going to aggressively pursue gamers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and a number of other regions where video games are only now becoming big business.

“We’ve seen a great deal of expansion of markets in emerging countries and regions, such as Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africe, India, and the Middle East,” said Ichii in an interview on Capcom’s Investor Relations homepage, “When you combine the size of these new markets, they’re about as large as the markets in major developed nations such as Germany and France. However, to successfully break into these regions, localizing our games is a must. Up until now we’ve only done English voiceovers for game characters, but by next year we’re looking to do voiceovers in languages of 5 to 7 countries, and have the in-game text translated into 13 to 15 languages. This will give us a major boost in the area of game localization.”

Ichii’s statements are surprising given how selective Capcom has become about releasing its titles internationally. While games like Resident Evil 6 and DmC are developed specifically for near simultaneous release around the world, Capcom has released a number of titles that haven’t left Asia. This isn’t just games whose predominant commercial following is in Japan, like 2011’s Ace Attorney Investigations 2. The Lost Planet spinoff E.X. Troopers released this fall was only released in Japan and other Asian territories like Hong Kong with no plans to release it elsewhere.

This strategy likely won’t change based on Ichii’s comments. “The key is to develop game titles fully adapted to the unique elements of their respective target markets, rather than endure the painful experience of setting a single standard for the global deployment of one title,” said Ichii, “When it comes to the actual development of a game, we need to accurately recognize and incorporate the tastes of gamers in each region.”

There’s certainly logic in Ichii’s statements from a marketing perspective. Resident Evil 6 for example was created to try an appeal to every possible audience and ended up a mess as a result.

He and the rest of Capcom’s corporate hierarchy need to treat lightly, though. The company’s early success with games like Street Fighter II was due to creativity and quality in singular products. Capcom should consider making quality rather than regional marketing needs its top priority.

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