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Review: Street Fighter Collection |
Upon reaching my local import store the other day, I happened upon a game with a black cover and that Ryu silhouette. Hmmm.. that’s funny. When I first heard this game was coming out (after all these years of waiting), it was like a dream come true for this Capcom fan. However, I almost didn’t get it. Apart from various financial reasons, I just didn’t really have a strong desire to get it. I guess my sense of nostalgia had dwindled over the years. Oh well. I bought it anyways, and I love it. However……
The SF Collection consists of three titles: Super Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2:X (known as Super Turbo in the US), and Street Fighter Zero 2 Dash (will probably be called SFA2:Gold or something stupid like that in the US), a conversion of the Japanese arcade upgrade to Alpha 2. Now, granted, most dedicated Capcom fans would probably have rather seen SF2:Hyper Fighting or even the original over SSF2, but it’s a miracle Capcom even decided to do this, so I’m not gonna pick.
The 1st disc contains the two “Super” games. Upon booting up, you get the ol’ SSF2 “Close up of Ryu doing a fireball”, and then you get the Collections logo. It then asks you which game you want to play (Super or Super Turbo). I’m not gonna go in-depth on the specifics of these games, mainly due to the fact that we’ve seen ‘em all about a million times. Suffice to say, SSF2 is an arcade perfect translation. Super Turbo is NEAR arcade perfect. Why do I say that? One word: slowdown. There is a decent amount of slowdown on certain levels (T. Hawk and Dee Jay’s stages were the ones I noticed). This is VERY frustrating at times, and I find it very hard to believe that the Saturn can’t do an arcade perfect SSF2T. Oh well. Apart from that, the two “Super”s are excellent translations and have just about everything in there (you can use Akuma in SSF2T). They are missing those great 3DO arranged tracks from SSF2T, but I’ll live.
On the 2nd disc, you get SFZ2′. The differences between this game and SFA2 for Saturn are not monumental. There are alternate versions of at least 10 different characters (CE Zangief, CE Sagat, CE Chun Li, CE Ken, CE Dhalsim, CE Bison, Super Sakura, Evil Ryu, and CE Ryu). You also get Gouki Mode, where you fight Shin Gouki(Akuma) w/o having to do the 2 Perfects, 5 Supers, etc. Certain characters have new moves (Sagat’s Super Taunt, Guy’s Raging Demon-esque Super, and Super Sakura’s little head bopper thingy come to mind). Last, but certainly not least, Capcom made an interesting little addition to this game. They added the X-men v. SF version of Cammy in to the game. She has her Drill Super, and they added a super where she calls out Bison to do his Psycho Crusher. She lost her counter move from X v. SF, but overall, she’s about the same. She can only be used in Vs. mode and training mode. Oh yeah, she’s a secret too.
In the end, these are great little nuggets of nostalgia, but in all honesty, you have to be a BIG SF fan to really appreciate them. If you are the casual fighting game fan (only play Tekken and Soul Blade), this won’t be for you. SF fanatics, rejoice.
Bottom Line: Nothing groundbreaking, but that wasn’t the plan. The plan was 3 arcade perfect translation of 3 classic SF games. Capcom comes close.
- Dark Schneider
