Games developer launches themed restaurant

Capcom has recently opened a new entertainment bar in Tokyo serving up video game-inspired dishes.

Regular Springwise readers may remember our article from 2010 about Snakes and Lattes, a themed café in Canada stocked with 1,500 board games. Now taking the idea of a game themed eatery to the next level, Capcom, the Japanese video games developer, recently launched the Capcom Bar in Tokyo, complete with in-house game kiosks and game-inspired dishes. Situated on the first floor of the Pasela Resort in Shinjuku, the Capcom Bar’s playful menu features a range of dishes inspired by the company’s famous releases. On offer is a meat dish recreating the stamina-boosting drumstick from the game Monster Hunter, black-and-white seafood pasta reminiscent of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and a Resident Evil-inspired ‘brain cake’. Keiji Maeda, of action title Sengoku Basara, now has a floral octopus carpaccio recipe in his honor, joining the many other characters on the bar’s colorful food and drinks menu. Even popular cocktails have had a makeover, re-imagined as vaccines with a syringe replacing the traditional umbrella. The restaurant has already opened and Capcom hopes to entice games fans with prices per dish of around JPY 680. Alongside the gaming kiosks already in place, future plans include a merchandise stall and in-house events — from live shows and talks to competitions — to engage diners. While themed restaurants are nothing new, the Capcom Bar is an interesting example of a company expanding tangentially from their usual line of work. Plenty of inspiration here for publishers in other sectors. Spotted by: Cecilia Biemann