Capcom Fighting Collection

3.5 trees

more fun than the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection Ok, VAmpire Savior and Night Hunter = 4x similar title, but port is better and option to set difficulty, speed

amazing collection of arcade classics. worth every cent.

A collection of some cool CPS2 and CPS3 fighting games. As is expected for rereleases of this type all games come with CRT filters, save states, concept art/arcade flyers and a music player. You also get online play, a modern practice mode, the ability to switch between the Japanese and international versions of games and Steam achievements. All games are the arcade versions, no home ports. Being CPS2 and CPS3 games means that the visuals are great throughout with some very good pixel art and a lot of animation frames. Now let's go through each game one by one. Darkstalkers, the popular monster mash fighter that lives on in dozens of crossover fighters is represented with all its entries. Something common in all of the games is the huge number of unique animation frames for each character. The original plays similar to Super Street Fighter II Turbo which came out the same year with similar controls and a meter used for special moves. The sequel Night Warriors (int)/Vampire Hunter (jp) allows you to store multiple special charges, adds the original's two bosses as playable characters + two more new characters. The third games, Vampire Savior, overhauls the round system by introducing the system seen in Killer Instinct or (years later) Injustice where instead of rounds players have two life bars that have to be depleted. The game felt victim to the CPS2's hard 322 megabit (40 megabyte) ROM size limit so a lot of characters had to be cut and put in the revisions, Vampire Savior 2 and Vampire Hunter 2 which both were released on the same day and are included in the collection. Both play the same as Vampire Savior and they only exist due to the storage limit. Street Fighter 2 is represented by Hyper Street Fighter 2, an anniversary release that combines all versions of SF2. This allows you to do some impossible combinations like for example having OG Ryu fight SSF2T T. Hawk complete with a meter. Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo (there was never a regular Puzzle Fighter 2 or a Puzzle Fighter 1 for that matter) plays a bit like a mix of Dr. Mario and Columns where you get colored gems in colums of 2 (like Dr. Mario) but cannot flip them horizontally (like Columns). The goal is to use the colored bomb gems to destroy gems of the same color. This will send gems to your opponent that can't be destroyed until some time passes. Whoever doesn't fill the top row wins. The game features characters from Street Fighter and Darkstalkers drawn in a cute cartoony style. Super Gem Fighter Minimix (int)/ Pocket Fighter (jp) uses a similar cute visual style. It's a fighting game that allows you to play as Street Fighter, Darkstalkers or Red Earth charaters with characters from other Capcom games like Mega Man and Resident Evil also making cameos. Hiting opponents and certain objects in the arena releases gems which power up your moves when collected. Controls are the simplest out of all the games. One thing stands out is the animation. It's very impressive with a ton of frames. Cyberbots is a mecha fighting game that lets you pick your pilot (only affects story) and your robot. Robots are split into categories with robots of the same category having the same head but different limbs which affect how they play. Since the robots are massive the arenas feature an impressive level of interaction even though most of it is cosmetic. Red Earth (int)/Warzard (jp) is a unique genre bender. You pick from a limited roster of playable characters and figt your way through non playable bosses so it's similar to the original Street Fighter in that regard but it also features some RPG influences like XP, leveling up (which unlocks new moves), multiple endings (some involving choices) and bosses with massive health bars. An interesting idea but an evolutionary dead end for the genre that hasn't been tried since as far as I'm aware. This is the only CPS3 game in the collection (also the first CPS3 game in history) with the new hardware allowing for some huge and highly detailed characters. Most of the above games feature hidden characters. usually you'll need to input a complex sequence of buttons to unlock them but the collection offers simplified unlocks for all games.

vampire savior alone is worth it. red earth was pretty neat too though.