Capcom "saddened" by MaXplosion furore

Capcom has responded to the uproar surrounding the similarities between its forthcoming iPhone game MaXplosion and Twisted Pixel's 2009 Xbox Live Arcade platformer 'Splosion Man, insisting it's "saddened" by the situation.

Yesterday, Twisted Pixel programmer Mike Henry dubbed Capcom's title, which sees you controlling a character by making him explode, "complete theft".

The studio co-founder Michael Wilford later Tweeted, "Best part is, we originally pitched @Splosion_Man to Capcom and they said no."

In response, a statement from Capcom Mobile released to Eurogamer today read:

"While Twisted Pixel did have discussions with our console game team about publishing 'Splosion Man' on game consoles, Capcom Mobile is a different division of Capcom with separate offices and as such, had no prior knowledge of any meetings between the console game team and Twisted Pixel.

"'MaXplosion' was developed independently by Capcom Mobile. Nonetheless, we are saddened by this situation and hope to rebuild the trust of our fans and friends in the gaming community."

Twisted Pixel has ruled out a lawsuit against Capcom, despite the obvious similarities between the two games.

"We're definitely not going to pursue legal action," explained a statement from Wilford.

"While I think the similarities are pretty nauseating, we're too small to take on a company like Capcom. That, and we owe them one for inventing Mega Man, so we'll let them slide. I just hope they're not counting on the fact that indies can't fight back.

"In general, anything that would take our focus off of making games would be a bad decision, I think. We just need to keep our heads down making the next thing so that Capcom has something to steal next year. But I have to say, the amount of support we've seen in the last 12 hours on Twitter and over email has been awesome, and I think that's better than winning a stupid lawsuit or anything like that.

"We'll just have to make our own mobile game and I'm hopeful that Capcom will see that robbing our shit wasn't worth it in the long run. We'll let you know when we have something on the mobile front to talk about, but now we have added incentive!"

In case you missed it, here's that MaXplosion clip again.