There was a time when Capcom cranked out multiple new fighting game franchises every year, but as development costs rose, the company's attention shifted almost exclusively to its biggest properties. Street Fighter and non-fighters like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter dominate modern Capcom releases, which means many of its older series get overlooked. These include Darkstalkers, Power Stone, and Rival Schools - true fighting game hidden gems that deserve remakes, reboots, or sequels.
Capcom's latest brand-new fighting game was 2017's content-poor Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, which featured a variety of Capcom characters (many of them from Street Fighter) battling it out with Marvel heroes and villains. 2016's Street Fighter 5 saw two upgraded re-releases in the time after Infinite's launch, but no other Capcom fighters have released since.
Nowadays, a three-year drought is the norm for most triple-A game developers, but it's been more than 10 years since Capcom published a new fighting game not in the Street Fighter or Capcom vs. series (via Black Falcon Games). Compare that to the year 2000, for example, when Capcom released fighters in at least eight different franchises, and it's easy to see why some fans of the company's older series might feel neglected. Here are three fan favorites Capcom could bring back, as well as what form a new game in each series could take.
Why Darkstalkers 3 Deserves A Sequel Or Reboot
Darkstalkers earned a name for itself with its incredibly creative roster's fluid, screen-spanning animations. Its cartoonish, horror-inspired characters were some of fighting games' most unique: The demon-lord Jedah attacks foes by spilling his own blood in their direction. Lilith, a succubus, can trigger an attack that makes her opponent play a short rhythm game to avoid damage. And then there's Q-Bee, a humanoid bee who can sting her opponent, causing her to die of exhaustion as they are hardened into a giant egg, only to then hatch a copy of herself out of the encrusted enemy.
These kinds of wacky, elaborate characters made the Darkstalkers games stand out when it hit martial arts-filled arcades in the mid-90s, and they're still some of the genre's most interesting to this day. The franchise's last release was 2013's Darkstalkers: Resurrection, itself just an HD compilation of two games from 15 years earlier. While another re-release would be appreciated, a true Darkstalkers 4 could continue the excellent world-building established in the first three games, bringing a breath of fresh air to the mainstream, triple-A fighting scene.
Why Power Stone 2 Deserves A Remaster
Power Stone falls into the same "party-fighter" category as Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series. Players control one of a diverse - though often problematic - set of characters (think Overwatch), utilizing unique attacks and items dropped throughout the moving, hazard-filled stage to defeat opponents. There's two big differences that shake up the Smash formula, however. If players collect three of the titular Power Stones, their character gains a temporary transformation that boosts attack capabilities, effectively doubling the roster and adding a frenetic wrinkle to already chaotic battles. Power Stone matches also take place in fully 3D spaces, as opposed to Smash's 2D stages, meaning players have to be extra mindful of their positioning.
Power Stone and Power Stone 2 were only ever released on the Sega Dreamcast and the PlayStation Portable. The series' easy-to-pick-up gameplay makes it a great candidate for a current-gen remaster or remake, requiring little tweaking from developers. The four-player Power Stone 2 would work especially well on the co-op-focused Nintendo Switch, but getting either game onto any modern platform would be a huge blessing for casual fighting game fans.
Why Project Justice (Rival Schools) Deserves A Remake
One of Capcom's first 3D fighting games, Rival Schools threw high school students from competing schools into tag-team duels, surrounded by a progressing mystery of disappearing students and teachers. Its mechanics were rather simple, but the premise stands out among other fighting games, and additional mini-games added to its value as a replayable party title. The Dreamcast sequel, known as Project Justice in North America, amped up the style factor and added a third fighter to players' teams, furthering the strategy of battles.
Unfortunately, Rival Schools' (and, to a lesser extent, Project Justice's) clunky 3D models don't hold up quite as well as Darkstalkers' 2D sprites. Power Stone's 3D fares better, as the zoomed-out camera allows for the imagination to fill things in. While this makes Rival Schools less suitable for a straight-up remaster - as does its uncomfortable sexualization of at least one of the students - Capcom could instead do a full remake, modernizing the graphics, story, and characters.