Last year was a rough year. Just ask Osaka-based Capcom. The game company, which is best known for the Street Fighter series, sales profits down. Way down.

According to an official statement, Capcom saw new sales down 27.3 percent to ¥66.8 billion. Net profit was down 73.1 percent from the previous year to ¥2.17 billion.

Sales were strong in Japan for titles like Wii game Monster Hunter Tri and PSP game Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Elsewhere, games like Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV continued to do brisk business.

"However, weak sales of some new titles besides the releases of Lost Planet 2, Super Street Fighter IV and Monster Hunter Tri for overseas were postponed to the next fiscal year significantly depressed sales compared to previous year," stated Capcom. Those "weak" selling titles, Capcom noted, were namely Bionic Commando, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles and Dark Void.

But with a battery of big titles coming out, Capcom should be just fine.

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Jay Pavlina recently released a sensation of a video game, a remix called Super Mario Bros. Crossover that allows gamers to play Super Mario Bros. as the heroes of Mega Man, Metroid and Castlevania. Other legends almost made it in.

From a GameXplain interview with Pavlina about the making of the game

GameXplain: Mario, Mega Man, Simon, Samus, Bill, and Link—that's a fantastic selection of characters, but were there any others you were considering adding? Were any cut for time or developmental reasons?

Pavlina: Yes, originally there were nine characters, and I'd really like to get these characters in at some point if possible. The other three characters were going to be Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden, Luigi, and the SOPHIA battle tank from Blaster Master. I also considered the guy from Bionic Commando. Most of the characters got cut due to time, but Luigi got cut due to a different decision. Originally, the game was going to have a story where Mario got captured, so Luigi recruited his friends from other videogame worlds to help get Mario back. But I decided not to worry about the story and just focus on making the gameplay awesome.

Play the game as is, at Newgrounds. Dream of what it could have been.

Super Mario Bros. Crossover Xplained: An Interview with the Creator [GameXplain]

The man behind Mega Man is very busy these days.

Not because of his 1987 creation and the more than 50 games it spawned since. No, Keiji Inafune's work is sadly free of the blue humonoid robot and his endless battles. Nowadays Inafune spends most of his time traveling the world keeping an eye on Capcom's other creations.

As the game maker's new head of global production, Inafune says he has only one goal: To make sure that all of Capcom's games have that, to borrow a French phrase, je ne sais quoi.

"It's a common comment I hear that games created in Europe aren't really Capcom games, that games created in Japan are true Capcom games," Inafune recently told a gathering of journalists at their annual Captivate event in Hawaii. "I want to put an end to that, basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love."

The news comes after a mixed year for Capcom. The past 12 months or so saw the publisher help to reinvigorate the fighting genre with the release of Street Fighter IV to consoles and the continued success of their Resident Evil franchise, but it also saw a few flops including Bionic Commando and January 2010's Dark Void.

Capcom's biggest disappointments of the past 12 months have to be Bionic Commando, which received middling reviews, and Dark Void which was perceived, at best, as forgettable. Both were products of a new initiative by the Japanese developer to try and blend the aesthetics, artistry and mechanics of Western and Japanese game design.

That initiative was announced at the 2009 Captivate event in Monte Carlo. At the time Inafune said that Capcom knew it needed to figure out how to climb out of what he called a pit that had Capcom at the bottom of the industry. The key, he realized, was to focus on globalization. The first result of that effort was the widely acclaimed Dead Rising, a game that other developers, he noted, said looked Western but felt Japanese.

So last year they decided to push things further west, perhaps a bit too far west.

Now, Inafune says the company is working to perfect this idea of collaboration not only between studios, but cultures.

Dead Rising 2, for instance, is being created by Canadian studio Blue Castle Games, but Inafune is making sure that the game will still have that Capcom feel.

"One of the biggest things we do is have more staff visits," he said. "We have a deeper collaboration through the sheer amount of communication, a lot more meetings, a lot more emails.

"Rather than have the development team do what they want to do by themselves, Capcom is trying to inject the Capcom flavor into it."

And, judging by what I saw earlier this month, it seems to be working. Dead Rising 2 feels like a game that has found the sweet spot between Western and Japanese game development.

While Inafune may have been overstating things last year when he said that Japanese game development has one foot in the grave, he's right to be worrying over his own company's health in an increasingly global gaming market.

The key, though, will be for Capcom and other Japanese developers to find a way to make games that appeal to a broad spectrum of gamers without losing a sense of where they came from and who they are. And that means being willing to make some bad games and learn from those mistakes.

The coming year should show whether Capcom is able to put into practice the lessons that Dark Void and Bionic Commando seems to have taught them and produce a game that is the best of two worlds.

The man behind some of Capcom's biggest video game creations is now in charge of personally assuring that all of the developer's titles are hits.

"It's a common comment I hear that games created in Europe aren't really Capcom games," said Keiji Inafune, the man behind Mega Man, Dead Rising and Onimusha. "That games created in Japan are true Capcom games.

"I want to put an end to that, basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love."

To accomplice that Capcom named Inafune the company's global head of production.

"So one of the thing I want people to know is that now that I am overseeing every part of Capcom R&D you can be sure that that unified vision is going to come through in all of our titles no matter where they are created."

Inafune's new title comes just a year after the company stressed their desire to create more games around the world to appeal to a wider, more diverse audience, something Inafune has long championed.

"Those of you who know me, know how serious I am about trying to make global games on a global scale especially thinking about America and Europe when designing a lot of our titles," he said. "I've been pushing really hard for the last several years to try and gear our games in that direction."

But, he said, the problem was that some of their studios and teams didn't have one "unified direction"

To help Inafune deal with developers in other countries, he also hired Shinji Futami to serve as his "mouthpiece to convey (Inafune's) feelings, his ideas, his philosophy to the U.S."

Yesterday 2K Games panicked some gamers with news that the turn-based tactics series X-Com will return as a first-person shooter. What other classic video game franchise have had their genres changed, and how did they weather the transformation?

We're calling the phenomenon genre bending. You take a game known as being one of the best in its original genre, and give it a gameplay facelift, oftentimes modifying the core elements that made it a classic in the first place. To some, this is a refreshing change. To others, it borders on blasphemy.

Let's take a look at how other classic franchise have fared when faced with genre bending.

Bionic Commando
Original Genre: Platforming Shooter
New Genre: 3rd Person Action Adventure

The Transformation: Capcom tapped developer Grin to recreate the 1987 arcade classic Bionic Commando as a full-on 3D action adventure game with 3rd-person shooting elements. Release in 2009, the updated game was praised for its visuals and ambitious gameplay choices, garnering average to high review scores.

The Verdict: It sold like complete crap. Actually, given the right salesperson, crap might have sold better.

Metroid
Original Genre: 2D Exploration-Based Platforming Shooter
New Genre: First-Person Shooter

The Transformation: News that Nintendo was taking the classic 2D platforming series that started in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System and turning it into a first-person shooter did not sit well with fans at first. There were cries of blasphemy, along with much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. Then Nintendo released the first Metroid Prime title in 2002, and it went on to become one of the best-selling titles on the Gamecube.

The Verdict: I'd say the transformation was a success.

Shadowrun
Original Genre: Action Role-Playing
New Genre: First-Person Shooter

The Transformation: Fans of the pen-and-paper, magic meets cyberpunk role-playing game Shadowrun loved the first game based on the series, an action RPG that stayed as faithful to the source material as a 1993 Super Nintendo release could. When FASA Interactive and Microsoft announced a new Shadowrun title for the Xbox 360 and PC, fans were ecstatic, until they discovered it was an online-only first-person shooter, completely bereft of story. Despite the negative fan reaction, the developers pushed on through, producing a final product that both fans and newcomers to the series generally disliked.

The Verdict: I like to pretend the second game never happened.

Super Mario Bros.
Original Genre: 2D Platformer
New Genre: 3D Platformer

The Transformation: More a product of evolution than an actual genre change, Nintendo was still taking a chance when it took its extremely successful Mario Bros. franchise from 2D to 3D. Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Nintendo Entertainment System was a gaming masterpiece, and the 16-bit follow-up, Super Mario World, sold countless Super Nintendo systems as a pack in-game. Bringing one of the most recognizable 2D characters on the planet into the realm of 3D is no easy task, but in 1996 Nintendo managed to make it look easy.

The Verdict: Mario 64 added a new dimension to the series without taking away any of the fun, and that's what the series has always been all about.

Fallout
Original Genre: Isometric Role-Playing Game
New Genre: First-Person Action Role-Playing

The Transformation: If any video game franchise could be said to have a rabid fan following, Fallout is that series. The first two installments of the post-apocalyptic role-playing game from Interplay are considered PC classics of the highest order, and it would take a pretty ballsy company to mess with such a successful formula. When The Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda Softworks snagged the license for Fallout and announced the development of Fallout 3, fan reaction was mixed, to put it lightly. There were those that were ecstatic that the series was continuing, while early screenshots had fans calling the new title a clone of Bethesda's award winning RPG Oblivion.

Fallout 3 was released in 2008 to rave reviews, huge sales, and fans who somehow managed to overcome their doubts long enough to play through the game multiple times, before going back to being angry about how different it was.

The Verdict: A mixed reaction, but a very clear success.

The Legend of Zelda
Original Genre: Top-Down Action Role-Playing
New Genre: 2D Side-Scrolling Action Role-Playing

The Transformation: After releasing the bestselling classic The Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987, Nintendo oddly decided to mix up the formula for the sequel, Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. While Zelda II still used the top-down perspective of the first game for travel, the act of visiting towns and battling enemies shifted the game to a 2D, side-scrolling perspective, reminiscent of Super Mario Bros., complete with platforming elements.

Many features of Zelda II would be passed on to future games in the series, including NPC conversations, the use of magic, and the Triforce of Courage. The 2D platforming view was not, with the series returning to a more-or-less top-down view for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo.

The Verdict: It's hard to call a game that sold 4.38 million copies a misstep, but I'm glad they put the top down again.

Castlevania
Original Genre: 2D Action Platformer
New Genre: 2D Metroid-Style Exploration Platformer

The Transformation: No, we're not talking about the failed attempts to create a 3D Castlevania here. We're talking about a more subtle genre switch that occured between the 1994 release of Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis and Catslevania: Symphony of the Night on the PlayStation in 1997. Previous games in the series had all been relatively simple affairs. You'd travel from level to level, taking on bosses with your whip until the inevitable showdown with Dracula.

Symphony of the Night switched things up considerably, adding in a wide variety of weapons and equipment, attribute-based statistics, and animal familiars. While experience points and levelling made their debut in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest for the NES, Symphony of the Night refined those elements, making them a mainstay in the series. The most notable change to the Castlevania formula were special powers that changed how you tranvelled about Dracula's castle. Certain doors would remain unpassable until certain powers were unlocked, much like the system used in Nintendo's Metroid series, hence Symphony of the Night's nickname, Metroidvania.

The Verdict: It's hard to go back to the original games after playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

These are just a few examples of classic video games that have undergone Genre Bending over the course of the past three decades. Sometimes the resulting games breath new life into stale franchise, while other times they've acted as coffin nails, sealing a series fate.

What does this mean for X-Com? Don't give up hope. The trip from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter is a rocky road, but as many of the game above have proved, swapping genres doesn't always end in tears.

Now it's your turn! Discuss your favorite video game genre benders in the comments section below! For extra points, be sure to start your comment with the words, "You missed..."

A few weeks ago, I did a feature on a company that's responsible for game logos and box art. Today, then, I thought we'd look at something similar: a company that does box art and marketing material.

The artwork you'll see in this post is the work of British firm Head First, an agency that specialises in advertising & design for both publishers and developers. This means they design stuff like box art, the back of a game's box, websites, posters, packaging, collector's edition packaging, and even the cardboard standees you see cluttering the aisles at your local GameStop.

Dom Conlon, from Head First, reckons this kind of design work is far more crucial to a game's success than most people would give it credit for. "It's estimated that 40% of purchases are impulse", he says. "That's a pretty big chunk of people deciding right there and then to buy a game."

"They could be gamers who have a vague idea of the sort of game they are looking for, or they could be Ma and Pa, looking to buy a game because little Johnny has eaten his peas. Now that's a pretty diverse audience right there, but let's assume they have all missed your advertising campaign, or at least that it's not the influencing factor."

"It's the back of pack that is interesting because that can make a real difference here. Ma and Pa may well be looking for cover art that resembles what they've seen before so they will be drawn to "that sort of thing". That means they will be picking up the box and taking a closer look. They need to be impressed and convinced that the game will be right."

Head First has worked with many of the industry's biggest names on some of the biggest games. In this gallery, you'll find examples of some of their more well-known work, including pieces designed for Call of Duty, Splinter Cell, Resident Evil and Red Faction (and even Onechanbara!). Interesting stuff! To read more, Head First run a blog, with regular updates on the challenges and inspirations to be found working in this oft-overlooked area of the industry.