Street Fighter has been around for 30 years and Capcom is
celebrating it in style with a collection of 12 key games spanning the early
history of the franchise. From the humble beginnings of the original Street
Fighter all the way to the masterpiece that is Street Fighter III: Third Strike
and everything in between – the many versions of Street Fighter II and the
Street Fighter Alpha series - the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary
Collection is a dream come true for fighting game fans. This is a great package
that no fight fan should miss. Continue reading our full Xbox One review for
all of the details.
Game Details
- Publisher: Capcom
- Developer: Capcom, Digital Eclipse
- ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen
- Genre: Fighting
- Pros: 12 games!; great bonus features; awesome local multiplayer
- Cons: Online / training modes only in 4 games; the A.I. is brutal
- MSRP: $40
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| Buy Street Fighter 30th Collection at Amazon.com |
The game also includes fantastic extras like artwork, design
documents, and history of the series. In a neat touch, you can also look at all
of the character sprites and scroll through their signature moves frame by
frame, which is absolutely awesome. This collection is a fantastic museum of
everything Street Fighter.
It has to be noted that these are the arcade versions of all
of the games so extra modes or features or characters or balancing changes
included in console releases are not present here. Because they are the arcade
versions, the CPU difficulty is kind of jacked up, too. I’m no noob when it
comes to playing most of these games, but I’m getting my butt kicked! You can
adjust the CPU difficulty for each game, thankfully, but even on easy these
games present a challenge. It also needs to be said that while you can
configure the buttons in these games, you can’t assign three punches or three
kicks to a single button, which makes performing certain super moves more
difficult (on a controller, at least, it’s fine on a stick).
Every game has local multiplayer and a solo arcade mode, but
four of the games – SFII Turbo, SFII Super Turbo, SF Alpha 3, and SFIII Third
Strike - also have training modes as well as online play. It would have been
nice if all of the games could have gotten these extra modes, but these 4 are
arguably the most important, so it is understandable why they got special
treatment.
The game selection overall is fantastic and it is nice to
see how Street Fighter has grown over the years. Street Fighter 1 is, honestly,
borderline unplayable, and the original release of Street Fighter II is
extremely sluggish and not all that fun, but all of the other games have
something to offer that makes them worth playing. All of the different Street
Fighter II releases actually do play differently, for example, and the
incredible improvement from the first Street Fighter III release to Third
Strike is really something to behold. The Alpha series also has a unique feel
that sets it apart as well.
It isn’t a "complete" Street Fighter collection,
though, which is sort of disappointing. I know that not all of Street Fighter’s
history is grand and epic and worthy of remembering, but I’ve never played a
Street Fighter EX game and really would have liked at least one of them to be
included here. Licensing obviously make these impossible, but X-Men vs. Street
Fighter or Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter would have been nice as well.
Even Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (more licensing issues) would have
been awesome to see. I'm not complaining, but there is more to Street Fighter’s
history than just the 12 games included here.
Presentation is great overall and it is incredible how
smoothly all 12 games were seamlessly integrated into one package. You can jump
from one game to the next surprisingly quickly, which is awesome. You can set
A.I. difficulty, screen size, visual filters, and borders for each individual
game as well. As for the games themselves, they look and sound pretty much
perfect.
All in all, the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary
Collection is a fantastic value. You're getting 12 games for $40 (or less) and
a majority of them are legitimately great and timeless classics. The games all
play perfectly, look and sound great, and the extra museum features round out
the package nicely. If you love Street Fighter and fighting games in general,
there is no reason not to buy this. It's freaking awesome.
