Capcom is doing something special for its 40th anniversary. The Japanese company has launched a new Capcom Town website that’s all about celebrating some of its biggest and classic franchises. Among other things, visitors will be able to participate in polls, visit a museum, emulate retro titles and also buy some merch.
Revealed as part of Summer Games Fest, during the Capcom showcase, the company’s new site is a way of celebrating its long history, spanning four decades. The site welcomes visitors with a full-on animated cityscape of classic characters from Capcom's past. It is easy to spot characters from Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Street Fighter.
Clicking on the Retro game building, the visitors can access five retro titles with classics such as Mega Man II and Final Fight (in its SNES counterpart). All games can be played for free directly in the browser. All games are available in both their English and Japanese versions, and the emulation seems to be spot-on. There’s even extra materials such as the original manuals in PDF format.
In the museum, visitors can browse concept art and game design docs from several classic Capcom series such as Resident Evil and Monster Hunter. Some of the buildings, such as the collaboration workshop and the merch factory, are "under maintenance", so they probably can be accessed in the future.
There are also sections dedicated to the company's history, with interviews to the current CEO, Kenzo Tsujimoto and COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto. Considering that Capcom is still working on the website, we can probably expect even more content in the future, perhaps more retro games to play.
Still, we were quite sad to find there is no content on the Ace Attorney series. Despite our minor grievances, it is quite refreshing to see a company so careful in preserving its history along with making it accessible for free to fans. Who says growing old has to stop being fun?