There weren’t any new game announcements but Capcom’s spring showcase has revealed dates for all upcoming games and a Resident Evil 4 demo.

It’s a shame Twitch ruined Capcom’s big surprise of a free Resident Evil 4 demo, but while that was clearly supposed to be the highlight of Thursday night’s showcase the rest of their line-up was still looking very good.

Apart from the demo, the biggest news was release dates for their upcoming slate of games, although it’s interesting that none of them go beyond July. Whether that’s coincidence or they have other games scheduled for the second half of the year is impossible to tell at the moment.

Resident Evil 4 and Street Fighter 6 are the two biggest titles but those dates were already known, as March 24 and June2, respectively, but the showcase didn’t dwell too long on either and instead focused on other games.

We’re probably not in a majority when we say this, but our favourite iteration of Mega Man has always been the Battle Network games, so we’re actually really looking forward to Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, which is now confirmed for April 14 on PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.

If you’re not familiar with the series it’s a tactical role-playing game with elements of Pokémon and a unique grid-based real-time battle system. The collection will contain all 10 games (Capcom went overboard on the sequels, sending the series to an early grave) and new online trading and battle modes.

You also get digital representation of all 499 patch cards, which were physical trading cards released only in Japan, plus a Buster MAX mode that makes you 100 times as powerful – so you can zip through each game if you’re only in it for the story. We’d like to think the collection means Capcom is thinking of making a new game, so hopefully it’ll do well.

Technically there was one new game announcement, of a sort, with Capcom due to celebrate their 40th anniversary with a ‘digital theme park’ called Capcom Town. It’ll open June 12 and you can get a preview of the website here (or at least that’s the idea, it’s not working as we type this).

We were beginning to wonder if weirdo dinosaur shooter Exporimal might have been quietly cancelled, given there’s been no news on it for a long while but it hasn’t and it’s out on July 14 for every format bar the Switch.

It seems to be a take on Left 4 Dead style co-op action but with dinosaurs instead of zombies, and is clearly full of classic Capcom cheese and nonsense. Their track record with online action games isn’t great (this one is specifically online-only) so this is going to be a case of wait and see but there’s an open beta on March 17 through 19.

Unfortunately, it seems to be a live service title, with two different battle passes: one free and one paid-for. That probably seemed a good idea a couple of years ago but as the tide turns against such games Capcom’s going to have their work cut out getting people on board.

Next up was the remaster of classic Nintendo DS game Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, from the creator of Ace Attorney. Sadly underrated in its day this is a welcome second chance, with higher res visuals, a faster frame rate, and newly arranged music – and a few new tracks.

There doesn’t seem to be much new content, just a new challenge mode, but it’s out on June 30 – for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC – and unless something very terrible goes wrong it’ll be getting a hearty recommendation from us.

That was about it, beyond an April 28 release date for expansion Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak on next gen console and a promise of Title Update 5 news in April.

There was also a brief look at Resident Evil: Death Island, a new CGI movie starring Jill Valentine and Leon S. Kennedy, that will be out sometime this summer.

Oh, and there’s a publisher sale on now for virtually every extant Capcom game, if you just can’t wait for the new games.

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