Every fighting game fan who was around during the 90’s knows that Capcom produced some of the best 2D game art ever. But we mostly talk about their illustrators – Akiman, Bengus, Kinu Nishimura, Edayan and so on. But what about the sprite artists, the people who made animated works of art like, you know, Hugo, Elena, Pyron, Felicia, Hydron or Sentinel?

Below is a table showing every Capcom fighting game that had at least one new character sprite, and the people credited for ”Object Designer” or ”Character Designer”, as opposed to the ”Background” or ”Scroll” designers that made backgrounds. Now, this list may not be 100% accurate. The credits were notoriously hard to track back in the day, with most people going by pseudonyms. Mobygames.com, from where I’ve taken all of the credits except Street Fighter Alpha 2, has identified most of them, but there may be overlaps or mistakes.

Capcom seems to have occasionally credited artists for their previous work reappearing in later games. So it’s difficult to tell when work was done, and it’s perhaps more interesting to see generally where artists crossed between series. Also, people like Akiman worked on a lot of titles in a overseer role doing both sprite work and promotional.

In the table, I’ve coloured the game where an artist first was credited with blue, and the last game with pink. If an artist was only credited for one game, I’ve coloured it yellow. Also note that artists may have worked on other non-fighting games, so this doesn’t say whether they were at Capcom before or after this. I’ve followed the later careers of the most productive ones, shown at the end of this post, and it turns out that many are actually still at Capcom to this day.

When defining a new sprite, I am including complete or mostly complete characters that appear first in that game. Some characters gain additional animations in later games, those are not counted again. Characters that are entirely or almost entirely recoloured from existing sprites, like MvC Ryu, War Machine or Blind Kakyoin, are not counted. Characters that reuse most of an existing sprite (every Ken or Akuma, Yang and Lilith) are counted separately with an asterisk, since there is still a lot of work going into these but not as much as a brand new character. Then again, you could argue someone like Lilith has more unique sprites than, say, Onslaught or Abyss. Then again again, this is not science.

(click the table to open the full image)

Now, what can we learn from this table? First, some stats. 187 different artists were credited across these 27 games. Not including the outliers Street Fighter and Capcom Fighting Jam, an average of 21 sprite artists were credited per game. Let’s analyze the games.

The era of Street Fighter

Only six artists worked on the twelve characters of Street Fighter, but obviously all of them had much simpler and smaller sprites than the later ones. None of these artists are known to have returned, although Dabada Atsushi may possibly be Atsushi Iwasaki. It’s possible some went with Takashi Nishiyama to SNK.

Street Fighter II thus had a completely new set of artists with 20 people, many of which would go on to work on many other fighting games. Seven of them worked on seven to thirteen different games with new sprites, and six of them (Ikuo Nakayama, Eri Nakamura, Mizuho Kageyama, Takashi Hayashi, Akemi Kurihara and Q Kyoku) would stay up until the last few games up to ten years later.

Super Street Fighter II added in another eight artists and kept several of the original crew for a total of 17 artists. While there were only four new characters, there were additional sprites too. Most of the newcomers were only credited for this game, so it’s possible they only did minor work. Similarly, Super Turbo added 15 artists for a total of 23, and most of these were also only one-timers.

With three entirely different series on the way, the original SF2 artists were spread out and a lot of newcomers showed up. The idea seems to have been using the experienced artists to head new subdivisions consisting mostly of new hires.

Time to diversify

Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors had four SF2 artists and added seven, for a comparatively paltry number of eleven. Considering this included characters like Victor and Pyron, that’s quite impressive.

X-Men: Children of the Atom seems to have been a massive investment. 22 new artists joined, many of which would go on for several more titles. Five alumni from the SF2 series would head up development, for a total of 27.

Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge, although it only had two new characters, would pick up a big number of people, and I wonder if someone may have been credited late for efforts on the first game. One source I’ve found suggested that Capcom sometimes skipped credits. Another three SF2 artists, everyone from Darkstalkers and eleven new ones worked on this for a total of 26. Obviously, it’s also possible that a relatively small scale sequel was a good way to tutor new artists.

Eri Nakamura, who was quite prolific already, was the sole SF2 alumni to work on Street Fighter Alpha, alongside Atsushi Iwasaki from Super Turbo who had similarly worked on X-Men inbetween. They brought six of the people from X-Men and twelve newcomers for a relatively modest total of 20.

Things get really interesting with Marvel Super Heroes. Again, only two SF2 artists were on it, but they kept eleven of the X-Men artists (which makes sense) and seven Alpha artists, but still added a massive 22 new people, many of which would only work on this. Now, Marvel Super Heroes actually credits people by character, which gives us great insight into the organization. The returning characters (Wolverine, Psylocke and Magneto only had a single artist each, but the new ones each had a team of three (Juggernaut, Doom or Spider-Man) to 13 (Iron Man) working on them. Some artists who are not listed in the table also provided effects work and similar, like Takafumi Sagata. Considering that this game was less than a year after X-Men, it seems all hands were on deck, since the game, like X-Men, had some insanely detailed sprites.

For Street Fighter Alpha 2, Eri Nakamura was joined by Takashi Hayashi, who had last worked on the Darkstalkers duo, and Atsushi Iwasaki who had similarly worked on X-Men and Alpha. Daisuke Kurita and Seigo Kawakami had both worked on X-Men, Alpha and Marvel, and similarly a lot of the new artists from Alpha and Marvel carried right on through. Thus only three entirely new artists were added. Street Fighter Alpha 2 is a remarkably confident game, and there was a lot of experience in the team already.

X-Men vs Street Fighter seems to have been developed completely in parallel to Alpha 2, with nobody working on both. Two SF2 alumni, Satoru Yamashita who had last worked on Marvel, and Ikuo Nakayama who did Night Warriors, headed up a team of mostly X-Men artists, a couple of Marvel artists, and eight new ones. Satoru Yamashita would not be credited again as a fighting game artist; he would instead work on Shadow Over Mystara and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters before seemingly leaving the industry.

The CPS-3 era begins, but CPS-2 is still around

Now Red Earth was an interesting one, being the first CPS-3 game with a massive amount of sprite work for each character. It also had a massive 32 artists, second only to Marvel Super Heroes and only later eclipsed by Capcom vs SNK. Veterans Mizuho Kageyama, Akemi Kurihara and Kazuo Yorikane, who all went directly from Night Warriors to this, were joined by work horses Eri Nakamura and Ikuo Nakayama, ten of the artists who had previously only done Darkstalkers games and a couple of the X-Men/Marvel team. They were joined by nine new artists, but all of these seem to have only worked on Red Earth as sprite artists. One of these, Naoki Fukushima, seems to have gone on to be a 3D animator and is still with Capcom as of Street Fighter 6, and Satoshi Takamatsu similarly worked on the Resident Evil 3 remake. So it seems a lot of the sprite work on Red Earth was in fact 3D oriented to help render the huge sprites, like how SNK did with Art of Fighting 3 around the same time.

Street Fighter III: The New Challengers famously had a rocky development. Takashi Hayashi, Q Kyoku and Hitoshi Nishio had started with Street Fighter II and had all most recently done Night Warriors, so they seem to have accounted for the other half of the Darkstalkers core team. Yusuke Yamamoto, who may or may not be the same Yu_Suke who also worked on Alpha 2, otherwise came straight from Super Turbo. Another group of veterans from the middle era joined up, with seven newcomers. Street Fighter III still ended up with only 19 sprite artists, far fewer than Red Earth, which must have been a miscalculation on Capcom’s part. These two games also had mutually exclusive teams, which makes sense as they released only two months apart.

Meanwhile, many of the core Darkstalkers artists also worked on Vampire Savior, but since several of them were also involved with the CPS-3 games, you might assume that this was mostly credits for old sprite work, or that they came over to draw additional frames for their original characters. Otherwise Vampire Savior was helmed by various artists from Alpha and Marvel, with only two completely new hires. Despite 25 credited artists, Vampire Savior was considered a bit of a side project at the time since Capcom was pushing the new hardware, and the team seems to reflect this.

Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter had only one really new character, so it also seems to mostly credit existing work. It also does list mostly people who worked on the previous three Marvel games, but also some diligent artists like Shinji Kaminaguchi, Shinya Miyamoto and Hiroshi Yoshioka who seem to have filled in whenever needed. The game didn’t have any new artists added.

Now Pocket Fighter was based graphically on designs from Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but I haven’t traced work credited from that game. Ikuo Nakayama and Atsushi Iwasaki were returning veterans, as was Kazuo Yorikane. The latter had also worked on Cyberbots and Battle Circuit, but would leave Capcom to later work with Arc System Works on Guilty Gear X. This would truly have been a side project, with some of Capcom’s most recurring artists like Takenori Kimoto, Tomohiko Ohsumi and Masaru Nishimura showing up in the credits here, and no newcomers.

Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact was released only eight months after Street Fighter III, and although the crew was halved, seven of the nine artists came straight from the previous games and were probably up to speed to get Hugo and Urien’s massive sprites running. Two new artists contributed but both only for this game.

Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes on the other hand was a big effort and included mostly veterans like Eri Nakamura and Akemi Kurahara but also workhorses like Takenori Kimoto, Hideki Ino, Hiroaki Minobe, Miwa Sakaguchi, Takafumi Sagata, Shinji Kaminaguchi, Hiroshi Yoshioka and Shinya Miyamoto. One of the two newcomers would later work on the Jojo games. However, of the 20 artists on this game, six wouldn’t work as sprite artists after this. Masanori Kondo moved on to 3D modelling and last worked on Monster Hunter Rise. Koichi Kikutani is also doing 3D, lately in Street Fighter 6. So it was perhaps the beginning of the end for Capcom’s sprite era, but at least some of the Marvel vs Capcom artists are still around 26 years later which is rather impressive.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 had two main versions, with much of the crew obviously being the same. Six people who worked on the SF2 games were still around here. The rest of them were experienced from across multiple games previously, although three new artists were hired (although again, it’s hard to tell from pseudonyms). These were also the last games for several experienced artists, like Takafumi Sagata (went on to effects works for Namco), Katsunori Takemoto and H. Fujihara (left the industry) and Katsuhiro Nakano (credited on Street Fighter 6 but only for artwork).

Jojo’s Venture, the western name for the first Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure game, was the final Capcom 2D fighting game with an entirely new cast of characters. It has a small team of twelve artists, which is impressive considering the number of new characters and expressive animation – although Jojo has a much simpler design than Red Earth or III. It comes across similarly to Disney’s Robin Hood: a project with clearly lower ambitions and a lot less polish, but still a lot of raw talent being showcased. Three were SF2 veterans still holding on for additional games. Two of the artists came straight from Vampire Savior, so that’s the probably the closest lineage. Capcom were still hiring: four artists were brought on for this and would work on two more.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is considered possibly the best fighting game ever, but at the time it was a desperate measure to recoup some of the money lost on the previous versions. Ikuo Nakayama was brought in as a veteran, since Takashi Hayashi and Q Kyoku were busy on Jojo, and Hitoshi Nishio had left after Vampire Savior. This was also Daisuke Kurita’s last sprite game (he’s still doing effects works for Capcom). Rather amazingly, seven of the fifteen sprite artists for this game were newcomers, all apparently doing splendid work. Although five of those use pseudonyms so they might also be veterans in disguise.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure added several characters and has a slightly bigger crew overall, with some veterans returning like Masaru Nishimura (previously on Pocket Fighter), and Kaname Fujioka and Tomohiko Ohsumi (Alpha 3). But no new people joined, and while this is the version that everybody loves nowadays, it’s clear that it was just an expansion to the original, releasing just ten months later and also coincidentally being the final CPS-3 game.

A new age of crossovers

Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, while having one of the largest casts ever, only had seven brand new characters. Still, 27 artists are listed. This includes veterans Akemi Kurihara, Atsuhi Iwasaki, Mizue Morimoto, Hiroaki Minobe and Makoto Ishii, all of whom left after this. Capcom did recruit six new artists, most of which would work on the final few games. The writing was truly on the wall for sprite artists – in glorious pixel detail probably.

Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 (including the later Pro revision) was the final massive effort, with 37 artists credited, the highest number since Marvel Super Heroes. This was the final game for Eri Nakamura, Mizuho Kageyama, Takashi Hayashi, Takenori Kimoto, Yuji Imamura, Miwa Sakaguchi and Masaru Nishimura, all of whom had been doing multiple games going back to X-Men and Darkstalkers or even Street Fighter II, but also newer artists who had joined with Alpha 3 or Jojo. And their effort and experience showed: Capcom vs SNK was the Capcom game with the highest number of brand new sprites added ever (21, including only three slight redesigns: Ken, Akuma and Dan).

Capcom vs SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001, for obvious reasons, was the final game for most artists. Only Ikuo Nakayama was left from ten years before, but the 19 artists were extremely experienced. Except for three newcomers, the others had an average of six finished games each, despite some having joined as late as Marvel vs Capcom 2. The game also had a huge number of new, amazing sprites, and was a worthy farewell from Capcom to the 2D fighting genre. Because they never did any more of those. End of story.

Okay, they did make one more, the infamously cheap Capcom Fighting Jam/Evolution. This game reused sprites liberally, with most of the effort going towards Ingrid and adding new static sprites for Demitri’s and Anakaris’ victims, although Zangief was also completely redrawn. Norihide Fujii and Tadashi Noyama heroically toiled with this – remember that nine years earlier twice as many people would typically work on a single Marvel Super Heroes sprite. It’s also worth pointing out that only two people worked on the historically bad backgrounds, which mostly consisted on old artwork randomly pasted on photographs.

And that’s the history of, basically, ten intense years, during which these 187 artists created, collectively, 193 unique sprites plus 27 heavily altered variations (like the Ansatsuken guys) and countless colour swaps (like Shadow Lady, War Machine, Blind Kakyoin and so on). And you can add all the people who created background art, and occasionally 2D effects works, and also obviously all the other people working on other 2D games during this decade. That’s why Capcom is only rivalled by a select few developers when it comes to pixel art brilliance.

Where are they now?

To wrap this up, let’s look back at what happened with the most productive artists not already chronicled. Where did they go next?

Ikuo Nakayama is still with Capcom, working with motion capture on Kunitsu-Gami, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Street Fighter 6, Exoprimal – you name it.

Eri Nakamura worked on the Nintendo DS Mega Man games for Capcom, and her latest credit was as one of the main character designers on the mobile game Last Cloudia.

Mizuho Kageyama is also still with Capcom, doing 3D animation most recently for Monster Hunter Rise and Street Fighter 6.

Takashi Hayashi has worked with several companies sporadically since 2000, most notably doing 2D sprite work again for Square-Enix and Examu in Million Arthur: Arcana Blood (2017).

Akemi Kurihara only did some work on Resident Evil: Outbreak and some retro re-releases at Capcom, last credited in 2010.

Q Kyoku is only credited with re-releases since their work on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and seems to have left the industry.

Atsushi Iwasaki mostly did storyboard work on the Devil May Cry games, and worked on Million Arthur alongside Takashi Hayashi. Otherwise he seems to have left the industry, and seems to have been working mostly on anime including Ikki Tousen.

Takenori Kimoto did various games for Capcom before leaving to, unfortunately, work with Keiji Inafune on Mighty No 9. However, he seems to have bounced back and did character art for Megaton Musashi W: Wired this year.

Shinji Kaminaguchi seems to still be at Capcom, last doing animation on Exoprimal. He’s also been working on several of the Ace Attorney games.

Chimorin Shogun was also last seen at Capcom, doing animation for Devil May Cry 4 and 5, and Street Fighter 5.

Norihide Fujii, after finishing Capcom Fighting Jam, has been working on the Ace Attorney series, Dragon’s Dogma and Resident Evil Revelations, and was last credited on Mega Man 11.

And finally, what about the artist with the evocative name Alien Pole? Well, he moved to Arika and worked on the Street Fighter EX and EX2 games plus Fighting Layer. So now you know.

Credit to Mobygames.com for game credits and screenshots, and to Fightersgeneration.com for sprites and screenshots. This article would not be possible without these excellent resources.