Vulgus
Nowadays, Capcom is a titan of the industry, so it’s interesting to see how humble their roots were in comparison. Founded in 1983 by Kenji Tsujimoto (formerly of Irem), Capcom got their start with simple coin-op games called Little League and Fever Chance, but once they opened their own arcade called Acty 24, they wanted something new and closer to what other companies were doing to draw players in. Capcom was smart enough to enlist the talents of former Konami employees Tokuro Fujiwara and Yoshiki Okamoto, who had helped to create games like Pooyan and Gyruss respectively and would both go on to define much of Capcom’s output throughout the 80s and 90s. Vulgus, as simple as it may be, manages to exhibit the essential elements that would propel many of Capcom’s future games towards success, namely the combination of challenging skill-based gameplay mixed with enough complexity to encourage players to optimize their scores. In an amusing twist of fate, Vulgus was distributed in North America as a conversion kit by a company called SNK, who Capcom would get to know very well in the coming years.
Read more...
