capcom

Breath of Fire 3 [Beta Concept – Playstation]

Breath of Fire 3 (III) is a RPG developed by Capcom Production Studio 3 and published in September 1997 (Japan) for the PlayStation. The project went through a lengthy development phase with numerous delays, mostly due to several writing and design changes mid-progress.

Character artist Tatsuya Yoshikawa went through numerous preliminary beta designs for each character, only settling on a finalized set of drawings after many character sprites and portraits were already completed. As a result, some character’s in-game appearances differ from official promotional material, such as child Ryu having a different hairstyle and wardrobe than his final design. [Info from Wikipedia]

In EGM #83 (from June 1996) there was a small article about the initial development of Breath of Fire 3, in which they shown some of the earliest character designs for Ryu and Nina, with a style more similar to Breath of Fire 2’s one.

Early Beta Concept Art:


Final Design:


More concept arts can be found in the Breath of Fire III Memorial Book and other Capcom’s official Art books. Some of these can be seen in the Dragon Tear gallery!

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Capcom vs SNK [Arcade Dreamcast – Beta]

Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 is a fighting game developed by Capcom and released for Sega’s NAOMI arcade hardware in 2000 and ported to the Dreamcast during the same year. When it was first announced, the characters of the Street Fighter series had the same graphic style as “Street Fighter Zero”, different from the style used in the final game. The scenarios were also quite different (with references to the latest Capcom games, as Power Stone).  In the gallery below you can see various screenshots from the beta version: if you can notice more differences, please let us know!

Thanks to Mestre Ryu for the contribution!

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Monster Hunter Tri [Wii – Concept / Beta]

Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) is an action coop game that was developed by Capcom and released for the Wii in 2009 (Japan) and 2010 (USA and Europe). As we can read in Wikipedia, the game was originally planned to be a PlayStation 3 title, but due to high development costs for that console Capcom instead decided to develop it for the Wii. Thanks to Monster Hunter Wikia, we can see many concept artworks from the official Hunter Encyclopedia 3, that show early versions of the MH3 monsters and various unused enemies (that may be revived for a possible MH3G expansion).

Beta Royal Ludroth:

Final Royal Ludroth:

Beta Barioth:


Final Barioth:

Check the gallery below for more concepts!

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Titan Warriors [NES – Unreleased]

Titan Warriors is a cancelled shoot ’em up that was developed by Capcom for the NES / Famicom, in 1988. The game was meant to be a sequel of Vulgus, an arcade shooter developed and published by Capcom in Japan in 1984. An almost complete build (with just some bugs) of Titan Warriors was somehow leaked online, and you can download it at the Lost Levels Forum. For more info about this project, you can read a nice article written by Frank Cifaldi for 1UP’s Retro Gaming Blog.

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Street Fighter 2 [Arcade – Concept]

Developed by Capcom, Street Fighter II was released in 1991 as a sequel to the original 1987 Street Fighter and it’s credited for starting the fighting game boom during the 1990s. Its success led to the production of a series of updated versions, each offering additional features and characters over previous versions, as well as several home versions. The roster initially included Ryu and Ken plus six new characters from different nationalities. [Info from Wikipedia]

In EGM issue #33 there was an interesting article with some early character designs, that show different versions of Vega (Balrog), Chun Li and Blanka.

Thanks to Celine for the scan!

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