Yesterday, Capcom announced Breath of Fire and Breath of Fire II have returned to the Capcom Town website’s Classic Games section and are again playable for free via web browser in the USA, Brazil, and Japan for an undisclosed, limited time.
Background: On June 12, 2023, Capcom Japan launched Capcom Town, a 40th anniversary celebration website. One of the sub-sections of Capcom Town, the Classic Games section, allows visitors to play some retro NES/Famicom and SNES/Super Famicom via Ares emulation on the web for free using a computer or smartphone. The games can be played with keyboard, touch controls, or a game controller, and users can keep their game progress so long as they use the same web browser storing the same browser cookie. If the cookie is ever cleared, however, the save data will be lost.
On September 28, 2023, Capcom added the Japanese and English language versions of Breath of Fire in the Classic Games portal alongside Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. The game is very much the same as you remember it on SNES, although the ROM has been scrubbed of any mentions of Squaresoft, who originally published and localized the game on behalf of Capcom back in 1994.
Breath of Fire II for Super Famicom and Super Nintendo was later added to Capcom Town on February 6, 2024. This was released in tandem with a new Breath of Fire exhibit in Capcom Town’s Museum section, featuring concept and promotional artwork, development documents, and videos.
At the time, the game pages included downloadable scans of the Japanese and North American Breath of Fire and Breath of Fire II instruction manuals, as well as cartridge scans (once again, all mentions of Squaresoft were scrubbed for the original North American Breath of Fire). Humorously, the Japanese Breath of Fire II manual was erroneously uploaded in a very small resolution, although this was later corrected.
The games were removed from Capcom Town on September 2, 2024, but were suddenly reinstated over a year later on September 22, 2025 and required logging into a Capcom ID account and watching an advertisement before being able to play. The manuals, cart scans, and aforementioned exhibit have since been taken down, although we have archived links for them in our Resources > Links of Interest section. The games were removed yet again on October 31, 2025 before just being reinstated on November 17; this time without the Capcom ID requirement (you’ll still need to watch an ad, however). Hovering over the game icon on the page lets you see a gameplay preview snippet. Currently, it’s unclear how long the games will stay up.
The games themselves play just fine within the browser, and you can even right-click the game screen and click “Save As” to save a 512×448 (2X native scale with bilinear filtering) screenshot. With the emulator also supporting 2-player controls, one can also perform the “New Game Cheat Code” from Breath of Fire to catapult themselves ahead in the story. However, with the intermittent and limited regional availability, lack of display options (and odd, seemingly incorrect resolution and aspect ratio scaling), save state functionality, and rewind functionality that the games already have in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System – Nintendo Classics app for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, it’s hard to recommend playing through these versions to completion, especially with save data being tied to your volatile browser cookies. If anything, it might be a neat way for someone to try out the games really quick to see if it floats their boat, or something to kill the time during a break.
Ultimately though, I think fans just really want to be able to legitimately purchase and play Breath of Fire I – V on contemporary consoles and platforms like PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 (sans online subscription), and Steam/GOG. One Japanese fan even had a similar thought published in Capcom Town’s Super Election poll results last year, but it’s really up to the big wigs in Osaka and Tokyo to make happen; not the folks running Capcom Town.
- Breath of Fire: Ryuu no Senshi (Super Famicom) & Breath of Fire (Super Nintendo)
- Capcom Town Availability
- September 29, 2023 – September 2, 2024 (included instruction manual and cartridge scans)
- September 22, 2025 – October 31, 2025
- November 17, 2025 – TBD
- Capcom Town Availability
- Breath of Fire II: Shimei no Ko (Super Famicom) & Breath of Fire II (Super Nintendo)
- Capcom Town Availability
- February 6, 2024 – September 2, 2024 (included instruction manual and cartridge scans)
- September 22, 2025 – October 31, 2025
- November 17, 2025 – TBD
- Capcom Town Availability
(Images: Capcom / Dragnier)