Capcom Fighting All-Stars was attempted by SNK employees who joined Capcom with the hopes of a quick impression but it got cancelled
As mentioned in previous articles, SNK ran into some serious financial problems in the early 2000s. A team of about 20 people from SNK ended up joining Capcom. Toyohisa Tanabe was among the SNK developers that went over to Capcom at this time.
In Polygon's recent article that talks about an era in which Capcom and SNK frequently interacted, Tanabe talked about how development began on a game titled "Capcom Fighting All-Stars."
"When we joined Capcom, there were two plans put forward for the kind of game we could develop," noted Tanabe. "We had a lot of people on our team with experience developing fighting games, so our first idea was to make our own fighting game. However, creating a fighting game from scratch, with a new gameplay system, would have been very time-consuming, and as a new team at Capcom, we felt we had to contribute something to the company as quickly as possible."
The idea is that the new team felt like they needed to make a quick impression on the rest of Capcom. As mentioned by Tanabe, the former SNK developers were unproven in the eyes of other Capcom employees.
During the development of Capcom vs. SNK 3, the game transitioned from being a 2D fighting game to a 3D fighting game. To save time on development, 3D assets were imported from the cancelled 3D Capcom vs. SNK title. Ironically, the developers would be unable to use the SNK assets.
"So instead, we went with our second idea, which was to use Capcom's pre-existing assets as the foundation for a new project," continued Tanabe. "And that game, well, I can't really talk about too much, but... that's how Capcom Fighting All-Stars' development began."
There were plans for four new characters in Capcom Fighting All-Stars — D.D., Rook, Avel and Ingrid. The game would inevitably get cancelled as beta testers reported that the gameplay wasn't particularly interesting.
"Unfortunately, we just weren't able to work it up into something interesting," stated Tanabe. "Partly due to my own inexperience, in the end, even though our staff did their best, the game never made it to release."
Though Toyohisa Tanabe, the idea of a Capcom crossover fighting game would later be revisited with Capcom Fighting Evolution. This would also end up being Ingrid's official debut appearance in a fighting game.
