Back in the early 90s, Capcom was the king of the arcade.  The co-op brawler genre was extremely popular, and many of the best brawlers were from Capcom.  Another Capcom gem is the topic for discussion today: Knights of the Round.

Hi, my name is Fred, and I'll be your incredibly scary monster today.

It's always nice when a single player game series adds in co-op, a la Resident Evil 5.  The latest title to join this trend is Capcom's Lost Planet 2.  If killing bugs to harvest thermal goo from their back ends was fun in single player, imagine the possibilities with a buddy to watch your back!  Capcom VP Christian Svensson promises that the upcoming third person action game will crank it up to eleven.

Takeuchi’s approach was, you know what we’re not going to sit back on our laurels and just *THERMAL GOO* (ed.) out a sequel, we’re actually going to take it up five notches. We’re not going to under invest in this, we’re actually going to over invest in this, and we’re going to build it bigger.

We're all for over investing as long as one of those investments is co-op.  It looks like Capcom really is making co-op a priority, as they promised.  I just took advantage of the weekend Steam sale for the original Lost Planet, and look forward to playing it to prepare for the sequel!

Source: Link

Capcom is announcing a new downloadable game on Monday, and the only place you'll get to see the trailer is on Xbox Live.    Of course with any new game announcement, we hope this means co-op!  With previous titles like Wolf of the Battlefield and 1942: Joint Strike, their track record has been pretty good for the arcade titles.  

In fact, in a recent (and yet unpublished interview) for Resident Evil 5, Capcom's Chris Kramer had this to say:

You’re definitely going to see a much larger emphasis on co-op in many Capcom titles over the next year or two.

Do you hear that Mr. Anderson?  That's the sound of inevitability.  We'll be posting the full Resident Evil interview on Monday, and we'll be keeping an eye on this announcement as well!  So be sure to check back.

Source: Link

I was going to tell you about this sweet contest for the upcoming co-optorific Bionic Commando: ReArmed, but don't bother I've already got the contest in the bag. See that sweet level design there. Jealous? Yeah, that's right, that's my entry and I'm totally gonna win this thing.

Capcom's really into this whole Bionic Commando thing and I couldn't be happier. Now they've just announced a cool little contest for designing your very own "challenge level" level in the upcoming ReArmed arcade title for Xbox Live and PSN. All you've got to do is draw a totally awesome level, i.e. the one I've already done (don't copy it, I know you want to).

All the rules are available here, as well as a diagram of the different components to build your level out of. If you win all you get is your level in the game when it comes out. The contest began Wednesday, February 27th, and ends Wednesday, March 12, 2008. Good luck.

Remember Bionic Comando on the NES?  Yeah it was pretty badass.  There's a new 3rd person 3D action game of the same name coming as well.  That's not even the good news.  The good news is Capcom has announced a remake of the original game complete with 3D  graphics and....CO-OP PLAY!

Check out the preview at IGN.