24. Capcom Fighting Evolution (2004)

By 2004 the fighting game dark ages were upon us, and Capcom reached its absolute nadir with Capcom Fighting Evolution. The only surviving offshoot of the canceled 3D project Capcom Fighting Jam, Evolution was an undercooked, misbegotten, content-starved misfire that did more harm than good.

Like 2001’s more successful Capcom vs. SNK 2, Evolution sought to combine characters from numerous Capcom franchises into one big battle royale. But Evolution’s characters were locked into the fighting styles of their original games, resulting in weird matches between incongruent game systems with none of the flexibility of CvS2’s grooves or Alpha 3’s “-ism” styles. And with only 23 characters drawn from five games (13 being from Street Fighter), more fan faves were left out than included.

Gosh, was it hideous. Recycled low-res sprites from five unrelated games combined with a few new ones plus cheap-looking, high-res backgrounds made the notably saggy visuals of 2000’s Marvel vs. Capcom 2 look like a reasonable effort in comparison.

Capcom Fighting Evolution failed to reverse Capcom’s fading fighting fortunes, so fans would suffer through another four or so years of fighting game purgatory before Street Fighter IV finally set the stage for the genre’s gradual resurgence. — Alexandra Hall