Trivia / Capcom Fighting Evolution

• Creator Killer: The game was intended to be the last hurrah for Capcom's fighting game division, which had been on a decline following the high-profile commercial failure of Street Fighter III and a general decline in the 2D fighting game market as 3D fighting games like Tekken, Soulcalibur, Virtua Fighter, and Dead or Alive were reigning supreme by the end of The '90s. Instead, its failure led to them to effectively gut said division, with new fighting games released by them being handled by other companies like Dimps and Eighting. It wouldn't be until the end of The New '10s and the beginning of the The New '20s that Capcom's in-house fighting game division would get a long-awaited Career Resurrection with Street Fighter V (particularly its twilight years of development and content) and Street Fighter 6.
• Development Gag: Hauzer's Midnight Bliss design was actually taken from a doodle found in the official Red Earth guidebook.
• Dueling Works: This game would receive competition with SNK's NeoGeo Battle Coliseum that came out a year later. Going by critical reception, NGBC is the winner of this duel. To quote from this games YMMV page for one factor that contributes to CFE's loss in this duel: "It's a neat idea to have various characters from different franchises against each other, but Capcom also ported their mechanics over on a per-game basis. So, the Street Fighter II characters are fundamentally crippled with their Super Turbo rules compared to the rest of the other cast members, who have numerous abilities like air guards, rolls or dashes, parries, Custom Combos, double meters and other things originating from their titles."
• Dummied Out: Ingrid has sprite for a second Midnight Bliss transformation that turns her into Hard Gay of all people. This is left unused, so her "second" transformation is the same as the first one.
• Franchise Killer: Capcom's fighting games were already on a decline before the release of Fighting Evolution, but its critical and commercial thrashing combined with its Troubled Production led to Capcom putting their fighting games on ice for several years until the release of Street Fighter IV.
• Troubled Production: As mentioned below, the game was basically a rushed attempt to salvage some of the work done on Capcom Fighting All-Stars. Yoshinori Ono also revealed that things were so hectic that he replaced the original producer after they left during the middle of production.
• What Could Have Been:
  • At first Capcom developed a game called Capcom Fighting All-Stars, a 3D crossover fighter starring Ryu, Chun-Li, Charlie, Alex, Mike Haggar, Poison, Strider Hiryu, Batsu, Akira, Akuma and Demitri^note The last two first revealed 14 years later in 2016 through the Street Fighter V official website.. The plot revolved around a bomb set to destroy Metro City and featured three new characters who each held part of the code needed to stop it (one of them being Ingrid). However, the game was savaged in playtests for not playing enough like Street Fighter or any Capcom fighter at the time^Explanation It was more akin to Tekken, with full 3D movement. However, each fighter's lifebar was separated into thirds and every third depleted caused a break to occur with a cutscene before resuming in place of rounds. and Capcom cancelled it in favor of making Fighting Evolution. There's even a footage of the prototype arcade version available. Interestingly, according to a 2017 interview, All-Stars was intended to utilize 3D assets that may have been created for a cancelled Capcom vs. SNK 3, complete with an appearance from K' as a Guest Fighter.
  • The original 1987 Street Fighter was the only 2D Street Fighter title not represented in the crossover. Originally, there were plans for the game to include Eagle (using his Capcom vs. SNK 2 sprite), a pre-scar Sagat, and Retsu, but time constraints prevented this.

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