cat /proc/claus

because blogs never go out of style!

Capcom Museum

2026 January 24

Today I met with some friends to go to the "Great Capcom Exhibit", a special exhibit about Capcom games and game making.

A picture of a wall in the museum, containing small monitors with representative capcom games, and a short blurb about their release year nearby"
The museum opened with this "wall of history of gaming/Capcom games. I didn't know that the release of the game boy coincided with the start of the Heisei era

I never thought too much about it, but I actually played a lot of Capcom games as a kid. Megaman and Street Fighter 2, sure, but I was also a huge fan of Breath of Fire 1, 2 and 3, and also Final Fight, Makaimura, and Onimusha.

I kinda drifted away from consoles past the 2000's though, so I never got into the Moster Hunter / Resident Evil / Ace Attourney series, though.

A picture of the logos for Breath of Fire, BoF II, and BoF III
Waaaaay better than Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest, lol

The exposition included a history of capcom titles, including posters and cartridges / boxes from many of their games.

A picture of the Japanese and American boxes for Megaman / Rockman. The Japanese box is cartoonish and cute. The American box tries to go for a realistic aesthetic, to terrible results
Yes, of course they had the cursed US Megaman box.

A picture of a game poster, featuring three giant robots and a space station in space
I didn't know this game, but I loved the poster. It is called "Side Arms", and it was an old arcade schmup. It is available on steam now.

A picture of a game box next to a large controller with two joysticks, three foot pedals, and many buttons, simulating a mecha cockpit.

This amazing Joystick was made specially for the game "Steel Battalion". It includes a "clean windshield" button. Too bad it was only available for the Xbox.

After that, there was a large section for gamedev techniques, such as pixel art, character design, hit boxes, and special effects. There was a cool sound design booth where you chose a sound effect, and they showed a video about how that sound effect was done in the studio. The way they made the sound effect for fish flapping on the ground was particularly hilarious.

It was fun to learn that the megaman sprite used half of the available color pallete data in the famicon, which explained why all enemies on a screen had to use the same pallete. Old gamedev was cool as hell.

A picture of a museum exhibit explaining transparency techniques

A picture of a museum exhibit explaining pixel art techniques

The last part of the exhibit had concept art and materials for several games. The concept art for Street Fighter 2 backgrounds were particularly nice to see.

A lot of the "materials" looked really pristine, however, and made me wonder if they were real working materials from the game, or something specifically made for the exhibit.

A picture of art (concept art?) of Megaman X enemies

All in all, it was quite fun, although maybe too small of a space for the price tag. It was nice to meet some friends in Tokyo and talk about games over coffee after the museum visit. We're all looking forward to Slay the Spire 2 this year.

Tagged: #capcom, #museum, #games, #tokyo,