Capcom

Japan · Founded 1979 · 1980s

Named after "Capsule Computers", built on arcade hardware it designed itself, and responsible for both the fighting game and survival horror as commercial genres.

Capcom's origins lie in I.R.M. Corporation, founded on 30 May 1979 by Kenzo Tsujimoto — who ran it simultaneously with Irem until leaving the latter in 1983. That year, on 11 June, Tsujimoto established Capcom Co., Ltd. proper. The name is a compression of "Capsule Computers", the term the company coined for the arcade machines it manufactured in its early years. Capcom's defining characteristic is that it built its own hardware. The CPS-1 board and its successors gave Capcom's artists larger, more detailed sprites than most competitors could render, and the company used that advantage to define two genres outright. Street Fighter II (1991) did not merely popularise the fighting game; it codified it — six buttons, character specialisation, frame-precise inputs — and created the entire tournament culture that followed. Then, in 1996, Resident Evil coined the term "survival horror" in its own marketing campaign and established the template that the genre still works from. Alongside these sit Mega Man, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Final Fight, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter and Ace Attorney. Few publishers have created as many distinct, durable franchises, and fewer still have invented two entire genres.