Capcom has made several of its stone-cold classic games available to play in a web browser, for free, to celebrate the video game publisher’s 40th anniversary.
Remember Street Fighter II? It’s just one of a handful of games you can play in Capcom Town, a glitzy Capcom website designed to celebrate the history of the company’s games.
You can play using a gamepad plugged into your PC or Mac, or using the keyboard to take on the job. A gamepad works much better, and you may want to try the remapping function if you don’t have a pad to hand. The default settings require some finger gymnastics.
Here are the games you can currently play through Capcom Town:
- Street Fighter II
- Final Fight
- Mega Man
- Mega Man 2
- Mega Man X
The games are a mix of SNES and NES titles from the late 1980s and early 1990s. And, while the Japanese and US versions are used here, those who played these video games back in the day will still feel that classic wave of nostalgia pass over them.
Capcom Town is quite a busy website, though. If you’re having trouble finding the playable retro titles, click the menu shortcut at the top-right of the screen and select Retro Games.
Games playable in a browser like this use a technique called emulation, where the original hardware is recreated in virtual form using software. Nintendo uses the same technique in its Virtual Console service for Nintendo Switch, which lets you play classic NES and SNES games.
If Capcom Town sparks your imagination, you can dig far deeper over at the Internet Archive. Its Emulation Station section lets you play more than 24,000 home console games, and more than 3,000 arcade games, right in your browser without any downloads required.
While this may sound legally questionable, the US Copyright Office has granted resources like the archive.org a DMCA copyright exemption as their work is primarily concerned with cataloguing and archiving content so it doesn’t end up in digital oblivion.
Capcom also held its Showcase 2023 last night, an event that looks forward to the games of the future rather than those lodged firmly in the past. Games showcased include Dragon’s Dogma 2, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, and Mega Man X DiVE Offline.
