Capcom at Wondercon 2008

"Buy Capcom games! Ya-ta!"

At WonderCon this year some of Capcom's developers had an hour long presentation on the games that will be released later in the year. I already knew of the games, but I wanted to see if they had any surprises in store. The obnoxiously began with the Capcom presenters getting half the room to yell "Cap" with the other half yelling "com" to wake-up everyone at the 'con. During the yelling the Capcom guys were throwing T-shirts out to the crowd, but only the first few rows got them. Shouting and free T-shirts are always a great way to get a legion of fans riled up for Capcom excitement.

From their relatively not well hidden Power Point menu I saw we would be viewing things from We Love Golf, Okami, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Bionic Commando, and Street Fighter IV.

The first game on Capcom's Power Point of awesome was We Love Golf for the Wii. People didn't get too excited about the game until it was announced that Ken and Morrigan won the Capcom Blog poll and would be the two exclusive characters in the US version of the game. I know I would much rather play a golf game with Street Fighters and Darkstalkers than boring random characters.

Second was a video for Okami for the Wii. Okami was called "the best game that people never played" which is completely true. Okami is amazing. The Wii visuals are still good, but they just don't seem nearly as good as they are on the PS2. At least the game has 16:9 support. After the video was a brief demo where the developer was having plenty of troubles drawing circles around enemies with the Celestial Brush. It was actually rather funny.

The next game shown was one that I am very excited for: Bionic Commando: Rearmed. They showed the trailer originally shown at GDC, which received huge cheers from the audience. After the trailer was a demo of co-op mode. When they were on the difficulty settings menu people shouted for them to choose insane, but they wussed-out and selected medium. They demonstrated many of the new moves that character Nathan Rad and the other "red guy" can do while showing us all how great co-op mode is. Not only can you work together to bring own enemies, but if one player gets far away from another, the screen will automatically enter split-screen so each player can see what they're doing. This is great because there isn't a need to have to wait for the other player, they can both go fight on their own. The players can also choose the type of spilt-screen they want: horizontal, vertical, or both.

After the co-op demo was the big reveal of Challenge Mode. Challenge Mode is very similar to that of Metal Gear Solid's VR Missions, and I'm glad that they eventually stated that because I thought it immediately once they began demonstrating the challenges. Three of the challenge rooms were shown and will test player's swinging skills like nothing before. It was stated that some "stages are so hard that you'll die 100 times, or at least 60." After this a Gamespot editor and four lucky fans that were chosen to test their skills in one of the challenge rooms. Capcom was more than happy to put the Gamespot guy on the spot and when he failed they said they should have invited an IGN guy. Damn. None of the fans passed the room and only one of them almost made it to the end. Those Challenges are going to be painful. Another mode for Rearmed is yet to be revealed.

You can't show off BC: Rearmed without something about the 3D Bionic Commando, so next up were the videos shown at GDC. The first video was the destroyed city with the building falling to ground with smoke pluming into the street. The character's context sensitive actions of covering his face from the shockwave were impressive. The second clip lacked sound, but it showed off the park, AKA the prettier side of Bionic Commando. Both clips are available online, but it was cool seeing them on a bigger screen.

Finally, it was time for the reason that most people came to the Capcom presentation: Street Fighter IV. Seth Killian and David Crislip introduced a trio of trailers. The first trailer was the Street Fighter IV announcement trailer of Ryu and Ken fighting in the field. The second was an artsy look at Crimson Viper versus Chun Li. The third trailer was one that they said had only been seen in Japan before this. This gameplay trailer showed off all the original eight world warriors, Crimson Viper, and Abel. They crowd was instructed to cheer for their favorite character. Dhalsim, E. Honda, Zangief, Guile, Ryu, and Ken (especially Ken) received the biggest cheers. Seeing all the Street Fighter action on a big screen was exactly what the crowd needed.

It was also mentioned that Street Fighter IV will be playable at San Diego Comic-con this year. So if you're going to SDCC08 and want to play SFIV, be prepared to stand in line for hours. One of them (I don't remember which one) said than Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix would be out in "a couple months." I didn't know it was that soon, but only a couple of months now? Oh hell yeah!

Capcom's booth on the show floor was pretty much the best booth there. Although, in respect to WonderCon, it's a small show, so it wouldn't be that hard to make your booth stand out, especially if you're Capcom. At the booth were some playable games, some merchandise for sale, and a bunch of fanboys and hired models as Capcom characters. The first two I saw were Capcom's own slender Ryu and Chun Li, whose thighs weren't nearly big enough. After the Capcom power-hour I went back to the booth and saw some dressed-up fans. There was Trish (Devil May Cry), a fancy Ada Wong (Resident Evil) M. Bison, Cody in his Street Fighter Alpha prison duds, and the scarred Doll / Cammy clone from the Udon comics. I'll bet her mask made the horribly disfigured ass-kicker well-equipped for all the rancid body orders encountered at a 'con.


Ada Wong is the poster girl for battling zombies while looking sophisticated.	Trish: relatively useless since Devil May Cry 1, back in part 4.