Curated playlist
Arcade video games
- Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 opens its story with two powerful organizations trying to ease political tension through martial arts. The Garcia Financial Clique and the Masters Foundation stage a tournament called Millennium Fight…
- Capcom Fighting EvolutionCapcom Fighting Evolution arrived in arcades in 2004 carrying a premise that sounded almost too good to be true. Characters from Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, Darkstalkers, and the obscure CPS…
- Street Fighter Alpha 2Street Fighter Alpha 2 made its public debut at the February 1996 AOU show in Tokyo. It arrived less than a year after Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams, its direct predecessor. Among the new characters was Sakura, a face that had…
- Silent Hill: The ArcadeSilent Hill: The Arcade drops six friends from Portland into one of horror's most iconic fog-drenched towns, and almost none of them make it back out in one piece. Polygon Magic built this game as a spin-off of the long-running Silent Hill…
- Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade EditionSuper Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition arrived in Japanese arcades in 2010 with a question hanging over it: was this the final chapter of one of fighting games' most beloved franchises? Producer Yoshinori Ono confirmed the arcade…
- Street Fighter: The Movie (arcade game)Street Fighter: The Movie is a 1995 arcade fighting game that arrived at an unusual crossroads: a video game adapted from a film that was itself adapted from a video game. Capcom, the franchise's owner and the film's financier, handed…
- Street Fighter II TurboStreet Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting reached arcades in 1992 not as a new machine but as an upgrade kit. Capcom built it for installation directly into Champion Edition circuit boards already in those arcades, less than a year after…
- Hyper Street Fighter IICapcom released Hyper Street Fighter II in 2003 to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Street Fighter series. The game arrived on PlayStation 2 as a modified port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo from 1994. Developers chose this specific…
- Super Street Fighter II TurboIn April 1994, the arcade cabinet for Super Street Fighter II Turbo began spinning coins in Japan. Game Machine listed it as the second most successful table unit that month, trailing only Virtua Fighter. This hardware ran on Capcom's CP…
- X-Men vs. Street FighterX-Men vs. Street Fighter arrived in Japanese arcades in September 1996 and claimed the top spot on Japan's arcade charts the following month. Game Machine tracked the country's most commercially successful arcade releases. The publication…
- Dissidia Final Fantasy NTDissidia Final Fantasy NT began not on a home console but in a Japanese arcade. At the Japan Amusement Expo trade show in Chiba in February 2015, Square Enix announced a new fighting game built on PlayStation 4 core technology. The plan…
- SNK vs. Capcom: SVC ChaosSNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos arrived in arcades in 2003 as the dream matchup fans of two rival fighting game giants had been waiting for. SNK Playmore built the game on Neo Geo hardware, a platform long associated with the company's most…
- Street Fighter Alpha 3Street Fighter Alpha 3 arrived in Japanese arcades during the summer of 1998. It ran on Capcom's CP System II hardware, a board that had powered previous entries in the series. The machine processed sprites and sound to create fast-paced…
- Street Fighter EX2The 1st of July 1998 issue of Game Machine declared Street Fighter EX2 the most-successful arcade game of the month in Japan. Capcom and Arika co-produced the game, releasing it as an arcade title for the Sony ZN-2 hardware. Street Fighter…
- Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super HeroesMarvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes arrived in Japanese arcades in February 1998, and within weeks it had done something its predecessors had not: it flung open the door beyond Street Fighter. For the first time in the series, players…
- Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street FighterMarvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter hit arcades in 1997. Game Machine ranked it the third most successful arcade game in Japan that August. Capcom built the game as the direct sequel to X-Men vs. Street Fighter, which had arrived in…
- Fighting LayerFighting Layer put its fighters into three dimensions, but it never made the jump from arcade cabinet to living room. Every copy ran on Namco System 12 hardware, inside machines that arcades began receiving in December 1998, and no home…
- Street Fighter III: 2nd ImpactStreet Fighter III: 2nd Impact landed in arcades in October 1997, and it arrived carrying a quiet distinction that no other game in Capcom's CPS3 library could claim: it was the only title running on that hardware to offer a widescreen…
- X-Men: Children of the Atom (video game)X-Men: Children of the Atom arrived in Japanese arcades in December 1994 carrying a technical problem that would shape every decision its makers faced. The arcade cabinet ran on CP System II hardware and used 32 megabytes of RAM just for…
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1985 video game)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back arrived in arcades in 1985, carrying one of the most recognizable names in cinema into a cabinet that could fit in any movie theater lobby or bowling alley. It was a sequel to an arcade game that had…
- Street Fighter II: Champion EditionStreet Fighter II: Champion Edition arrived in arcades in 1992 with a promise: every fighter you had faced, you could now become. In the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior from 1991, four characters called the Grand Masters…
- Super Gem Fighter Mini MixSuper Gem Fighter Mini Mix arrived in arcades in 1997 with a simple, disarming premise: what if Capcom's most beloved fighters were shrunk down to chibi proportions and sent on ridiculous personal errands? Ryu is looking for worthy…
- Capcom vs. SNK 2Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 arrived in arcades in the summer of 2001, asking a question that fighting game fans had argued about for years: whose fighters were better, Capcom's or SNK's? The game put 48 characters from…
- Street Fighter AlphaStreet Fighter Alpha arrived in arcades in 1995 carrying a question that Capcom had not answered in four years: what comes before Street Fighter II? The last all-new Street Fighter game had been Street Fighter II itself, released in 1991.…
- Arcade video gameArcade video games have a surprising ancestor: the coin-operated pinball table. Pinball gained electric lights and display panels in 1933. Player-controlled flippers did not exist yet; they would not appear until 1947. Without flippers,…
- Star Wars (1983 video game)Atari released the Star Wars arcade cabinet in 1983 using a unique hardware design that rendered 3D color vector graphics. The machine featured a deluxe cockpit with powerful speakers mounted in the back to create an immersive audio-visual…
- Street Fighter IIIStreet Fighter III arrived in arcades in 1997. It followed 1991's Street Fighter II, the game that had turned the series into a phenomenon. Capcom's own general producer, Noritaka Funamizu, explained the biggest gamble behind the new game…
- Street Fighter III: 3rd StrikeStreet Fighter III: 3rd Strike arrived in arcades in May 1999, and almost nobody cared. The game sold modestly, drew mixed reviews, and landed during a moment when the fighting game world was chasing 3D graphics and home consoles were…
- Super Street Fighter IISuper Street Fighter II reached arcades in 1993 as the fourth version Capcom had released under the Street Fighter II name. Game Machine in Japan ranked it the most popular table arcade game of October 1993. This was the first Street…
- Pac-ManPac-Man arrived in arcades on the 22nd of May 1980, and within two years it had earned more than a billion dollars in quarters from American players alone. A yellow circle eating dots in a maze does not sound like a cultural revolution.…
- Street Fighter IIStreet Fighter II arrived in arcades in 1991 and changed the way people played games in public spaces. By 1994, an estimated 25 million people in the United States alone had played it. That figure does not count Japan, Europe, or the rest…
- Fighting EX LayerFighting EX Layer is a 2018 fighting video game built and published by the Japanese studio Arika. On April Fools' Day in 2017, Arika posted online footage of an unnamed fighting game prototype. Staff had built it while experimenting with…
- Final Fight (video game)Final Fight arrived in arcades in 1989 with a premise that could have come straight out of a Hollywood action film: a former pro wrestler turned city mayor tears through six rounds of urban chaos to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Capcom's…
- Space InvadersSpace Invaders arrived in Japanese arcades in July 1978, and within months the country was running out of places to put the machines. Pachinko parlors and bowling alleys were the first to adopt it when amusement arcade owners passed. Then…
- Dead or Alive (franchise)Dead or Alive began as a wager. In the mid-1990s, Tecmo was in financial trouble, and a programmer named Tomonobu Itagaki made a bet with company management, including vice president Junji Nakamura: he would create a game with a genuine…