With the rise of miniaturised retro consoles, there’s still a special corner of gaming’s past that’s gone sorely overlooked. It’s a corner that could once be found in a mid-90s London Trocadero – a space, among many spaces, that Capcom called home with its sublime arcade produce, built on the CPS1 and CPS2 boards. Between the co-op thrills of Progear and Aliens vs Predator, some of the best 2D sprite-based titles of the era sparked from this hardware, and often, their technical quality didn’t translate exactly to PlayStation or Saturn, if ports were produced at all.
All of which makes Capcom’s catalogue a fascinating trove of hidden gems – and the focus for the upcoming Capcom Home Arcade – a full arcade controller that aims to put this slice of gaming history in the living room. The idea is simple enough: hot off the heels of its work on the Commodore 64 mini, Koch Media has put together a Capcom-licensed plug-and-play arcade unit that comes with 16 pre-installed titles. From the iconic brawling of Final Fight, to lesser-known highlights like Capcom Sports Club, the aim is to recreate the full CPS1 and 2 arcade experience at home. With a price tag of £199 (or around $260) though, there is the expectation of a premium product. From what I’ve seen in an early hands-on, there’s a lot going right at a design level – at the very least, focusing on the hardware.
Out of the box you get a hefty arcade unit that supports two players on one slab, and a micro USB power cable to juice it. Once the power button’s pressed, video is pushed out at 1920×1080 via an HDMI port at the rear. On the whole, it’s a ruggedly built bit of hardware. The fact that it sports two octagonal gate joysticks, and six quality Sanwa buttons per side also goes a long way in explaining its price tag. Impossible to ignore is that bold CAPCOM logo screaming across its top, too, a yellow and blue toned title with detailing extending to its sides in a grey, 3D mould etching. For my tastes, it’s a likeable enough design – though given it’s the only style on offer at launch, anyone less keen may be out of luck.
Regardless of the design, the controls on top are spot on. Anyone familiar with top-end Sanwa arcade parts will know the sense of a lightest touch triggering an input. It’s precise, holds up to hard mashing and nothing jams. Equally, the spacing between the two player sides is essentially a match for a proper arcade unit (though I didn’t have time to get the ruler out on this). One downside? To keep the front façade clean, and avoid labels, the start and ‘insert credit’ buttons near the top are tricky to tell apart – but at least the box includes stickers to help get you started.
Capcom Home Arcade games list
There’s a good spectrum of CPS1 and 2 games on the unit, accessible through a scrolling front-end menu. Here are the 16 pre-installed games listed in full:
Alien vs PredatorArmored WarriorsCaptain CommandoFinal FightCyberbotsDarkstalkersStreet Fighter 2: Hyper FightingMega Man The Power Battle1944: The Loop MasterEco FightersGiga WingProgearCapcom Sports ClubSuper Puzzle Fighter II TurboStriderGhouls ‘n’ Ghosts
Arguably, fans of Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting would have preferred a square gate joystick instead of octagonal here. The choice makes sense though – it aims to address the range of genres covered between the 16 games. Side-scrolling beat-em-ups, platformers, and shooters all have to factor in. That being said, the screws on the underside of the unit are easy to spot, where the potential for some DIY switching of parts is there.
What of the games then? Much of this boils down to the quality of emulation, which is driven by an ARM processor. I had time to play all 16 titles, each navigable through a scrolling, front-end with crisp PNG title cards, as supplied by Capcom. This default view is all we have for now, but the inclusion of a WiFi module opens up the gates to more possibilities in the future. More games is high on the wish list, of course – notably the Street Fighter Alpha series, or X-Men vs Street Fighter, or even pushing the board to CPS3 classics. The online aspect does serve a function in the here and now, however: it’s put to work on active leaderboards attached to each game.