 |
Review: Capcom Generations Volume 5 |
I played SF3 the other day at home. I played it in the arcade a few weeks ago. And as excellent game it is – there’s something it doesn’t have.
Nostalgia.
It may well do in 8 years time, but until then, if we want a blurry-eyed, rose-tinted Streetfighter fix, we have to look elsewhere.
“Capcom Generations 5″ is the second of Capcom’s recent classic SF releases. The other collection is comprised of Super Streetfighter 2, and Super Streetfighter 2: Turbo, but this one is the real old stuff.
There’s three games on the one CD, Streetfighter 2: The World Warrior, Streetfighter 2: Champion Edition and Streetfighter 2: Turbo (henceforth referred to as SF2:WW, SF2:CE and SF2:T, to save my poor fingers.)
There are also a few extras on the disk, unlocked by completing the games a set number of times – an extensive art gallery, which sometimes proves unintentionally hilarious, some early conceptual art, the option of a specially arranged soundtrack, and lastly, the option to mix and match fighters from all three games – ie. having Turbo Ken, with his air hurricane and long range Dragon Punch versus World Warrior Ken…without. It’s not really that interesting a feature, as the characters remain generally similar throughout the three games, and only really Ken and Ryu, Chun Li and Dhalsim are worth using.
There’s also a training mode, which would be great for practicing all those nasty Guile glitches, except Capcom seem to have removed them, as well as all other game glitches from this version. Damn. Still useful though.
Actually playing the games is great fun though – playing SF2:WW really takes me back to 1991, when I was just a young, fresh-faced schoolboy with bad hair – I remember running down to the Asian sweet/video shop at lunchtime to play this game, and I can almost smell the incense burning, almost taste the greasy chips.
Seeing it running will bring it all back – the classic tunes, the terrible intro – the fact that a lot of the character portraits are crap (Guile, Ryu and Dhalsim look like children – Blanka looks way too happy and Chun is wearing orange) – which are all remedied in CE….
It’s a great game – and it really brings home how much has changed in the last 8 years – it’s strength is its simplicity. There’s no air-blocking, no supers, no Alpha counters, custom combos – nothing like that. Two hits will dizzy. Five hits will kill. It’s essence is in its purity. There’s nothing to distract from the pure one-on-one combat experience, and the fact that one misplaced attack will often cost you the match ensures it is always a tense battle.
It may seem dull and boring to the “Vs” scrub generation – but the skill and timing required to achieve a decent 5-hit combo is much, much greater than that needed to get a 40-hitter in X-Men vs Streetfighter.
However, World Warrior is also the most bugged – there are several questionable gameplay features that would cause outrage if included in a finished modern fighter – the abundance of re-dizzies, the fact the CPU sometimes doesn’t need to charge charge moves (…Guile!) and the fact the four boss characters have very strange throw ranges and hit priorities…but hey! This was a long time ago!
As far as I can tell – it’s a perfect conversion – there’s no between-match loading, the sprites seem to be the right size, there’s no missing animation, music or voices.
And if you want to control the bosses – play CE, if you want a faster game – play Turbo. The enhancements to each game are subtle, but they are there – playing each one after the other will reveal how each character has been tweaked and changed throughout the years.
Some may question the worth of purchasing three, essentially very similar games, but I think if you were around at the time, and enjoyed these games in the arcade, or as 16-bit conversions as much as I did – they are. Just don’t expect anything new.
