Capcom reflects on Red Earth, a game previously only available to Japan included in the Capcom Fighting Collection – PlayStation.

Back in 1996, Red Earth – one of 10 titles in the upcoming Capcom Fighting Collection – first appeared in coin-operated arcade cabinets in Japan. With a fantasy setting and colorful cast of characters, Red Earth is unique in providing a single-player RPG-like experience known as Mission Mode, where players will choose one of four characters and Take on a series of bosses.

After defeating each boss, the player will receive experience points that can be used to improve attack, defense or completely acquire new moves. During battle, bosses can drop food, which the player can use to replenish health. Like in Japan, this classic game was never officially released outside of video games until now with Capcom Fighting Collection. In fact, Red Earth was the first game the team decided to include in the collection!

How did this unique fighting game come about? Takashi Sado, one of the producers of Red Earth at the time – and still at Capcom – started working on Red Earth proposals in the mid-90s. As fighting games were becoming increasingly popular at the time. At that point, he followed this trend and originally intended to make Red Earth just a fighting game. However, he feels that skill level among fighting game players is increasing as casual multiplayer can’t keep up with many higher level players. To bridge this skill gap, his team wondered if they could get creative and make up for it by changing the stats, gear, or other aspects of the genre.

Also during this time, Sado was drawn to fantasy action games such as Magic Sword and The King of Dragons developed by Capcom. Both of these beat’em-up games feature character progression systems to power up player-controlled characters. With fantasy games in mind and a desire to address the growing skill gap between fighting game players, a unique RPG-like character progression system was created for Red Earth.

Red Earth was also the first game created using the CPS-3 arcade system board, bringing together the best of Capcom’s technology at the time. Due to the success of the new hardware, the Street Fighter III series was also created on the CPS-3 before being discontinued as Capcom’s last proprietary system board.

While this was Red Earth’s first release outside of video games, its legacy has been as part of other Capcom games such as the belt in Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and as a costume for Alex in Street Fighter V – both for the lion king, Leo.

Speaking of Easter Eggs, some of the games in the Capcom Fighting Collection have secret characters that can only be unlocked under certain conditions. While they can still be unlocked using authentic inputs or methods, you can now unlock these characters with a simple menu that switches in the game. Other secret characters include Akuma from Hyper Street Fighter II; Oboro Bishamon in Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire; and Hutizil and Pyron in Darkstalkers. How you want to play these secret characters is up to you.

We hope you enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at Red Earth. Capcom Fighting Collection launches June 24 on PlayStation 4 and includes 10 different games, including all five Darkstalker, Red Earth, Cyberbots, Hyper Street Fighter II, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix .