Capcom Fighting Evolution

Capcom Fighting Evolution (or Capcom Fighting Jam as it is known outside of the United States) is a fighting game that was developed by Capcom and released in 2004. It features characters from five Capcom franchises, Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter III, Darkstalkers, and Red Earth. Unlike other fighting games that were available around the time of the game's release, such as Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Capcom vs. SNK 2, Capcom Fighting Evolution did not allow players to select the style of play they would like to use with each character. Instead, fighters are locked in to the style of play corresponding to the game they represent.

Capcom Fighting Evolution began life as an entirely different project, known as Capcom Fighting All-Stars, which was a 3D fighting game planned for the arcade and PlayStation 2 that was to be developed by Capcom. Like King of Fighters: Maximum Impact, it was designed to translate a 2D fighting game series into 3D. This was done previously in the Street Fighter EX series, by Arika, but not directly by Capcom. Capcom Fighting All-Stars attempted to utilize modern console graphics with characters from Street Fighter and other Capcom series, much like the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Capcom beta-tested the game, but after negative feedback from players and more months in development, the game was canceled in August 2003.

One new character that was developed for Capcom Fighting All-Stars was a young girl named Ingrid. Ingrid's design was saved and converted to 2D for use in Capcom Fighting Evolution. Ingrid was then featured once more in the PSP conversion of SFA3, Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX. The endings of the game are presented with a comic book style, having been drawn by by artists from the comic book studio UDON, who have a working relationship with Capcom that still exists today.

The game generally wasn't well received due to the fact that all of the characters except Ingrid were literally copy-and-pasted from their respective games except with drastically cut-down animation frames (the "SFII" characters actually came from Capcom vs. SNK 2). Comparisons were instantly drawn to the similar Capcom VS series games and the gameplay of this newest fighter seemed to lack the finesse of those earlier games. Many series favorites such as Ken, Cammy and Sagat, were relegated to the backgrounds of the stages instead of being playable characters, which did little to aid the game's popularity. The character line-up was also somewhat misrepresentative of certain games (Chun-Li being included as an SFIII character, rather than SFII, at the expense of a character who would define SFIII better). The game also received criticism that certain moves that the characters originally had were not available to the player, which led to some backlash from fans of the games. The game enjoyed a brief period of competitive play in Japan, but was soon dropped from most major tournaments.