The Capcom Interview, as conducted with SSM circa Oct. 1998

[Steven]

At this time I'll be presenting to you guys THE CAPCOM INTERVIEW (part 1 of 3) conducted by SSM in their 2nd to last issue, # 36, October 1998. Parts 2 and 3 to come at a later time.

Have a nice day. :)


The CAPCOM Interview

Possibly the greatest videogame developer in the world, Capcom rarely opens its doors to western journalists. This month, we're proud to have an EXCLUSIVE interview with Mr. Noritaka Funamizu, General Producer of Capcom's Development Division, as he reveals future plans, Dreamcast development and Biohazard secrets. WARREN HARROD reports.

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SSM: Can you tell us what Capcom's plans for the Sega market now that Dreamcast has been announced?

NF: We'll continue producing Saturn games for the rest of this year. Our line-up consists of Capcom Generations, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter in October, Dungeons and Dragons Collection in November and Street Fighter Zero 3 in spring next year. That will probably be our final Saturn game. SFZ3, MSH vs. SF and D&D part 2 will all use the 4 MB RAM cart.

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{my note: Final Fight Revenge turned out to be their final Saturn game}

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SSM: Do you think the Saturn market will collapse after the Dreamcast release?

NF: No, there are still over two million Saturn owners out there. Of course, I don't expect that they will all continue to purchase Saturn games, but I think many of them will still be active users that we can target with our titles.

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SSM: Will you continue to port all of your CP-System II arcade games to Saturn?

NF: We're not considering releasing any games after April '99 because we can't be sure that there will be anyone out there still buying Saturn games. Sega has stopped all development on new Saturn titles and will only release a collection of budget games from now on. Most shops will remove their Saturn section of games and replace it with something else.

SSM: Will there ever be another Biohazard game on the Saturn?

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NF: No, there won't. We've already announced this in Japan but we haven't officially stated this overseas yet. We did consider doing Biohazard 2 and we had started it, but we cancelled the project because of Dreamcast.

SSM: Is the Saturn capable of handling Biohazard 2 or would you have needed to use the 4 MB RAM cart?

NF: It wouldn't have been impossible to do a Saturn Biohazard 2. We don't really need any more RAM, the real problem is that the CPU is too slow and it doesn't have the power to handle the graphics calculations. Maybe Sega's own development teams could push the CPU closer to its top performance, but we couldn't.

SSM: What was your first impression on Dreamcast?

NF: It was completely different to what I thought it was going to be. I was surprised to see that it was even more powerful than Model 3. The hardware looks very interesting indeed.

SSM: Did Capcom give any advice to Sega about what it would like to see from the Dreamcast hardware?

NF: We did ask Sega to make sure that it supported 2D titles as well as 3D. However, at the moment the Dreamcast's 2D tools aren't as good as we would like them to be. We're hoping, that before the final version is released, Sega will be able to improve our expectations.

SSM: So will your 2D programming teams be able to produce perfect conversions of CP-System III games on Dreamcast?

NF: That really depends on whether Sega has listened to us or not. If it makes the amendments we've asked for then it should be possible.

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[Ed Oscuro]

That &$#@! Final Fight Revenge! Very nice read...and it's getting hard to believe that this review was conducted over six (going on seven) years ago!

[MegaDrive20XX]

Sucks ass about BioHazard 2. At least I was right a long time ago, Resident Evil 2 was planned for a US release, since it appeared on many "upcoming release titles"

Makes me wonder how far it was finished before it canned..

btw nice picture of RE3 ;)

[IntvGene]

It's interesting to hear that Capcom wanted Sega to continue the support of the 2-d genre.

[Ed Oscuro]

btw nice picture of RE3 ;)
I was wondering about this...are all the screenshots scans from the magazine (two have logos on them), or are some ones you've handpicked to represent what was in the text of the magazine?

[Steven]

btw nice picture of RE3 ;)

LOL

Yeeeh, I couldn't find a RE2 pic fast enough and got restless. Notice I put it under "Will there be ANOTHER Biohazard game on Saturn?" though. It didn't specify RE 2 there per se. ;)

[Steven]

btw nice picture of RE3 ;)
I was wondering about this...are all the screenshots scans from the magazine (two have logos on them), or are some ones you've handpicked to represent what was in the text of the magazine?

None of the screen grabs are from SSM unfortunately, because their shots are better than the ones I posted here, but I hope these pics kind of symbolize the quality of SSM's pictures... often called "The Warrior's Grab" meaning a picture of significant quality in a video game.

For example on the interview about 1/3 of the top of one page has a HUGE hi-quality shot of Acopolyse (sp?) being pounded on by Akuma I think it was. Good stuff.

I tried to handpick pictures that went with the text. But yeah, they're all online pictures not affliated with SSM.

[MegaDrive20XX]

btw nice picture of RE3 ;)

LOL

Yeeeh, I couldn't find a RE2 pic fast enough and got restless. Notice I put it under "Will there be ANOTHER Biohazard game on Saturn?" though. It didn't specify RE 2 there per se. ;)

True true hehe, oh well it's RE nonetheless :)

[THATinkjar]

Great read. When will the rest be up my good man?

[Steven]

Great read. When will the rest be up my good man?

Probably part 2 within the next 5 days and part 3 within the next 5 days after that. So expect to see this wrapped up by next Friday. Maybe earlier even, but not later. Unless something crazy happens... *knock on wood*

[fishsandwich]

Yes, I want to read the rest!

And Final Fight Revenge does suck ass. It's like Virtua Fighter ONE with better backgrounds, far fewer moves, and shite gameplay. Eeek.

LOL

[Steven]

Thanks for all the comments. Keep 'em coming.

Let's continue on with the Capcom Interview Part II.

SSM: The Biohazard franchise seems ideally suited to the Dreamcast hardware. Can you let us in on any of you plans for bringing the world of survival horror to the 128-bit generation?

NF: On October 6th, Sega will hold its New Challenge Conference: Part 2. Capcom will be there to make a joint announcement with Sega about Biohazard on Dreamcast.

SSM: Who from Capcom will be at the Sega New Challenge Conference?

NF: Probably myself, Mr. Yoshiki Okamoto (President of Flagship, Managing Director of Capcom's R&D Division) and Mr. Shinji Mikami (a Biohazard Producer). There might be more staff present because we will be announcing several titles, not just Biohazard.

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SSM: What are your thoughts on the non-release of Grade A quality titles like X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Vampire Savior in the US and Europe?

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NF: Of course we are very disappointed with this. The problem is that overseas sales companies were really opposed to the use of the 4MB RAM cart because of the additional expense involved. The European and American markets are very hard, so they didn't want the extra risk. Personally, I think that they should have been able to support these titles, but instead consumers have to pay very expensive import prices instead.

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SSM: Dreamcast will appear in an arcade form as the Naomi board. Since Capcom supported the PlayStation System 11 and 12 hardware, are you at all tempted to switch to the far greater 3D power of this new Sega machine?

NF: We will make an official announcement about this at the JAMMA Show in Mid-September, but I think that we will eventually stop using the PlayStation board for arcade games sometime soon. We've pretty much pushed that hardware as far as we can.

SSM: You didn't port any of your PlayStation board games to the Saturn. Does this mean that Naomi board games will all become Dreamcast exclusive games?

NF: It would be very difficult to convert Naomi games to the PS. However, we'll be able to port all our PS board games to the DC.

SSM: Will you improve your PS board games to make more use of the DC?

NF: No, we won't. We won't alter the game to make it look better on the DC hardware. However, if we have a PS board gae that we can't port to the PS then it will only be ported to the DC. We won't let the quality of games suffer.

SSM: Are there any other plans to convert your CP-System III titles to the home market?

NF: As far as DC conversions go, we will make an announcement about that as the New Challenge Conference in October, but it's not possible to port them to the PS. Even CP-System II titles have been very difficult to do. Even Street Fighter Zero was pushing the PS to its limits.

SSM: Apart from WarZard and SF III, do you have plans to release any more titles for your CP-System III board?

NF: Yes, there's a title called JoJo's Adventure. That's going to be a fighting game based on a Manga story which we plan to release in December. We'll show some video footage of it at the JAMMA Show.

SSM: Why has it taken so long for a new CP-System III game to appear in arcades?

NF: It's similar to the problem that Sony has with the PS and PS2. We have so many CP-System II boards out there, that it's difficult for us to introduce a new board into the market place. Many arcades don't have a CP-System III board at all, but they still have their CP-System II boards, so we can't give up on it just yet.

SSM: Would you prefer everyone to change over to CP-System III?

NF: Not really. We're thinking of giving up on the CP-System III. To be honest, it wasn't very good. Many companies didn't like it because it had a lot of hardware faults.

SSM: Will you only use other manufacturers boards from now on or will you create a CP-System IV?

NF: A CP-System IV board does exist, but we haven't decided whether or not to market it yet.

SSM: Can you say when we might see the first real 3D Street Fighter game from Capcom?

NF: The year 2000 (laughs)! We have an in-house joke where we say that it'll be called Street Fighter 2000. From a creative point of view our designers are always asking why they have to create a 3D Street Fighter game. They originally wanted to create a new world of characters, like Star Gladiator. That's what they all strongly felt and they didn't want to think simply about the sales aspects. However, none of our new 3D characters have been very successful, so they're slowly coming round to the idea that it would actually be OK to create a 3D Street Fighter.

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SSM: Will Arika continue to make all the 3D versions of the SF series?

NF: No, they won't be. The last 3D game they developed for us was SF EX2.

SSM: What are are your plans for the SF III series?

NF: In spring of next year, we are planning to release SF III: 3rd Impact. At the moment there are too many fighting games in the arcade, so we can't release a sequel any faster than one every six months. We've only just released SF Zero 3, so we don't really want to launch anything just yet.

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SSM: Will 'Impact' become the official sub-name for the SF III series?

NF: We want to make SF III: 3rd Impact the very best version of this series and possibly the last. After that, we will think about a new Street Fighter series. SF Zero 3 will probably be the last in that series as well. SF III: 3rd Impact wil keep all the old characters, but we'll add some new ones as well. Although it'll be a major change over the 2nd Impact game system, it won't be a major departure from the first two games in the series.

[Damaramu]

Hmmm.....very interesting read. :D

[MegaDrive20XX]

I love how well planned out this was, Capcom seemed to know what they wanted to do. Yet I think it wasn't executed the way it should be.

[kainemaxwell]

Great articles and thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[sharp]

It was a good read. Didn't know it was that long ago already.