Reviewing Every Game in Capcom Fighting Collection 2

This is a follow up to my Capcom Fighting Collection 2 review. I’d recommend reading that first if you want the details on what I thought of it, but the short version is it was a great collection for fighting game fans. But now that I’ve already looked at the overall package, it’s time to look at the individual pieces.

We’re reviewing every game featured in Capcom Fighting Collection 2. Normally I’d do that in the review of the collection itself, but I have a lot to say on these games. There is so much to cover on the mechanics, presentation, and the history behind them that I couldn’t fit all that and a review of the collection into one post without it being ludicrously long.

So instead, I’m reviewing the games here. As you can tell by the top, it still wound up being ludicrously long. So if you want to skip ahead to an individual game of your choice, I wouldn’t blame you. But if you want to read the whole thing, grab a snack and let’s get right into this thing.

Capcom vs SNK: Millenium Fight 2000 Pro

Who doesn’t love a good crossover? Not Capcom obviously. They’ve made a ton of crossovers over the years, whether it be the crossovers with Marvel and Tatsunoko or even whether it’s with their own characters, Capcom aren’t afraid to have their world collide with others.

But perhaps the most fitting crossover they ever did was with SNK. Not only because both were prominent fighting game developers, but because they had a bit of a rivalry back in the day. The most well-known part of the rivalry was with the creation of Dan Hibiki. Which was a piss take at SNK’s Art of Fighting series which had a character that was very similar to Capcom’s Ryu but with Ken’s head. He even had the name Ryo for Christ’s sake.

Capcom saw this and went, “well two can play at this game” and created the created the character of Dan Hibiki. A visual fusion of the main characters in Art of Fighting in a pink Gi with a similar fighting style that was made intentionally bad as a complete joke.

It wasn’t meant to be malicious or anything, it was all good-natured ribbing. Their rivalry was a friendly one, and the two companies had a mutual respect for one another. So, with Capcom being big into crossovers it only made sense for the two to do a collaboration.

Although the initial idea for doing the crossover came from a mix-up. A gaming magazine named Arcadia had an issue that covered the releases of Street Fighter Alpha 3 and King of Fighter 98, with a front cover saying, “KOF vs SF”. People read that and thought they were referring to an actual crossover between the two and this got so much buzz the two companies decided to just do a crossover anyway. Funny how big things come from the stupidest of places.

The idea behind the collaboration was interesting too. It wouldn’t just be a one and done game, it was a multi-game deal that would allow the two developers to produce two fighting games crossing the two companies over. Capcom made the Capcom vs SNK series, while SNK made SNK vs Capcom Match of the Millenium, SVC Chaos, and the Card Fighters Clash spinoff as a nice little bonus.

Incidentally, if you want to play SNK’s games you can. They’re all available on modern consoles and are games I strongly recommend. Match of the Millenium is one of the most robust handheld fighters ever made, Card Fighters Clash is a fun card game spinoff that includes more than just the fighting games, and SVC Chaos… ok that one is mid but it’s a weirdly interesting mid.

But we’re not here to talk about any of those, we’re here to talk about Capcom’s first SNK crossover. Capcom vs SNK: Millenium Fight 2000 is an odd case because despite the importance of it being the first big crossover between the two, SNK vs Capcom came first but this one got all the publicity, it’s been largely forgotten.

People still talk about it but only in relation to the sequel. People don’t really talk about Capcom vs SNK 1 on its own and that’s usually not a good sign. Although there is one thing about this game that everyone talks about and that’s the presentation.

And I don’t just mean the in-game visuals like the backgrounds or the character sprites, I mean everything surrounding it. The set-up for this game is that there’s a tournament being held by the Masters and Garcia foundations and the whole thing is being broadcast live on tv. The whole game is framed like a TV broadcast; the menus and screens between fights are designed to resemble bumpers you would see on tv news channels.

It gives the game a unique style. It’s very minimalist in it’s aesthetic; having a heavy inspiration of the Y2K aesthetic that was all the rage at the turn of the millennium. Even the announcer is done via a robotic voice to make it feel all futuristic and cool, which ironically makes it feel very much of the time. In a good way mind you, I love that old Y2K style.

Some don’t like the announcer or the style in general since it feels too minimalist and even downbeat, but that’s why I love it. The game has such a unique vibe that doesn’t exactly make you hyped but does help you get into the tone and atmosphere the game creates.

Even the music ties into this. it’s very techno heavy, almost sounds like a Tekken soundtrack at times, and it also has a very downbeat, almost relaxed sound to it, and yet it still works. It helps that the music is good. It uses some remixes of classic Capcom and SNK songs that help add to the crossover appeal and the tracks themselves are great to listen to.

As for the in-game visuals, those are great for the most part. The backgrounds are very nicely drawn. They feel very urban; a lot of them feel like locations you could see on the street. They’re a perfect mix of the kinds of stages you would see in a Street Fighter and King of Fighters.

Aside from being nicely drawn, the backgrounds also have some very impressive special effects. The dojo stage shakes whenever a character lands on the ground, the alley has some great shadow effects, the arcade stage has a door that opens when you approach it. There are a lot of little details in the backgrounds like that.

One element I love are the little stage transitions before a fight. They give the stages a little more personality and are a nice reference to SNK. They did these kinds of transitions a lot in their older games. I don’t have many criticisms for the stages, they’re all great and one of the highlights of the game.

The character sprites are bit of a mixed bag though. They’re not bad by any means, they’re just a bit inconsistent. Capcom created a bunch of new sprites for this game and those sprites all look fantastic. Honestly, it’s some of the best sprite work they ever did. The problem is they didn’t create new sprites for the entire roster.

While the entire SNK side and some Capcom characters were redrawn, most of Capcom’s side of the roster had their sprites taken from other games. Mostly Street Fighter Alpha. Don’t get me wrong, the sprite work in the Alpha games is fantastic, but they do clash with the new sprites.

Not only are the new sprites better drawn and animated, I mean the Alpha sprites were several years old at that point, but they also have a slightly different style. Basically, you can tell the sprites don’t all come from the same game. When compared side by side it can lead to visual clashes.

Thankfully it never becomes so bad that it becomes too distracting, and the animation quality is close enough that you don’t see the clash during gameplay. It’s only when you stop to take everything in that you notice it.

There is, however, one sprite that sticks out like a sore thumb and anyone who played this knows where I’m going with this, the Morrigan sprite. This is one of the more infamous examples of Capcom reusing a sprite. Morrigan used the exact same sprite in every game she appeared in. From Darkstalkers to Marvel vs Capcom, they kept the sprite exactly the same. Only redrawing certain attacks or win poses.

It is very obvious that Morrigan’s sprite is from an older game. It doesn’t just clash with the other sprites; it clashes with the backgrounds too. It looks oddly pixelated almost like it wasn’t keyed in properly. I love the sprite work in Darkstalkers, but Morrigan needed an upgrade for this game. It doesn’t look like it should be here at all.

The Morrigan sprite is the only true negative to the presentation. The Alpha sprites have their issues but they’re more like a gripe than a full-blown problem. They still look good, and the new sprites are even better. Add on some nice-looking backgrounds and you have a damn good-looking game.

The presentation is easily the best part of Capcom vs SNK. It’s the one element that everyone praises regarding the game. So, what does that mean for the gameplay?

Well, there are good things about that too. The actual fighting is smooth with tight controls and a decent speed to the combat. It plays like a typical Capcom fighter, with some unique ideas of its own to help it stand out.

The first is the Groove System. There are two different Grooves to pick from, a Capcom Groove and an SNK Groove that both affect how the super meter works. The Capcom Groove is basically just Street Fighter Alpha 3’s Aism. A three-bar super meter that lets you perform super moves with the ability to perform stronger versions at the cost of more meter.

SNK Groove is basically the King of Fighters system, specifically the one from 94-98. This meter has to be charged up manually by holding the two heavy attack buttons. It’ll deplete steadily while full, but when it is you not only can do a super move but also get a power up until the meter is empty again. Also, if you’re health is low you can perform super moves as often as you want, and if the meter is full at the same time the super moves become max level.

There’s a bit more to the SNK Groove, but I prefer Capcom Groove overall. I don’t really like needing to manually charge my super meter and I’ve played a lot of Alpha 3 over the years so Capcom Groove just feels more comfortable to me. Neither are bad though; it’s just a matter of preference.

The Groove System is fine, but it’s hard to not compare it to the Groove System in the sequel. That not only had more Grooves to pick from, but the Grooves themselves also had individual sub-systems that made each Groove play very differently from one another. The only differences between the Grooves here are the super meter.

It just felt lacking compared to that. I know it’s not fair to compare this to the sequel. That came out later and refined a lot of the systems this game introduced but therein lies the problem. Capcom vs SNK 1 in retrospect just feels like a lesser version of Capcom vs SNK 2. Everything it did was done better in the sequel.

Take the second system it introduced as an example, the Ratio System. Capcom vs SNK is a team game, but unlike Marvel vs Capcom where it was a tag team, here it’s more like a King of Fighters where each character goes in one at a time and swaps out when defeated.

The big difference is in how you forge teams. With the Ratio System you have four points that essentially act as individual slots on the team. When you put a character on the team it costs a point, but you can spend more points on a character to make them stronger. This means that you can have a team of up to four weaker characters that cost one point each or have a single character with all four points that’s super beefed up and every other combination in between.

This is a very unique system for a team-based game. In other team games you’re limited to a set number, usually two or three, but here you can have teams of different sizes and combinations that could lead to a huge amount of player expression. Key word being could.

See there’s one major issue with the Ratio System, characters are locked to a specific point number. Meaning that you have characters like Dan, King or Yuri that cost one point, Ryu and Kyo that have two, M. Bison with three etc.

So, let’s say you play Akuma like me, and you want to make a team of him and Terry. Well, you can’t, because Akuma is a four-cost character meaning if you want to play him you need to go solo. Even if he was three points you still couldn’t add Terry because he costs two, so you need to play a one cost character. Don’t like any of the characters that cost one-point, tough shit, learn them and get good motherfucker.

The way it sets up greatly limits what you can do with the system. It can almost feel like it punishes you for playing certain characters. This kind of limitation can work in fighting games. Hell, this exact same system was used in Dragon Ball Sparking Zero and it’s the basis for a popular Marvel vs Capcom 2 mod.

But it worked in those games because of how broken they were. Sparking Zero is intentionally unbalanced and the point system was made to make ranked less busted, and the MvC2 mod was made by fans to breathe new life into the metagame since it was dominated by a few overpowered characters.

Capcom vs SNK doesn’t have either excuse. It just comes across like they didn’t think it through all that much. Not just in the points system either. Having teams of four characters sounds cool and all, but it just makes fights go on longer than they should, and the balance between the points doesn’t feel as finetuned as it should.

There is another option to the Ratio System. If you go into the options menu in the collection you can choose to have a doubles style system where every character has two points. It works fine as an alternative, but it is a lot less interesting.

I should also note that in VS mode the characters aren’t tied to a specific point total. So you have a lot more freedom in team building when it comes to multiplayer. However, this was a feature added to the home console release and not part of the main design.

I like the idea of the Ratio System. I just wish it was better implemented, and much like the Grooves it’s something that was made better in the sequel. It’s hard to go back to Capcom vs SNK 1 after playing the second because of how much it improved on it. But even when ignoring that and looking at it on its own merits Capcom vs SNK doesn’t hold up as well as you’d hope.

If I could describe Capcom vs SNK in one word it would be off. Everything about the game just doesn’t feel quite right. It’s hard to explain since it’s more of a feeling than anything else, but when playing this game it always feels like there’s something in the game that doesn’t fully work. You can’t quite pinpoint it, but something about the game isn’t as polished as you might want.

Take the controls for instance. The actual responsiveness is fine, I had no issue performing specials or supers beyond my lack of skill, the problem is in the button layout. Capcom vs SNK uses a four-button system which for Capcom is strange as they usually use six.

Now, having a four-button control scheme isn’t a bad thing. Capcom have used four buttons in other games, some we’ll even be talking about later, and SNK use that scheme all the time. That might have been why Capcom used it. They wanted to make a Capcom fighter that felt like an SNK game. But Capcom is not SNK, they have a different feel that require six buttons.

See, Capcom games are designed around linking. The way combos in them work is you can link one normal into another and cancelling that into a special or super move. SNK games do something similar but have a greater focus on cancelling normals into command normals, like going from standing light punch to forward heavy punch and then cancelling into specials and supers.

That’s how SNK games usually work. It’s why the four button control scheme works in those games. So you would think if Capcom was going to copy the SNK control scheme they would also copy their combo system.

They do not. The combo system is still designed like a Capcom game with a focus on linking. There are command normals, but it doesn’t feel like the combo system is designed with those in mind. It feels like a half measure, like Capcom wanted the control scheme of SNK but still wanted it to feel like a Capcom game.

What they ended up with is a control scheme that didn’t end up satisfying anyone. SNK fans didn’t like it because it felt nothing like what they were used to, and Capcom fans rejected it outright when they saw the four buttons because they’re that damn petty.

You can get used to this. The control and game feel are still solid enough that you can adjust, but even if you do the control never clicks all the way, at least it didn’t for me. It always felt like there was something missing.

But if there is one critical, fatal flaw with Capcom vs SNK it’s in the roster. Capcom and SNK were both known for their numerous fighting game franchises. But if you were to play Capcom vs SNK you’d think all they had were King of Fighters and Street Fighter, since that’s all that is represented here.

The SNK side of the roster does hold up better. There’s a bit more variety in the series represented, but that’s only because the King of Fighters was already a crossover between SNK properties. Looking at the SNK characters it’s obvious that they were pulled based on their appearance in that series and not from their home games.

The only interesting pick from the SNK side is Raiden. He hadn’t appeared in King of fighters yet so it’s nice to see him in this as SNK’s main grappler. I think Tizoc would have been better, but Raiden is cool too.

And then there’s the Capcom side. Which, I kid you not, is just the cast of Street Fighter 2, and Sakura from Street Fighter Alpha. That’s it. All they did was take Street Fighter 2 Champion Editions roster, throw it in this game along with Cammy from Super Street Fighter 2 and then they just added Sakura as a bonus.

This is pathetic. Look, I love the cast of Street Fighter 2. They’re a bit overused but they’re iconic; they helped create the various fighting styles fighting games still use today. But by this point Capcom had multiple other series to pull from. They had Darkstalkers and even other Street Fighter sub series like the Alpha games. You know the series you pulled most of the character sprites from. You couldn’t add another character from that.

All of this applies mainly to the base roster of the game. But the version on Fighting Collection 2 is Capcom vs SNK Pro which added some extra characters to help address this. Adding Nakoruru, Joe Higashi, and Orochi Iori for SNK, and Morrigan, Akuma, Evil Ryu and Dan Hibiki for Capcom.

Those are great additions and do help with adding more series representation, but they can only do so much. Especially since Akuma is another Street Fighter 2 rep and now makes it so there’s more Capcom characters than SNK. Oops.

The most baffling part of it is, why was Dan not in the base roster? Let me get this straight, you’re making a crossover with SNK, and for the base roster you don’t include the character that you made that was a parody of an SNK game. What the hell?! He should have been the first character you added.

Capcom vs SNK Pro also adds one other thing to the roster that does help make things a bit more interesting. Every character has an Extra version that mixes up their move sets, usually making them feel like an older version of the character, but they can get very interesting in how the move sets are changed up.

This is another thing that makes me think Capcom wanted to make this more like an SNK game. SNK are known for changing character move sets between games. Kyo for example went from a traditional Shoto archetype to a Rekka style character, which is why in a few SNK games they have alternate versions of Kyo that plays like he used to and he’s not the only one like this.

Seeing Capcom do this is cool. They did something similar themselves in the Alpha games, but it’s clearly taking more from SNK here. Most of the roster have an Extra version and it is fun to try the different versions of the characters and comparing them. The only characters who don’t have an Extra version are any of the new characters added in Pro, and Ryu and Iori because they already have alternate versions as separate characters already.

However, even these Extra versions have issues with them. While having different versions of these characters is cool, they also feel like incomplete versions of them. Some characters never feel like they have their full move sets because they’re split across the different versions. Terry, for example, has Power Dunk in one version and Rising Tackle in another but never both despite them being standard moves for him.

Then there are Extra versions that just feel anaemic in comparison. Poor Balrog has nearly his entire move set stripped away for his Extra version and all he gets is his headbutt grab. A fair trade? And Guile, literally just loses a super move. He’s exactly the same otherwise. Come on guys, you could have done something cool with him.

The Extra versions are an interesting idea that helps spice up the very bland roster, but even so I don’t think it helps that much. If anything, it’s a detriment because it makes the characters feel like lesser versions of themselves. I’d rather have one complete version of a character than two different but incomplete ones.

If you haven’t gathered by now, I’m not keen on Capcom vs SNK Pro. It’s not a bad game by any means, and there are aspects of it that are worthy of praise. The presentation is phenomenal, and the game is worth playing for that reason alone. It has such a unique style that perfectly encapsulates the time it came out.

It’s hard to deny that it’s not a game that’s easy to return to though. Even the consensus back then was that it was a case of missed potential, like it wasn’t the game that a crossover like this deserved, and time has only further cemented that opinion.

It has some good ideas, but they aren’t as fleshed out as they should be. The game feels very experimental, but more in a we’re going to try things out for the sequel sort of way. Like this was simply a testing ground for the next game. I don’t think that’s what they intended, but it is how it comes across.

It’s one of the weaker games in the collection. It is worth playing it for its historical significance, but as a standalone fighting game it’s only just ok.

Capcom vs SNK 2: Mark of the Millenium 2001

Released only a year after the original, I mean it’s in the name for god’s sake, Capcom vs SNK 2 attempted to address all the major complaints fans had about the first game. To say it succeeded is an understatement. They knocked it out of the frigging park.

Capcom vs SNK 2 is the big game of this collection. There’s a reason why the cover predominately features Terry and Ryu facing off. Because Capcom vs SNK 2 isn’t just the best game in the collection, it’s one of the most beloved Capcom fighting games ever made.

But you may be thinking it couldn’t possibly live up to the hype. Like there’s no way it could be as good as everyone says it is right? No, it is exactly as good as everyone says it is. Provided you put the time to learn how to play it.

It is a very deep game with a ton of different mechanics, systems, characters and tech to learn. If you truly want to experience the full breadth of what the game has to offer you need to spend a lot of time labbing the game out and learning everything you can. This is the sweat lord fighting game; made for people who love how deep this genre can get.

That isn’t to say you can’t enjoy this game on a casual level because you absolutely can. I’ve been doing that for years. It’s just that the game has so many layers that playing it on a purely casual level means missing out on a good chunk of the experience.

I suppose that speaks to how good this game is. That even when played on a purely surface level it can still be recognised as a masterpiece. This game is such an improvement over the first game it makes the first game feel obsolete.

Almost, there is one element where the first game is arguably better and it’s in the presentation. Capcom vs SNK 2 doesn’t have the same style and it’s lacking a lot of the more impressive effects and details the first game had in its stages.

But the reason I say arguably is because Capcom vs SNK 2 has a stellar presentation of its own. Unlike the first game which was a purely 2D game, Capcom vs SNK 2 takes advantage of the Sega Naomi hardware and now uses 3D backgrounds. Not fully mind you, they are still mostly 2D, but there are still plenty of 3D assets used that do look great for the time.

3D backgrounds with 2D sprites is a style that I personally love, but it can look rough if done poorly. It can make the 2D sprites stand out in a bad way. Thankfully this is an example of it being done right. There’s a healthy balance of 2D and 3D assets, so everything meshes to make a cohesive visual treat.

It all looks really nice. In fact, this game has some of the best stages in any Capcom fighter. Not only are they well drawn with great use of 3D, but there also packed with references to past Capcom and SNK game.

The first game had those too, but Capcom vs SNK 2 doubles down on it. If you are a fan of either company, then you’ll get a kick at just looking at the backgrounds trying to spot all the references. There are some that are even hidden away so you really need to pay attention if you want to spot them all.

These references all tie into what Capcom vs SNK is trying to achieve, being a massive celebration of both companies. It really feels like it wants to be one massive love letter to both companies and their histories.

You can even tell that by the style and tone. The first game had a very down beat Y2K era aesthetic. While Capcom vs SNK 2 is almost the complete opposite. It’s so much more energetic than the first game; much more colourful and livelier in its backdrops and tone.

It has a much more celebratory feel. Like it’s one big party meant to bring everyone together. To beat the crap out of each other granted, but people have come together for worse. Point is the two games feel very different in their tones and styles. The only thing in common is them keeping the framing device of it being a news broadcast.

I can’t say one approach is better than the other. Both succeed at what they’re trying to accomplish. I lean towards liking Capcom vs SNK 2’s presentation more, but both are so different in their approaches I can see people preferring the first one.

But if there is one part of the presentation that is definitively better in the sequel, it’s the music. The music in the first game was great, but the music in the sequel is on another level. This is one of the most upbeat, catchiest, ear worms of a soundtrack Capcom have ever made.

I could just point to the song “True Love Making” and call it a day. That song is a masterpiece, but the whole soundtrack is just as good. It helps add to the upbeat tone the game is going for but still has room for variety. With some more mellow tracks and even some that are dark and foreboding. The training stage will even play random tracks from past Capcom and SNK games, again making the whole thing feel like one big tribute to the histories of both companies.

Capcom vs SNK 2 is also one of three games in Fighting Collection 2 to have a remixed soundtrack made exclusively for the collection. It’s an ok remix. Some tracks sound great, others are a bit mid, and I really don’t like what they did with “True Love Making”, but it’s a decent arranged soundtrack overall.

It does have a different feel though. It tries to have the same spirit and tone, but it leans more into the techno. It makes it sound more like a rave soundtrack. I don’t mind listening to the tracks on their own, but it does feel weird playing the game with it. Not only do they sound too new for the game, but they also changed the sound effects and announcer which just throws me off.

Especially the announcer. The new guy isn’t bad, but the original announcer is just too iconic. He has an infectious energy and a voice that just got you pumped up. He’s one of the best announcers in fighting game history. I prefer the original soundtrack because of that. I like having the new soundtrack as an option, but you can’t beat the original.

Really the only flaw with the presentation is the reused sprites. Much like the first game there are still clashes between the new sprites and the ones they reused from past games. It’s not as bad as before. They redrew some more of the old sprites, well only just Chun-li but at least that’s something, and most of the new characters have new sprites, so it does feel like there’s a better balance of old and new.

The presentation is amazing, but it’s in the gameplay where the true beauty lies. Capcom vs SNK 2 keeps the same basic game feel as the first game. The first game already felt good to play so this isn’t an issue, and Capcom vs SNK 2 builds on the first games foundations and makes everything better.

The big improvement to the game feel is now having six buttons. Capcom abandoned the idea of trying to make something that felt like an SNK fighter and instead just made a Capcom fighter with elements of SNK. The six button control scheme feels far more natural and comfortable for a Capcom fighter like this.

This makes Capcom vs SNK 2 very easy to pick up and play. While there is a lot to learn here, the fundamentals aren’t that dissimilar to other Capcom fighters. In short, if you’ve played a Capcom fighter before you’ll be able to play this no problem.

Before you even start playing the first thing you’ll likely notice is how much better the roster is. The character roster went from thirty-one in the first game, to forty-four. That’s a beefy roster for the time. Now the issue the first game had of having too much Street Fighter 2 representation is still here, but Capcom got wild with their newcomers which helps add some much needed spice.

For Capcom you have Rolento from Street Fighter Alpha, Yun from Street Fighter 3, Maki from Final Fight 2, Eagle from the very first Street Fighter, and Kyosuke from Rival Schools. Strange to me that they didn’t include another Darkstalkers character, but I can’t be mad because these are some deep cuts. Especially Eagle and Maki.

SNK have some cool picks of their own. For their new characters you have Athena, which is strange to say since you’d think she’d be in the first game with how popular she is, Haomaru from Samurai Shodown, Chang and Choi are here as a double team character which is new for them, Hibiki from Last Blade 2, Rock Howard from Garou Mark of the Wolves, and Todoh from Art of Fighting.

That last one is an especially deep cut. Like right to the bone levels. Todoh was a character that hadn’t made any kind of playable appearance since Art of Fighting 1 in 1992. That was a nine-year gap, and he hasn’t made any playable appearances since then. Making this his last playable appearance ever.

This is the roster you would want for a Capcom/SNK crossover. It’s still not perfect. The Capcom side is still too heavy on Street Fighter 2 characters, and the SNK side is missing some characters that really should be there. Where are the Ikari warriors? You put Chang and Choi in but not Clark and Ralf? But it is much better regardless.

The character roster isn’t the only thing that got expanded. The Groove System did too. Not only are there now six Grooves to pick from, three for Capcom and three for SNK, but now each Groove also offer more than just different types of Super Meter. Now they offer more sub systems that make them play very differently from one another.

These sub systems affect things like mobility and defensive options. You’ve got dashes, running, just defending, rolling, sidestep dodging, air guarding, long and short hopping and way more. Some are shared across multiple Grooves, while some are wholly unique to one. The sub systems add a lot more variety to the Grooves, but they do make picking the right one difficult since there’s a lot more to consider.

This is one of the flaws with Capcom vs SNK 2. It has so many characters and Grooves to pick from that it can be a bit overwhelming for newcomers. Not a bad problem to have. It’s always better to have too many options than not enough, but it does make it difficult to know where to start.

For those just starting out my recommendation is to focus on learning the super meters first. That’s where the big differences lie, and the sub systems are easy to pick up as you play. I should probably talk about the Grooves in more detail though. To give you a better idea on what they’re like. C Groove is basically just the Capcom Groove from the first game. Three bar meter, three levels of super moves, no need to go over it more.

A Groove is based on the V-ism from Street Fighter Alpha 3. You can still perform super moves, but the main attraction with this is Custom Combos. When the meter is full you can enter a state that lets you chain any move together to create your own wild combos for a short time.

P Groove is based the X-ism from Alpha 3 with a bit of Street Fighter 3 thrown in. You get one single bar of meter that builds up a bit slower than the others, but you get one ultra powerful super move out of it, and it also has the Parry from Street Fighter 3, allowing you to negate any attack with proper timing.

S Groove is the SNK Groove from the first game. Chargeable meter, power boost when full, unlimited supers at low hell, all the good stuff. Although it did receive a change in the form of a sidestep dodge. Instead of the roll it had last time, making it much more in line with King of Fighters 94 which is what it’s based on.

N Groove is based on the Advanced Mode from King of Fighters 97 and 98. This has a meter that will give you a stock when full. You can have up to three of them, and with them you can either perform a super or enter a powered-up state for a short time. Use a super while in that state and it becomes max level, but you need another stock for that.

And finally, we have K Groove which is based on Samurai Shodown. This one uses a Rage Meter that builds up as you take damage instead, and when it’s full you enter a rage state where you get a massive power increase for a short time. You can also perform powerful supers, but you lose the power up doing that. This also has the Just Defend sub system that acts like the parry from P Groove did, though it is lacking in sub systems compared to other Grooves.

Of the six Grooves, the ones I’d recommend the most for those starting out are C Groove and N Groove. Those are the easiest to learn and are also very effective. N Groove is the one I use the most because of its great mobility options and fun meter system, but C Groove is a close second.

K Groove isn’t a bad one for beginners either. It doesn’t have as many sub systems to learn and the power up you get in the rage state means you don’t need to worry about supers too much. But the fact you need to take damage to gain meter does make it riskier and learning Just Defend will take practice, so I wouldn’t start with it right away.

A and P Groove are a bit more advanced. For P Groove you really need to learn the Parry timing to get the most out of it, and while Custom Combos are a lot of fun, you’ll need a lot of lab work to learn the most optimal combos. I would only recommend these after you put some time into the game.

As for S Groove, don’t even bother. It doesn’t offer anything the others don’t do better, and the meter system is more awkward than it is fun. It has some cool features, but everyone agrees it’s the weakest in the game.

I know that was a lot to take in. There is a lot to the Groove System and I’m only talking about the surface level stuff. If you want to play this game, like truly get into it, you’re going to need to put the time in to learn it.

Keep in mind also that there’s over forty characters to pick from. Not only do you need to find a Groove to main, but you also need to find a character you like playing too. Not just one character either; you need an entire team.

Which brings us to the Ratio System. Like before it lets you create a team using a points system, but here it’s received a massive overhaul. It’s now called the Free Ratio System because characters are no longer tied to specific point totals. You’re now free to arrange the points in any way you see fit.

This is exactly what it should have been like to begin with. It gives you so much more freedom in team composition. You can’t have teams of four anymore, but that always felt a bit excessive. Having a team of three makes more sense since you’ll always have an anchor character that’s slightly stronger than the others. That seems more logical.

Of course that’s only one way of doing it. You can also have a team of two with both being balanced, or one being supercharged and the other being weaker. Or you can go solo with one Übermensch character and steamroll everyone. It’s all up to you.

And if you don’t like the Ratio System, you don’t have to use it. The game has two other modes you can switch between in the options. One letting you do a simple one on one match like in Street Fighter, and the other having a three on three like in King of Fighters. Having options from both companies’ flagship franchises is a nice addition and they’re a nice way of easing players into the game.

Again though, look at how many options you have. There are so many different things to consider, the Grooves, the characters and the Ratio System that it can be overwhelming. That is one of its greatest weaknesses and also one of its greatest strengths.

There’s so much here. A lot of characters and systems to learn, but a lot of them aren’t too difficult to learn. Just pick a character and Groove you think looks cool and go from there. Don’t feel like learning multiple for now, just play in the one v one mode until you find the characters you’re most comfortable with.

Capcom vs SNK 2 has so much player expression. There are so many ways to play this game that you could play it for months, years even and still find something new. The reason it has so many options is because it wants you to experiment with it. It’s all about letting you play the way you want to play and that’s what has made the game so endearing for so long.

While the game is still very fun casually, it’s when you dig deeper that you realise just how masterful the game is. For me, the best games aren’t the ones that are deep, but the games that are as deep as you want them to be. They don’t push you into using every system but give you enough options and leeway to use the systems in a way that suits how you play.

Capcom vs SNK 2 is the absolute king of that. This game can be as shallow as a kiddie pool or as deep as an ocean depending on who is playing it, and they’ll all enjoy it because at a basic level, the game is just fun. The roster is great, the combat is snappy, responsive, and satisfying, and the presentation is immaculate.

Is it flawless? No, but it’s damn near close. Really my only complaint is that I hate the final bosses. Yeah, I know, fighting game bosses always suck but these two are particularly infamous examples. Shin Akuma is already painful enough with how strong and fast he is, but he is nothing compared to the nightmare that is Ultimate Rugal and his Genocide Cutter spamming bullshittery.

This guy is a prime example of SNK boss syndrome. Just a completely unfair fight that frustrates the hell out of you. It’s hard enough just getting to fight the bosses to begin with. You can only get to them by getting a certain number of points and not losing any fights. The latter isn’t too hard but the point threshold you need to get is high. It takes effort just to get to them and then they just end up kicking your ass.

I guess the difficulty makes sense in that context as a final challenge, but my god is it excessive. Oh, and you can only get the character endings by beating these guys. Great, that’s just great. The bosses are playable too if you want to feel their power for yourself, even online. Oh yeah, that won’t go poorly.

The final bosses are the only thing I don’t like about the game. I love everything else about it. I guess I could also complain that the game is busted as hell and totally unbalanced, but it’s an old Capcom fighter. Those are always unbalanced. Complaining that an old fighter is unbalanced is like complaining about ice being cold.

Capcom vs SNK 2 is a true classic that any fan of the genre needs to play. I have no qualms saying this is the best fighter in the collection, if not Capcom’s entire catalogue. It’s not my personal favourite, but it is the best. If there’s one game to buy the collection for it’s this one.

Capcom Fighting Evolution

Alright, normally when I review a game I like to start with a brief history of them. The development and circumstances of when it first came out. In this case though, I think I’ll save that for after I review the game. Because the history of Fighting Evolution is far more interesting than the game itself.

So, what is Capcom Fighting Evolution? Well, it’s a crossover of Capcom’s fighting game properties. Which, ok, that doesn’t sound too bad. Capcom are known for making great crossover games and have enough franchises of their own that they could do their own internal crossover fighter.

The games crossing over are Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 3 Third Strike, Darkstalkers, Street Fighter Alpha and even Red Earth. That last one was a big deal at the time since this was the only way a lot of people could experience those characters

It not only featuring characters from the series but also the playstyles. You can play like you would in those games with all the mechanics they provided. It’s also got a tag team system that lets you fight in a team of two characters. So far you may be thinking this doesn’t sound too bad, and on a surface level you would be right, but there’s one fatal flaw that holds the game back. That being that it does absolutely nothing right.

Everything I mentioned, it sucks. It is absurd how much the ball was dropped here. First let’s talk about the roster because that is the first, most immediate disappointment you’ll have. Fighting evolution has a roster of twenty-three characters. For a normal fighter that may not be too bad, but for a crossover game, and a Capcom crossover at that, that is pathetic.

The five series represented only have four characters a piece. Not only does it mean you only get a small representation of each game, but also that some fan favourite characters never made the cut. There’s no Ken, no Sagat, no Dan, no Dudley, no Ibuki, they didn’t even include Morrigan. How the fuck do you not include Morrigan?!

Which brings me to my second issue with the roster, the picks are frigging weird. Although it’s dependent on the series. Street Fighter 2 has Ryu, Guile, Zangief and M Bison. A fair selection of some of the more iconic characters from that game. Not much to complain about.

For Third Strike you have Alex, Urien, Yun and Chun Li. Again, a decent selection, but why is Chun Li here and not in the Street Fighter 2 camp. I know Chun Li was top tier in Third Strike, but she’s more associated with Street Fighter 2 since, you know, she debuted there.

And if characters can appear as representation outside their debut games, then why not put Ken in the Third Strike roster. He was top tier there too and he’s one of the more iconic characters in the series. He’d be a better pick than Alex. I like Alex and all, but Ken is more popular. That’s just a fact.

Then there’s the Alpha series which is represented by Sakura, Rose, Guy and Karin. Those first three are all fine, Sakura is too popular not to include, Guy also represents Final Fight so him being in means double representation, and Rose is one of the more memorable characters that debuted in Alpha, but why Karin? I mean I don’t hate her or anything but, really? You picked her over any of the other Alpha characters. I would have gone with Dan over Karin; he’s way more popular.

You may be thinking I’m putting too much emphasis on popularity. After all obscure characters have a place in a fighting game roster too. They’re often the most interesting picks that add spice to things. But here’s the thing, when you have a limited number of slots to fill, you’ve got to go for the more popular picks because you don’t have the space to put in the weird ones.

Fighting Evolution doesn’t seem to get this. It intentionally cut itself short by limiting the roster size, then tried to go for the weird picks anyway. Which results in bizarre inclusions that under normal circumstances would be great to see that end up feeling like a waste of a spot, and omissions that are outright unforgivable. Seriously, where is Ken? Even Smash Bros knew to include Ken.

Next is Darkstalkers. We got Felicia, Anakaris, Demitri and Jedah. I’m torn on these choices. On the one hand it’s nice seeing other Darkstalkers get the spotlight for once. Felicia is pretty common in crossover games, but Demitri, Anakaris and Jedah almost never get included. In fact, the only other crossovers Demitri and Jedah appeared in were SVC Chaos and Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. Proving they may have the shittiest luck when it comes to appearing in other games.

But again, if you’re going to limit the roster like this, why not go for the more obvious popular choices. Not just Morrigan, who really should be here, but why not include Hsien-ko or B.B Hood. I’d argue those are far more well known than Jedah. And I love Jedah, he’s an underrated Capcom villain, but B.B Hood is just too memorable to not include. She’s Red Riding Hood with a machine gun; how can you not love that.

The only one of the games that could have worked perfectly with the limited roster is Red Earth since that game only had four playable characters to begin with. Except they somehow screwed this up too.

Leo and Kenji are both here, but the other two are Hauser and Hydron, two of the unplayable bosses from the game and it’s obvious they were never designed to be played because they feel awkward as all hell. You included them but not Tessa, the only Red Earth character people may have recognised. All I can ask is, why?

Even when set up for a home run under its own rules Fighting Evolution stills fucks everything up. The roster is just bad. It’s too limited in its scope and too bizarre in its choices. Even if you’re a fan of these games the roster pleases absolutely no one.

Now if you were paying attention, you may have counted only twenty characters despite me saying there were twenty-three. That’s because there’s three extra characters. There’s Shin Akuma and Pyron who serve as the games bosses, and the third is Ingrid who is a completely original character. There’s a reason why she’s here that I’ll get to later, but Ingrid is honestly fine.

She’s one of the most despised Capcom fighters, but she’s really not that bad. She’s honestly just kind of there, her playstyle and design are ok but there’s nothing about her that particularly stands out. As I was writing this, they announced Ingrid is coming to Street Fighter 6, so hopefully Capcom can turn it around and make her work. Because currently she is the Scrappy Doo of Capcom.

Some of you may be thinking, “ok sure, the roster isn’t great, but they had to make entirely new assets for them and that’s why it’s so limited”. Nope, not even close. There are no new assets in this game. Aside from Ingrid, every other character is literally just copy pasted from their home games.

I am not kidding. Every character is ripped straight from their original games, or Capcom vs SNK in some instances. All they did was take old assets and reuse like it’s an official Mugen. Except I’ve seen Mugen’s that were way better than this. At least those got buck wild with their rosters.

This results in the roster not only coming across as incredibly lazy, which it is but trust me there’s a reason behind it, but it also makes the game ugly to look at. The problem with the clashing art style present in Capcom vs SNK is made even worse here. At least there you only had to worry about the Alpha sprites clashing with the new ones, but here nothing goes together at all.

The CvS2 sprites clash with the Alpha sprites, which clash with the Darkstalkers sprites which clash with the Third Strike and Red Earth sprites. Nothing goes together at all. This would be more forgivable if the sprites were good, and they would be since they looked good in their home games, but Fighting Evolution cut a lot of the animation frames from a lot of the sprites. Meaning they all look worse.

But the character sprites are nothing compared to the backgrounds. These are some of the most hideous stages I’ve ever seen in a fighting game. Composition wises they’re fine, some would even be great, but they’re so blurry and badly drawn that they become a clusterfuck for the eyes.

There’s no energy and life to any of them either. They’re just flat images with no personality to them. They try to spice them up with cameos in the background, but those are just reused concept art that look even blurrier than the scenery. They didn’t even bother redrawing them, except for a Ken Masters pic that was redrawn as T Hawk for some reason. Because those two look so much alike.

This game is a visual nightmare, and it plays… actually it plays ok. It’s functional, it controls well, and it’s still a Capcom fighter so the fighting does still feel good. I’ve certainly played worse. But mechanically speaking it’s just as much of a mess as the graphics.

Fighting Evolution doesn’t have any kind of unique mechanic of its own. Its main gimmick is having fighting styles and systems from past games. If you think this is like the Groove System, it’s not. Because that let you choose which Groove you wanted, while this game locks the fighting behind the characters.

The Street Fighter 2 characters will only fight like Street Fighter 2, Darkstalkers like Darkstalkers, the Third Strike cast fight like Third Strike you get the idea. To go from the freedom offered by CvS2 and even Alpha 3, which I’ll tackle momentarily, to this is just depressing.

There’s no room for player expression; you can’t mix and match styles or have any kind of fun with it. It’s stagnant and boring. Yeah, it’s fun seeing different gameplay styles and mechanics clash at first, but it loses its lustre after about five minutes.

It’s also incredibly unbalanced. And I don’t just mean in the usual ways with broken tech you only notice at a high level, I mean that even at the most scrub lord of levels you can tell the balance is whack.

Check it, the Alpha characters have access to Alpha Counters, super moves and Custom Combo’s. Third Strike’s characters have Parrying and EX moves. Darkstalkers have Chain Combos, ES and EX Moves. Red Earth characters have a level up mechanic that makes them stronger and a Super Guard. Street Fighter 2 characters have one bar of super and can delay getting up off the ground. One of these is not like the other.

The Street Fighter 2 cast got shafted harder than the guy who drops the soap in the prison shower. They don’t get anything. They’re the most basic characters to play in this game. I think the idea is they do more damage to compensate, but I didn’t notice any difference. Why would I play as any of them when the other characters have so much more going on.

It’s almost unfair how bad the Street Fighter 2 characters are in this. The balance in general though is all over the place. The Darkstalkers cast is just better than everyone else because of how aggressive they are, and the Red Earth characters were never designed to be played in multiplayer, and you can feel that while playing them. They’re missing a lot of what made them tick.

While there is some fun to be had in trying the different mechanics, they were clearly never meant to fight against one another. Unlike CvS2 which slightly reworked old gameplay styles to make them all work off each other, this one copy pasted everything and hoped for the best. It’s a complete mess where nothing comes together.

Imagine trying to put together a jigsaw with pieces from other jigsaws. That’s this game. Capcom tried to hammer away at those pieces all they want, but even a blind man can tell these pieces don’t go together.

Even the tag system is half assed. You can only swap out mid round, and even then there’s no benefit to swapping so you can just keep using one character exclusively. The other character doesn’t even contribute anything in the fight. For all intents this might as well just be a one-on-one fighter. This was a last-minute addition it had to be.

I could go on folks, but I think you get the point. Capcom Fighting Evolution is not a good game, at all, but it does have some positive elements. While the in-game graphics are bad the character art is nice, the music is pretty good, dare I say it’s a bit of an underrated OST, and the ending panels done by Udon are great and have some nice easter eggs and references in them.

Yeah, that’s all I got. Decent character art and music is all the positives I can muster for this dumpster fire. How in the hell did it end up this way? I mean this is a Capcom fighter and even the weakest of those are of high quality. What exactly happened here?

Time for a history lesson. There’s a lot here, so I’ll try to keep it brief. Capcom Fighting Evolution started out as Capcom vs SNK 3. Despite the deal with SNK being only for two games Capcom wanted to keep the series going with a third entry after CvS2 became a decent hit. Then SNK went bankrupt and that idea went out the window.

So, Capcom decided to take the preliminary work they did on the game and do their own crossover. With blackjack and hookers. This was going to be Capcom All Stars; a 3D fighter that was designed to be an SNK flavoured Capcom fighter, sort of like they’re own King of Fighters. They even got former SNK devs to work on the game to make it feel extra SNK like.

It was going to be a big crossover between all of Capcom’s fighting games, including Rival Schools, Final Fight and even Strider, because Strider is awesome and needs to be in more things. It was also going to be very story driven with its own original characters. One of which was, you guessed it, Ingrid. This is the game she was originally designed for.

The game looked interesting from what footage has released of it. Unfortunately, it did not play as well as it looked. The initial arcade tests were a disaster, and even internally the game wasn’t being all that well received. From what I can gather the game just felt bad to play, and it had weird mechanics that didn’t sit well for a lot of the players.

Now at this point the sane thing to do would be to take the feedback received from the tests and improve the game. Capcom instead decided to just cancel the whole thing despite it being very nearly finished.

Why? We don’t know. Capcom never revealed the reasoning behind it. It could have just been that bad, but the original director also left not long after the tests so there was likely some bad blood behind the scenes that could have contributed to the cancelation. We may never know, but the important thing is that Capcom had spent years of development on a game that would now no longer see release.

Unfortunately, they had wasted so much money on it that they needed a new fighter on the market to recoup some of their losses. So, they grabbed a random guy from the sound team, gave him a shoestring budget and asked him to make a game in under six months.

There you go, that’s the reason it sucks. It had no money behind it, and it was rushed out the door to earn back the losses from two aborted projects. The reason it reuses so many assets is because they had no choice. It was the only way to get the game out the door.

I almost feel bad for Fighting Evolution. it was a solid concept that just got wasted by unfortunate circumstances and poor planning. It doesn’t excuse the quality of the end product, but it is a lot more understandable as to how it ended up like this.

Fighting Evolution did so poorly both critically and financially that it nearly killed Capcom fighters in general. Even today it’s considered the worst fighter Capcom ever made. Is it though? I don’t think so.

It’s not good, but I’d still play this over Street Fighter 1. At least this game is functional. Even the reputation it has of nearly killing 2D Capcom fighters is a bit overblown. Guys it was 2004, 2D fighters were already out by that point. Capcom would have likely left the genre alone even if this was a modest success.

So no, I don’t think it’s the worst fighter Capcom made. It is not good though, and only worth playing as a morbid curiosity. I wish instead we would have seen the prototype of Capcom Fighting All Stars release instead. I know it’s been years, and the build is probably lost, but someone has to have a copy of it somewhere. Here’s hoping we see it sometime in the future.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper

It wouldn’t be a Capcom collection without one Street Fighter game would it. The first Fighting Collection even included Hyper Street Fighter 2, an obscure update to Street Fighter 2 made to celebrate the series 15th anniversary. I guess since the first collection had an obscure Street Fighter update it only makes sense for the follow up to get the same treatment.

In this case we got Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, an arcade update for Street Fighter Alpha 3 that added in additional content from the home console release. See, when Alpha 3 released on home consoles it had more playable characters than the arcade. Adding in characters that were previously not in the game but also making three of the unplayable boss characters fully playable with their own stages and endings, on top of adding an extra stage or two for other characters.

Essentially, the home console ports of Alpha 3 were a more complete version of the game, and in 2001, a year after the Dreamcast version dropped, Capcom ported the new content back to the arcade for Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper. Only in Japan though. This version never saw release internationally.

Fighting Collection 2 is not the first time this version has been released outside of Japan though. I remember the Alpha Anthology collection on PlayStation 2 had an unlockable version of Upper as a secret game, but I’m also not entirely sure if that was an arcade accurate port or just a weird PS2 original version.

This is the first time an arcade accurate conversion is available on home consoles, though it does thankfully come with a full English translation. Making this a step up from the Vampire Saviour sequels from the first Fighting Collection which were only in Japanese.

I guess it makes sense since this game already had a full translation they could just port over, but it does make me wonder if this is the actual arcade rom and not a modified rom of the home console port. I know Plasma Sword is like that, but it actually says that is the cas on the website. It doesn’t say so for Alpha 3 Upper.

I don’t know for certain, but it doesn’t matter since we at least have a playable Alpha 3 Upper on modern consoles now. Not a moment too soon either. Alpha 3 has always been a fan favourite Street Fighter, but whenever it was rereleased it always focused on the original arcade rendition. Even the Alpha Anthology did that, the Upper port was a secret.

I understand from a preservation perspective that the original version needs to be released. It was the first and likely the one that everyone remembers, but it always confused me why Upper was never included as an option. Street Fighter 2 has at least five versions that get re-released all the time, but Alpha 3 doesn’t get to have it’s one only update? It never made sense to me.

This is why, despite it clearly being a filler game, I was happy to see Alpha 3 Upper was part of Fighting Collection 2. If for no other reason than to have the complete version of Alpha 3 finally be playable. It’s not the most complete version, that would be Alpha 3 Max on PSP, but that version never saw an arcade release, so it didn’t fit the theme here.

Now that you know what this is let’s finally talk about the game. Street Fighter Alpha was the first proper follow-up to Street Fighter 2 and felt like a true evolution of the series. It improved on the super move system by adding multiple bars of meter and added a bunch of new mechanics to the series that made it a bit crazier and over the top.

Alpha 3 was the final game in the sub series, and the most divisive. Not that people hated it or anything, just that it brought a lot of changes to the series that fans are still split on to this day. There are people who adore Alpha 3 and say that it’s the best game in the series, and there are others who say that Alpha 2 was the better game.

Yeah, the divide really comes down to whether you prefer Alpha 2 or 3. Me personally, I’ve gone back and forth between them. I used to be a die-hard Alpha 2 stan but as time has gone on, I’ve gradually grown to prefer Alpha 3.

I think back in the day I preferred Alpha 2 because of its presentation. It looked great with some of the best backgrounds in any Street Fighter, Ken’s stage being the absolute king of them, and the music was awesome. Alpha 2 has one of my favourite soundtracks in the series, with some great remixes of classic Street Fighter tunes.

Alpha 3 was very different. Visually it kept the same basic art style and sprite design, which was great since the Alpha games have some of the best sprite work in the series, but the backgrounds weren’t as visually interesting. They were a lot more subdued compared to the ones in Alpha 2.

The soundtrack was different too. All the characters got brand new themes, and the general tone of the music was much more downbeat. It was much more heavily focused on techno and leant more into atmospherics. It was a lot less catchy than the Alpha 2 and I didn’t like it as much.

Now I’ve really grown to appreciate the games presentation. While the backgrounds aren’t as colourful as the ones in Alpha 2, I now see what they were going for. The backgrounds feel a lot more down to earth, almost like places you would see in the real world. There are still stages that are wilder and over the top, the majority of them feel very… street for lack of a better term.

I think that was the idea though. One of the main concepts of Street Fighter was that a fight could break out at any time. It’s why a lot of the stages in Street Fighter 2 were based on real life locations. Alpha 3 leans into this hard. The stages don’t have the same lively energy as previous stages, but that makes them feel more real.

There’s an atmosphere to these stages you don’t get in the other games. The stages themselves are also very well drawn with lots of great layering effects in the background and fore ground. It’s great stuff and while the stages aren’t as memorable as the ones from Alpha 2 I still really enjoyed them and a few have become iconic. M Bison’s stage is one of the best villain stages in a fighting game, you really feel the evil aura it radiates, I love it.

Even the menu’s feel very different with its minimalist computer look. Though it keeps the sub series anime aesthetic going with some interesting character art. A lot of it looks great but it’s so exaggerated that a lot of the characters wind up looking weird. Zangief was in every strange mood in the Alpha games I swear to God.

The music I’ve also grown to appreciate. It isn’t as immediately catchy or memorable as other Street Fighter osts, but there are some very good tracks here, and it has a very unique sound to the rest of the series. I think that’s why I like it more now. It’s something wholly different and after Street Fighter 4 and 5 leaned too heavy on Street Fighter 2 nostalgia, I appreciate it when the series tries something different.

That and I also feel sorry for it. It’s the Street Fighter soundtrack the seems to be ignored the most. It almost never gets any remixes in future games, even the characters introduced in Alpha 3 wound up getting brand new themes when they reappeared later. I don’t know why. Is it an issue with the composer over the rights to it or something. Whatever the reason it’s unfortunately become a bit more forgotten which is a shame.

Of course, there is one part of the presentation I’ve always loved and that’s the announcer. Alpha 3 might have the most hype announcer in fighting game history. Not only does he have a ton of energy, even in the continue screen he never lets up, but he has some of the most memorable quotes too. He really knows how to get you pumped for the next match and you’ll be quoting him for days after playing it.

Gameplay wise Alpha 3 doesn’t stray away from the core foundations of Street Fighter. It has the same basic controls and game feel as the others and it doesn’t take long to get to grips with it. Like a comfortable pair of well-worn sneakers, it’s easy to slip into.

The basics were largely kept the same, but the Alpha games introduced several new mechanics to the franchise that spiced up the combat. The Alpha Counter added a fun defensive option, the new super meter gave you more opportunities to use big flashy super attacks, and the Custom Combo system gave you more creativity in crafting massive combos.

To put it more succinctly, the Alpha games just kept adding more to the series as it went on. Alpha 3 continues this trend. It introduced a guard meter that depleted as you blocked attacks, when emptied your guard is broken and you get opened for an attack, with the guard meter being cut in half for the rest of the round. A nice addition that helped fight against turtling.

It also changed how throws work. Instead of throws happening by pressing a heavy button up close, now they’re a command input by pressing at least two punches or kicks. Technically this idea was introduced in Street Fighter 3, but this was the first game outside of that to use this idea. Meaning it was the first time people noticed it.

 Alpha 3 introduced these features that are now considered standard. You could even argue a lot of what we consider modern Street Fighter started in Alpha 3. It added a lot of cool things to the series, but some of its additions were the cause of the divisions the game caused in the fanbase.

This is thanks to the Ism System. This is the defining element of Alpha 3; the Ism System gives you access to three different fighting styles that change how you play the game. This is what Capcom vs SNK 2 took a lot of inspiration from.

There’s A-Ism which gives you the traditional three bar meter and three level supers from previous Alpha games. Although one improvement Alpha 3 made was making the inputs for them easier. In the other Alpha games the level of the super was determined by the number of buttons used when performing the input, one button for level one, two for level two and all three buttons for a level three.

In Alpha 3 it’s determined by the button used. Lights for level one supers, mediums for level two, and heavy for level three. This is much more comfortable and intuitive. Capcom seemed to agree since this became the standard going forward.

X-Ism is basically Street Fighter 2 mode. You lose a lot of the extra mechanics of the Alpha games, but you hit harder, the guard gauge is bigger, and while you only get one bar of meter the super you get out of it is ultra strong.

And finally, there’s V-Ism. This one doesn’t have supers but does let you perform Custom Combos. Activate it and you can chain any moves together to create some insane combinations. It’s cool, but this is where the divisions start.

A lot of Street Fighter Alpha 2 fans weren’t happy with the Ism system. Mainly because it split up the supers and custom combos. In Alpha 2 you had access to both at the same time, but in Alpha 3 you had to pick between them. For some fans they didn’t like this, they preferred having everything at once like Alpha 2.

I personally don’t mind this change. For one I think the Ism System gives you a bit more variety in the fighting styles. Especially since characters will change depending on what Ism you pick. For example, Chun-li and Sagat in X-Ism have their classic move sets from Street Fighter 2, and some characters get entirely different Supers in X-Ism.

The Ism System, much like the Groove System it inspired, let’s you play the game the way you want. Want a pure Alpha 3 experience? Play A-Ism. Want something more classic? X-ism is right there. Want something technical and crazy? Do I have the V-Ism for you. I have fun with all of them. Even X-Ism, despite being simpler than the others, is enjoyable thanks to the increased damage and classic move sets.

I don’t play V-Ism as often as the others, but that’s because I’m not good with Custom Combos. I just mash buttons and hope for the best with them. You need to practice a lot to get the most out of them, but if you do it’s some of the nuttiest shit in a fighting game.

But that’s another thing people didn’t like. The V-Ism and Custom Combos were too good at a high level, like they were utterly broken with infinites and everything, and some did end up preferring how they worked in Alpha 2.

Look, the whole thing comes down to whether people like Alpha 2 more or if they like Alpha 3 more. It’s entirely dependent on who you ask and is also largely based on nostalgia. I think the people who grew up with Alpha 3 will like it more, and the people who grew up with Alpha 2 will like it more and nothing will change their minds.

For me, I love Alpha 3. I love how fast it is, in fact it’s a bit too fast and I end up playing it on a lower turbo speed, I love the Ism system and all the different ways it lets you play the game, and I love the roster. At thirty-four characters it’s a very sizable roster for the time, and it’s got a lot of classic returning favourites on top of new characters that went on to become fan favourites like Cody and R Mika.

If you think about it, this was the series “Everyone is Here” moment. It had every playable Street Fighter character that appeared in the series at that point. Sort of, none of the Street Fighter 3 characters are here but that’s probably because the two were in development at the same time.

It can be a bit overwhelming with all the characters and all the ways the Ism system changes them but like with Capcom vs SNK 2 the basics are simple enough that you can ease yourself into it. It helps that the Ism System only has three options and they’re well-defined going in.

I really don’t have a lot to complain about with Alpha 3 Upper. Alpha 3 was a great game to begin with, and the new characters and stages Upper added only makes it better. I’ll admit I don’t know how the game is competitively, for all I know it could be broken as all hell and the new characters suck, but from a casual perspective it all seemed fine to me.

In fact, on a purely single player perspective it’s one of the best games in the series. Ok, yes, the arcade version doesn’t have the World Tour mode, but the arcade runs here are great. Alpha 3 put a lot more emphasis on the story. Each character has their own intro, rival battles and decently long endings that help flesh them out.

The endings are unique too because they use the in-game sprites on top of new artwork to make them feel a lot more cinematic than most fighting game endings were. It can look goofy at times, but the effort that went into them is clear to see.

Sadly Alpha 3 is sort of non-canon. It’s a bit confusing because some parts are canon and others aren’t, it’s not entirely clear where it falls in the Street Fighter timeline but I’m sure there’s some references online you can find that goes over that. Regardless, the story is entertaining and that’s all that really matters.

I will say that the arcade mode is a bit too long. At ten matches it’s a bit of a drag by arcade game standards, but it’s not too bad all things considered. I think playing the relatively short arcade runs of the last few games may have made it seem longer by comparison.

The Arcade Mode isn’t all it offers. There’s also a secret Survival mode which, ok is just a standard Survival mode but the fact an arcade game has it is pretty amazing, and a Dramatic Battle mode that pits two people against a powerful AI opponent that’s also playable in co-op.

Dramatic Battle is awesome. I’m shocked they never brought it back because it’s great fun. I mean, its Street Fighter co-op, that’s the coolest idea ever. If you want to activate these, just hold three punches on the start screen for Survival and three kick for Dramatic Battle. I’m shocked these were in the arcade release, this game was feature rich even there.

The only criticism I can level at the game is the difficulty. It isn’t insane or anything, but it is the hardest game in the collection. The other games pose a decent challenge, but Alpha 3 is outright bullshit at times. It’s an older game, well in comparison to the rest of the collection, so the input reading is high and the ai cheats like a motherfucker. I admit that for this one I did have to lower the difficulty a bit.

Although Upper does make one change that does make the game significantly easier, you can continue at the final boss. In the original version if you lost to M Bison that was it, you got kicked out of the game and went right back to the beginning.

He wasn’t hard, he’s fairly easy compared to other versions, but having only one shot was utter bullshit. The home console releases fixed this, and I’m glad Upper did the same thing. Although I didn’t know that in the collection review and may have alluded to you only having one shot there. Oops.

Besides the difficulty, I love Alpha 3 Upper. It’s one of my favourite Street Fighter’s and it only seems to get better with age. I can see why some weren’t big on it, but I haven’t heard anyone call it bad. Even the people who like Alpha 2 more still say Alpha 3 is a good game, if not a great one.

I will say that it does suffer a bit in the collection since Capcom vs SNK 2 is also here and arguably does what it does better, but I think there’s still enough here to help Alpha 3 Upper stand on its own merits.

Power Stone

Ah Power Stone, how we’ve missed you. While Capcom vs SNK 2 is the leading game of this collection, Power Stone is a close second. It’s one of the perfect examples of a cult classic and one of the most unique and interesting games Capcom ever made.

Power Stone is not a traditional fighter. Instead, it is what is commonly referred to as an arena fighter. While traditional fighters focus more on spacing, combos, special moves and the like, arena fighters are more focused on, well, the arena. They have simple controls compared on other fighters and put a focus on taking advantage of the 3D space and greater environmental interactions.

While Power Stone wasn’t the first game in this style, it is the first to really hammer home what it should be. Many arena fighters took huge inspiration from what Power Stone did if not copying outright.

Capcom developed the game largely as an attempt to make a true 3D fighting game. To Capcom a lot of 3D fighters weren’t all that dissimilar to 2D fighters, which is sort of true. Outside of side stepping most 3D fighters still used a side view camera that still made it feel like a 2D game. Capcom wanted to make a game that truly took advantage of the 3D space, and felt like the technology of the Naomi arcade board would finally let them accomplish this.

That wasn’t the only focus going into the development. Another goal Capcom had in making this was to make a fighting game that anyone could play. They felt the genre had become too catered towards the ultra-competitive players and wanted to make a fighter that even a total newbie could pick and play.

On both counts they succeeded with flying colours. Power Stone is one of the easiest fighting games to pick up and play. The controls are very simple, you have a punch, a kick and a jump button, with various actions being done with different combinations of those three buttons.

I thought for the longest time that the game had a grab button given how often you use it, but no it’s done by pressing jump and punch buttons. You can just put that combination on one button anyway, so it’s almost like having a grab button, but I was so used to it I thought it just had a default grab button.

The game is very simple. You don’t have special moves or elaborate combos; you have combo’s but they’re very simple and the game doesn’t put much of an emphasis on them. Instead, the biggest focus is on the environmental interactions.

There are a bunch of items scattered around the arena that can be picked up and thrown on top of special items that spawn in that can be used like swords, pipes, guns and flamethrowers. It’s almost Smash Bros like in a way, which had only released a year prior to Power Stone.

There’s a lot more to it than just the items. There are poles to swing on, you can launch yourself off walls, grab onto ceilings, and some stages have unique hazards to be mindful of. The stages themselves have a lot going on and are one of the more entertaining parts of the game.

One issue with arena fighters is that the arenas can have too much going on. They become so chaotic they distract from the combat. Power Stone manages to find the happy middle ground of having plenty of interactable elements and keeping things grounded just enough that the player doesn’t lose track of what’s going on.

It varies from stage to stage though. The Pirate Ship stage is the worst since it’s too cluttered and closed in that it makes fighting on it cumbersome, but that’s the only stage I felt didn’t work. Everything else I liked. The stages are a big highlight of the game, so it already has that requirement ticked off.

I called the combat simple earlier, but do not mistake that for simplistic. It only takes about five minutes to figure the game out, but the game still has plenty of interesting little mechanics under the hood. Dodging and catching thrown items make up the defensive core. There’s no block but those two do add defensive options to the combat that prevent it from becoming a mindless dive kick fest. Trust me, you’ll be doing that a lot in this game.

But the true depth of the game lies in its namesake, the Power Stones. These are three coloured gems that spawn in the match. If you’re able to get all three of them, you transform into a powered-up state and your attacks become powerful special moves that do massive damage. You also get access to super moves that do even more damage, but using one ends the transformation early so it’s best saved until it’s nearly finished.

Even if you get a Power Stone, you can still lose it. One clean hit can send them flying out of you and opponent can scoop it up for themselves, and vice versa. This is where the true fun of the combat lies.

Those transformations are incredibly powerful and can end a match once they show up. So, you want to get one for yourself while also preventing the opponent from doing so. Of course, if your opponent does get one it’s not over. You just need to focus on dodging and out lasting the transformation.

This back and forth adds an extra layer of strategy to a fight. The game is all about getting those Power Stones, but there’s also the arenas and the items to consider. Sometimes the best course of action is to go for the items since a Power Stone might be too far away, or maybe you want to chase the opponent down to keep the pressure up.

Power Stone is a simple fighting game, but it still has that layer of complexity and strategy that most fighters have. It’s just done in a way that anyone can understand. If you want a fighting game to break out when you have friends over, Power Stone is a good one to go for.

Because it’s a game that everyone can play. There are no complex button inputs to learn, you don’t need to learn frame data or the optimal combo routes or any of that shit. You just need to know the buttons and you’re golden.

I’ve said it before that the best beginner friendly games are ones that bring the player up to its level. They simplify things to make them easy to understand, but not to the point where they become shallow or insulting. Power Stone finds that perfect balance. It’s simple enough for everyone to play, but there’s still enough depth to the combat that things never become shallow.

That said, Power Stone is the least competitive fighting game Capcom made. It’s clearly meant to be a more casual party fighting game and not a serious competitive fighter. So naturally it has a dedicated competitive scene. Because of course it fucking does. Every fighting game has one even when it clearly wasn’t made for it. Never underestimate the insanity of the fighting game community.

Even on a casual level though, I was able to find some tech and even recognise balances in the character roster. While every character has the same basic controls, they still have differences, mainly in how they interact with the stages.

Smaller weaker characters like Ayame and Rouge have slower throw speeds while big strong characters like Gunrock and Galuda have a faster throw speed and can pick up and throw polls that the rest of the can swing around. I mean, everyone can do that while transformed, but the heavy guys can do it in base form.

The transformations themselves are the biggest difference between characters. Each of them comes with their own unique attacks and a character’s effectiveness is largely dependent on how good their transformed form are. Characters like Jack, Falcon and Wangtang have great transformations and are some of the games stronger characters, characters like Ayame and Ryoma aren’t bad but have some drawbacks, while Galuda is honestly useless. It’s sad how much he sucks honestly.

I love the cast in Power Stone. They’re some of the most fun designs Capcom ever made. Visually the game’s a treat and still holds up today. A lot of that is due to the art style. Power Stone has a very old school feel to it.

The game takes place in the 19th century and takes a lot of cues from classic adventure stories and anime. You can tell the crew took a lot of inspiration from old school anime from the 70’s and 80’s as a lot of the characters resemble ones you would see in those old shows. There’s a Saturday morning anime vibe to the whole thing, which is fitting considering Power Stone would receive an anime adaptation around the same time the game came out. It has a very charming look.

The music is great too. The character themes add to the casts personality and the tracks are catchy and have a very adventurous tone to them. I wish I could hear it more in the game though. There’s so much chaos and sound effects during a battle that the music is hard to make out. You’ll be hearing the announcer shout “Oh No” so often you’d think it was the entire soundtrack.

Power Stone is a game that I have a lot of fondness for. The first time I played it was on the PSP via the Power Stone Collection. I remember I bought it in an airport while I was travelling to America for a few weeks on holiday and I played it the entire trip trying to unlock everything.

I love Power Stone, but it is not a perfect game. While the game controls well, because the grab function is used for different functions it can on occasion mess up if there’s too many things nearby. It doesn’t bug out it just might not grab what you want which can be frustrating.

The biggest issue for me though is how long matches can be. Because the nature of the game involves running around the arena and not always being in direct conflict, matches can often drag on for longer than they should.

To give you an idea of how long matches can go on for, the arcade mode scores you based on the time taken to complete it, so far my fastest time is over 26 minutes. Yes, I had to redo some fights and lost a round or two, but not that many. The matches just go on for too long, I’ve even run down the clock a few times.

The fighting itself isn’t slow, it’s just that it takes time to get the opponents health down since half the time you’re focusing on getting the Power Stones, so you can get the opponents health down. It’s just a side effect of the design.

Even with how long arcade runs can be, I still played through it with half the cast. I didn’t need to, I only needed to play a couple times to get a feel for the game, but I did it anyway because I was having too much fun.

And that’s what Power Stone is, fun. It’s an immensely entertaining fighting game that anyone can play, with a fun and memorable cast of characters, and a really engaging gameplay hook. It’s one of the best casual fighting games I’ve ever played next to Smash Bros. There’s a reason why this game is a cult classic, especially on Dreamcast where it also served as a launch title.

But while Power Stone is a great party game, it’s still only two players. Everyone knows the best party games have four. Hmm, I wonder what four player Power Stone would look like.

Power Stone 2

Absolutely wild as it turns out. Released only a year after the first game, Power Stone 2 doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on the party game affectations of the first and made one of the craziest multiplayer fighters of all time.

Yes, the game did indeed see a bump to four players. This was the main selling point of the game and everything else seems to revolve around this idea. For good and for ill. The ill part being the somewhat watered-down fighting mechanics. It’s still got a lot of the stuff from the first game, dodging, catching items, wall jumps and the like, but it feels noticeably toned down with less attacks.

You only have one main attack and a special attack button which is basically just a heavy attack that also grabs when used up close. You also can’t dive kick which sucks, but I can imagine a four-player game where everyone is dive kicking all the time would get annoying quick. Would be funny though.

I don’t think Power Stone 2 really cares about the lack of fighting mechanics though. This game basically drops all the pretences from its predecessor about being a legit fighting game and goes full in on being an over the top, wacky party brawler.

Everything got dialled up to 11 in this game. There’s a lot more items and the items themselves are even wackier. You’ve got standard stuff like axes, swords and guns, but then you’ve got stuff like an extending staff, a gun that shoots bubbles, and a moped and skateboard. You can ride a moped and run people over in this game, it’s frigging awesome.

The stages are also far more elaborate. There’s only five of them this time, which is a shame, but there is so much more going on in them. They’re bigger, which makes sense given the four players, with way more obstacles and hazards to avoid. They even have things you can ride in like tanks and turrets.

And while there are only five stages, the stages themselves all have parts to them which makes them feel like three stages in one. Take the airship stage for example. You start out on the airship itself which starts to break apart as the fight goes on. Eventually it blows up and you start falling to the ground, during which you have to fight it out for umbrellas to avoid taking damage from the fall. After which the fight takes place on the ground and you then have to deal with a tank.

That’s just for one stage, and they’re all like this. There’s a stage in an ancient temple that involves an Indiana Jones style boulder chase, and another where you fight up elevators in a futuristic base and end up fighting an alien. There’s a frigging alien in this game. Wasn’t this supposed to be the 19th century? This game is cracked out of its mind.

The stages here are nuts. Add on the four players and the items flying around and Power Stone 2 becomes one of the most chaotically fun fighting games ever made. Perhaps though, it’s a bit too chaotic.

The game is an absolute blast in how chaotic it gets, but it’s so chaotic that it becomes overwhelming at time. With four players on screen at once and all the items and stage hazards going on it can devolve into a complete clusterfuck where you have no clue what’s going on. I’ve actually lost track of where I was on screen while playing this thing it’s that bonkers.

Ironically the one part that feels toned down are the Power Stone transformations. There are more Power Stones to facilitate the four players, which in theory means there should be more transformations happening, but I find it’s the opposite. They don’t happen nearly as often.

They still happen every match, but there’s often a huge lull where no transformations happen at all. Even when you do get one, they don’t feel as powerful as before. They’re still devastating, but before they felt game ending in how strong they were while here they aren’t nearly as impactful.

The problem with all the chaos going on is that interesting back and forth the first game had isn’t emphasised as much. You aren’t just fighting the other players for the Power Stones you’re fighting over the items, trying to survive the stages and just trying to keep an eye on what’s going on through all the madness.

You can’t even turn this stuff down. Well, you can but that isn’t how the game is meant to be played. The game is designed for four players, even the single player arcade run, and training modes force you to fight with four players. To play with only one vs one and no items is missing the point. You can’t do no items Fox only Final Destination because you’d be missing the entire appeal of the game.

That’s why I think it’s best to view Power Stone 2 as a party game. It is a pure multiplayer fighter to be played with a group of friends and in that respect this game rules. But it also makes it hard to judge when playing solo because there isn’t a lot to the game.

It puts so much emphasis on the party game aspects that the actual moment to moment fighting isn’t as satisfying as the first game. The fun comes from the pure madness that goes on, not necessarily engaging with the mechanics.

The arcade run is also lacklustre. It’s super short with only five stages, two of which are bosses, and it’s over before you know it. You can’t even fly solo since the game forces you to have a partner. I guess that could make it a good co-op game, but it’s so short and lacking in replay value you’ll probably only play it once.

This is where the Fighting Collection 2’s lack of single player modes comes back and bites it in the ass. Power Stone 2 on consoles had a ton of additional content to unlock like more items, characters and stages. Without anything like that, playing this game solo got old fast.

Fortunately, Fighting Collection 2 did at least port the additional items and characters over, but not the stages. Which is a shame because those were more traditional stages that could have helped add a toned-down alternative to the wacky main stages.

For as fun as the stages are, they can also be intrusive to the combat since they move around so much. You know how Smash Bros has those scrolling stages that everyone hates because they don’t let you focus on the fight. Every stage in Power Stone 2 is like that, and there’s no way to change it.

The annoying thing is that the final forms of each stage are decent. They strike that perfect balance that Power Stone 1 did with its stages. If I recall correctly so did the console stages, which again makes me question why they weren’t included.

Because of all this, I find I enjoy Power Stone 1 more overall. I just find it more engaging with the bigger focus on the actual fighting mechanics, and it’s more balanced type of chaos. I also find the new characters in Power Stone 2 to be less interesting. Accel is kind of cool, but the rest are meh. I don’t find their designs nearly as fun as the characters from the first game.

At the same time though I can’t call Power Stone 2 worse because it isn’t. It’s just going in a different direction, and it succeeds in that. It’s still good on the technical aspects. It keeps the same art style as the first game, and it’s just as strong here. The graphics still look great, and despite the chaos it runs at a smooth 60fps.

The music is great too. It’s very bombastic and adventurous which fits the game like a glove. Power Stone 2 is also one of the three games in Fighting Collection 2 to get an arranged soundtrack, and this arranged soundtrack is amazing. They use an actual orchestra for this one which just makes it sound so much better. I can’t go back to the original soundtrack after hearing it, it’s just too good.

Power Stone 2 is a great game. It’s too hectic for its own good but that’s part of the fun. This isn’t a game you play competitively, you play it with friends to soak in the chaos. Play it in the right conditions and it can be amazing.

Honestly the Power Stone duology might be the strongest in Capcom’s history because neither one is objectively better than the other. Power Stone 1 is a better fighting game, but Power Stone 2 is the better party game. They both fit their own unique little niche and can stand side by side with one another. You really can’t go wrong with either.

Project Justice

If you grew up with a PlayStation, there’s a good chance you played a game called Rival Schools. It was one of Capcom’s earliest attempts at a 3D fighter and it became a cult hit on the system. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it did ok for itself, and a lot of people do at least know about it.

What you may not know is that the game got a sequel, technically it got two since there was a sequel on the PlayStation except it wasn’t really a sequel it was more of an update with new characters. Except it was a sequel since the school life simulator took place after the original, you know what it doesn’t matter. Point is it wasn’t the true sequel.

That was Project Justice. The reason you may not have heard of it was, well for one it was never named Rival Schools 2 except in the subtitle. Because it came out around the time of the Columbine massacre and Capcom wanted to avoid any and all controversy. A sad reality, but I can’t blame Capcom for the decision.

But the main reason you likely haven’t heard of it is because it was a Sega Dreamcast exclusive. It was well liked by Dreamcast afficionado’s, but that’s like saying a niche underground black metal band from Kenya is liked by its fans. Not many people played this thing. Which is a shame because Project Justice absolutely slaps.

A lot of that is because it’s built on a solid foundation. Rival Schools was already a great game, and Project Justice simply took what worked in that title and improved on it. Smoother gameplay, more mechanics, better presentation, and a larger roster. Everything was made bigger and better.

The only thing it lacked that the first game had was a handful of characters, including Sakura from Street Fighter. Which was a dumb decision. I get they wanted to focus on the original characters, but Sakura was massively popular character and would have helped the games notoriety.

That wasn’t all it lacked. It didn’t have the minigames or the school-life simulator modes either, but considering this collection only includes the arcade versions all of that is irrelevant here. Like Power Stone 2, I think Project Justice suffers from Fighting Collection 2’s focus on the arcade versions. Some content from the consoles made it in, but not the big single player modes people wanted to see.

This version is purely focused on the fisticuffs, and thankfully that part of the game is stellar. The best way to describe Project Justice, and indeed the way most describe the Rival School series, is that it’s a 3D version of a Marvel vs Capcom game. It’s a team-based game with an emphasis on big combo’s and air launchers.

It’s not hard to see the comparisons, but at the same time simply calling it a 3D vs game is not entirely accurate. Project Justice does have its own unique identity. The gameplay and mechanics are certainly different, and even the way the game feels and control make it a distinct entry in Capcom’s fighting game history.

The game only uses four buttons. Two punches and kicks with a light and heavy version of each. The way combo’s work in this game is that you can chain attacks into each other like in Darkstalkers and Marvel. So unlike Capcom vs SNK Pro the four-button system actually works with the combo system, and the combo system is easily one of the best parts of the game.

Not only are combo’s very easy to learn, but they can get crazy too. Not quite on the same level as Marvel, but you can still do some wild stuff here. Every character has the same basic combo chain to learn. Light punch, light punch, heavy punch and forward heavy punch or kick. That’s the fundamental combo chain everyone has, and yes, it’s always light punch since light kick very rarely chain into anything other than low heavy kick.

Where the combo’s get interesting is when launchers are involved. Each character has at least one launcher that sends opponents skyward opening them up to air combos, and every character has one super or special move that can be done in the air, so getting those air combos is a big part of the game.

What makes it interesting is that not every character combo into their launchers the same way. Some characters have multiple launchers, but only one of them can be chained into and only through a specific chain. You know how games like Tekken have long lists of combo strings to learn? Well Rival School has something similar in how it’s chains work.

It’s obviously not as extensive as Tekken’s move lists, but every character does chain their normals in different ways. Some characters can’t even chain into their launchers at all and are reliant on their special moves and supers to get one in. So, while the basic bread and butter stuff is the same, every character still winds up playing differently and that’s not even counting all the special moves and supers they have.

The combos here are fun as hell to do. The game feel is a bit heavier than a lot of Capcom’s other fighters, but I think it works to the games benefit. It makes it very easy to chain into specials and super moves. This is one of the easiest game in the collection to simply pick up and play, for the more traditional fighters at least.

Even the defensive mechanics are easy to figure out. Since this game is in 3D it has a sidestep which is done by pressing the two kick buttons, or by pressing the sidestep button that Fighting Collection 2 has in the default scheme. It’s a standard sidestep that lets you dodge attacks, but if you time it just right you can circle behind an opponent and hit them from behind which is not only useful but looks damn cool too. It’s like in Dragon Ball where they teleport behind people.

The most entertaining defensive mechanic though is the Tardy Counter. It’s the Rival Schools equivalent of the Alpha Counter except it’s way more fun. See, unlike the Alpha Counter which allowed you to go from a block to a standard counterattack, the Tardy Counter lets you go from a block to any other attack.

This is absurd. It’s one of the most open-ended counter mechanics I’ve ever seen, and I love it. You can counter with any special or super move you want and it’s one of the most hype things you can do. It’s not even that hard to do either. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s so easy to do that I would pull it off by accident at times.

And again, you can use any attack. You can counter with just use a basic normal if you want. The Tardy Counter on its own makes Project Justice a very over the top and crazy game, and that’s just one slice of the pie. I haven’t even gotten to the team-based stuff yet.

Project Justice let’s you form a team of three characters, an increase from the teams of two Rival Schools had. Despite this the game is still primarily a one-on-one fighter. You can’t tag characters out during a fight; you can only swap them between rounds. So, while it is compared to the Marvel fighters, it is not a tag fighter.

You may be wondering why the game is a team-based fighter if you only control one fighter. Well that’s because the other two fighters don’t just sit there and do nothing. By pressing the light or heavy attacks together you will perform a Team-Up attack with one of the members of your team.

Team-Up’s are basically a type of super. They’re powerful attacks that do a good amount of damage and are very flashy and over the top. Sometimes to an outright goofy degree. I’m not kidding, some of these Team-Ups are cartoonishly silly, but that’s part of the games charm. The game is so over the top silly at times that it loops back around to being completely awesome. One of the Team-Ups is just a synchronised swimming routine. Seriously.

Team-Ups are not the only super in the game. You also have more traditional supers in the form of Burning Vigor Attacks, which is the most awesome name for supers ever. While both function similarly things, they do have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Burning Vigor’s are harder to pull off since they require motion inputs, but they only cost one bar of meter and can be comboed into, unlike a Team-Up which costs two bars of meter and can’t be comboed into. Well, they can but only in very specific circumstances.

But Team-Ups have their own advantages. Not only are they easier to use since it takes only two buttons to activate, but they’re also completely invincible on startup. Making them a good punishment tool on more aggressive opponents. Mind you they also have a good amount of recovery, so you can’t go too wild with them lest you get punished yourself.

There’s also a bit more versality in Team-Ups since some of them aren’t even attacks. Some Team-Ups act as a buff by either healing you or maxing out the super meter. Yeah, you can spend meter to earn meter, this game is weird.

This is where the team composition comes in. Since you only control one character at a time you can focus entirely on that character and simply pick the teammates for their Team-Ups. Maybe you want one character on the team to have a healing option or just to have an easy way to get meter, or you can just have two attacks you really like.

In fact, some characters are good purely based on their Team-Ups. Chair Person is the worst fighter in the game. She’s basically the Dan of Rival Schools, in fact she trained in his style via mail order according to the lore, but her Team-Up is amazing since it heals you and gives you meter at the same time. It’s worth having her on a team for her Team-Up alone.

There is one caveat to Team-Ups though, they can be countered. If someone is on the receiving end of a Team-Up, they can spend a bar of meter to send one of their teammates to interrupt the attack. When that happens the last member of the attacker’s team comes out to try and stop them. A three second standoff then plays out where both sides try to get a hit in. If the defender gets a hit in the Team-Up is interrupted, if the attacker gets the hit or can run out the clock the Team-Up happens as normal.

I love this. it prevents Team-Ups from being too overpowered and they create a fun moment of tension in the middle of a fight. I know that sounds like a pace breaker, but they’re short enough that they don’t interrupt the flow of combat too much.

You can see the intricacies of team compositions though right. You obviously are going to pick a main fighter to start with, but you also want teammates with good Team-Up Attacks to back them up. However, while it isn’t required to play every member of your team it does help if you do. Not only to keep your opponent on their toes by swapping combatants, but also to prepare for when a Team-Up is interrupted and you need to control the other character.

There’s a lot of factors to consider when making a team, but because you can just focus on one fighter it still makes it very accessible. I would argue it’s more accessible than even the Marvel games since those games did force you to learn multiple characters while this game doesn’t.

It’s a unique way of handling a team-based fighter that to this day has never been copied. I guess Fighting Evolution did, but that was anaemic, shallow interpretation of this system. I can’t think of any other game that copied it. Most team games copy Marvel or King of Fighters, which is fine since those games are excellent, but there’s potential in Rival Schools’ mechanics that people aren’t taking advantage off. Indie devs, get on this.

There’s one last type of super to mention, the Party-Ups. These are the game’s Level 3 equivalent. You need a maxed out super meter, it goes up to five bars, and it uses all three team mates to perform. Party-Ups are absolutely devastating and can’t be interrupted, but the steep cost does help balance it out since meter is very important in this. You gain meter very quickly but lose it just as fast with how many mechanics require it.

There’s a lot to the combat in Project Justice. It’s one of those games that seems very simple and button mashy at first, but the more you spend time with it the more you learn about the deeper systems and mechanics. Project Justice is an awesome game to play but I don’t think that’s the reason why this is a cult classic.

It certainly helped, but I don’t think the gameplay was the major draw. I think it was the premise and the art style. The whole idea of the Rival Schools games is in the name; it’s a game about school students fighting one another.

Because of that a lot of the characters are based on high school stereotypes. There’s the hot head who always jumps to action, there’s the preppy upper-class kid, there’s the hooligan gang members, hell half the cast are based on school clubs like baseball, volleyball, football, or soccer if you prefer, photography and even swimming. Yeah, there’s a guy who fights in a swim speedo and who battles his opponents with swimming techniques.

This game is bonkers, but it’s also strangely relatable. Even though everything is exaggerated to the extreme, the characters are all based on things you remember from school. We all knew people like the cast in Rival Schools, maybe we even were them. Despite the game being set in Japan and clearly being inspired by anime tropes, there are still recognisable elements to them that people across the pond can still relate to.

For as iconic as a lot of fighting game characters are, let’s be honest we don’t really connect to them. We can’t relate to a wandering martial artist, or a crazy jungle guy, or an American drifter who pulls power from the earth, or a chosen one destined to save the planet. We like those characters, they’re a great power fantasy, but it’s hard to relate to them because of how fantastical they are.

I would argue the reason why Sakura is such a popular character in Street Fighter is because she’s one of the few characters in that series that people can connect with. She’s not some great warrior destined for greatness; she’s a school kid following her passion and trying to figure herself out. That’s something that everyone has been through which makes it easy to connect with the character.

The cast of Rival Schools is very similar. These aren’t great martial arts masters, they’re a bunch of school kids using whatever skills they have to beat each other up. Even the teachers, because of course you can play as a teacher in this, are relatable since they go through typical adult stuff, and they do remind you of faculty you may have known when you were a kid. Even the ones you may have had a crush on because, damn Kyoko is hot.

It’s all exaggerated obviously, but that’s part of the fun. That’s the fantasy element that makes the fighting more enjoyable. I mean it could have been more down to earth but then it would have just been regular high school students beating each other up and that wouldn’t have gone down well.

The cast of characters here are all very likable. Not only do they have fun fighting styles, but they’ve also got a ton of personalities and some of the best character designs Capcom ever did. The whole game has a very energetic, hot blooded anime art style and each of the characters have a very striking memorable design.

The art in this game is fantastic. The in-game graphics are great too, it’s a very expressive and colourful 3D fighter for the time, but it’s in the character art where the style really pops. They give these characters so much personality that it makes you want to play as all of them. This is one of those fighting games where I actually like all of the characters. Except for Momo, she can fuck off.

More than anything though I think the idea behind this game is what drew people to it the most. I think we all had those fantasies when we were kids of fighting with or against your schoolmates with wacky powers and abilities, or at least I did. I used to pretend fight all the time. Project Justice taps into that youthful energy and imagination we had as kids and makes a whole game about.

The fact that the gameplay was great was what ultimately kept people around. There are other things that did that too. I already talked about the graphics, but the music was awesome too. It goes for a hard rock soundtrack that matches the hot-blooded tone the game is going for.

Admittedly I think Rival Schools soundtrack was better, but Project Justice still has great music with some standout tracks. This is also the third and final game in the collection with a remixed soundtrack and I really like it. I don’t think it’s better than the original, they’re about equal in quality and I like to swap between them. Also, was it just me or was anyone reminded of Bloody Roar with the arranged soundtrack? Had a very similar sound.

Then there’s the content. Project Justice is a surprisingly feature rich arcade game. You have two different modes to pick from, Free Mode which is a standard arcade run where you pick three characters and fight through a series of stages, and Story Mode.

Yes, this fighting game from 2000 actually had a full-fledged Story Mode. In it you pick from a group of set teams representing a school and play through that team’s unique storyline. The story itself is suitably ridiculous involving ninja assassins and brainwashing schemes, and it’s presented in a visual novel style with manga panels for certain scenes.

Admittedly the presentation is the weakest part of it. The character portraits could have been larger, there’s no voice acting despite Rival Schools having full voice acting for its own Story Mode, and the translation is, well it’s a Capcom translation from the early 2000’s so of course it would be bad.

Despite that, I really liked the Story Mode. Each story is short, but there’s a surprising amount of replay value since a lot of them have branching paths. The endings don’t change, but you can see different events and get access to different characters depending on the choices and actions you make. It basically a precursor to what Arc System Works would do for their own story modes. It was ahead of its time.

I liked Story Mode so much I wound up playing through all of them. I was just having too much fun to stop. I do think Free Mode is more fun gameplay wise since you have more freedom in team compositions and it is a bit longer, but the fact this arcade game had a full-blown Story Mode is really impressive and shows how ambitious Capcom was back then.

I could go on folks, I honestly could. Project Justice is the definition of an underrated gem. The only flaw I can think of, beyond petty shit like the final boss being a cheap bastard, is that the roster is a bit too clone heavy. A lot of the secret characters are just alternate versions of other characters, but even then they play just differently enough that it isn’t that big a deal.

I love Project Justice. It’s one of the most enjoyable fighting games Capcom ever made. I was lucky enough to play the original Dreamcast version years ago and playing it again I think it’s only gotten better with age.

It sucks this version lacks the content of the original Japanese home console release, but it does still include the edit characters from the western release at the very least. Hopefully one day we see a Rival Schools collection focused on the console games with all the content.

Until then I’m more than happy with this. Dare I say it’s my favourite game in the collection. It’s not the best, that’s Capcom vs SNK 2, but it is the one I enjoyed the most. It’s a definite highlight of the collection.

Plasma Sword The Nightmare of Bilstein

When I first saw the game line up for Capcom Fighting Collection 2, Plasma Sword was the game I was the most curious about. Simply because I knew next to nothing about it. The rest of the games I already had history with, or they were documented well enough that I knew a lot about them going in. I didn’t need to play Capcom Fighting Evolution to know it was a piece of shit, plenty of YouTube videos had informed me of that.

But Plasma Sword was a game I had barely heard anything about. I’ve seen one YouTube video about it, shout out to guilewinquote for it, but other than that, zilch, nada, bupkis, nothing. It’s the one Capcom fighting game that nobody seems to talk about, well that and Tech Romancer.

After playing it, well I can see why, but I also think it’s a shame. Because despite its flaws there’s a lot to like about Plasma Sword. The big thing that drew me to it was the theme and setting. First, it’s a weapon-based fighter which is always cool to see, and it’s a sci-fi themed fighting game which you almost never see.

No really, think about it, there’s not that many science fiction fighting games out there. There’s a lot of fantasy themed fighting games, and a lot of fighting games do have science fiction elements, but when it comes to a full sci-fi brawler, they’re quite rare.

It doesn’t take long to realise the specific sci-fi that Plasma Sword is aping. The hero with a laser sword, a big black armoured villain with a laser sword, a female lead with buns in her hair, a giant apelike creature, a story involving a war with a galaxy spanning empire, it’s Star Wars, it’s basically ripping off Star Wars.

There’s a good reason for that. Plasma Sword is a sequel to another game called Star Gladiator, which, fun fact, was the very first 3D fighter Capcom ever made. It was also originally pitched as a Star Wars fighting game. Yes, it didn’t start as a Star Wars expy but as an actual Star Wars product. Lucas Arts turned down the pitch though since they were working on their own fighting game, which wound up being the trainwreck that was Masters of Teras-Kasi.

Instead of letting what they had go to waste, Capcom retooled it into an original property. There’s even a theory that the reason the name was changed from Star Gladiator to Plasma Sword was to avoid copyright disputes with Lucasfilm. Although it kept the name Star Gladiator in Japan so who knows.

Honestly, I think the game is better off being an original IP. Beyond avoiding dealing with copyright bullshit, buy that Marvel collection while you can folks, it also means Capcom could create their own distinct, very anime themed sci-fi universe. The Star Wars influences are still apparent, I mean Gamof couldn’t look more like Chewbacca if he tried, but there’s plenty of original things here too.

One of the characters is a green alien street performer who fights with Yo-yo’s and moon walks like Michael Jackson. It’s weird but it’s certainly original. I really like the world Capcom created with this. The characters are likable with some very cool designs, mixing anime sensibilities with classic sci-fi tropes.

The art style is great, but I can’t say the graphics hold up as well. It doesn’t look bad but compared to the other 3D games it doesn’t look nearly as nice. This is because Plasma Sword wasn’t built on Naomi hardware like the other 3D fighters in this collection, it was built on the Capcom Zn-2 hardware which is essentially a PlayStation in arcade form.

The version in Fighting Collection 2 is based on the Dreamcast port which did see graphical improvements, but it was more of an upscale that didn’t take advantage of the improved hardware. It still looks like a PlayStation game.

This gave it unfavourable comparisons to Soulcalibur at the time. That game also got a graphical update on Dreamcast, but it was a much bigger glow-up. As in, you wouldn’t even know it originally looked like a PlayStation game level of glow-up.

Plasma Sword didn’t receive the same treatment, and it was harshly judged for it. Which is a shame because the art style in the game is very strong. I think if it had come out on PlayStation it wouldn’t have gotten as much criticism. Because by PlayStation standards it looks great, and it runs well too. It’s a shame the game didn’t get the visual facelift it needed, but the art style helps keep the game visually pleasing.

The music is, ok. It’s not up to Capcom’s usual high standard, but the tracks are decent and matches the energy of the fights well enough. Mind you Capcom music is usually godlike, so even a lesser Capcom soundtrack is better than most studio’s best.

So, we have a theme that isn’t seen very often and a cool art style with memorable characters, but then we get to the gameplay, and this is where things do start to crumble a little. Don’t get me wrong, Plasma Sword can be a fun game, but it feels lacking compared to other Capcom fighters.

The game itself controls well enough. It uses four buttons, a horizontal slash, a vertical slash, a kick and a sidestep. it’s basically the same control scheme as Soulcalibur, just replace sidestep with guard and it would be the exact same. Not that I’m complaining, it’s a good control scheme for a weapon fighter.

The game feels fine to play, but it also feels very loose. Attacks don’t have much weight behind them, and things combo into each other a bit too well. Even when I get a combo it doesn’t feel like I should have. It’s the most loosey goosey fighting game I’ve ever played.

Plasma Sword is a button basher, pure and simple. It’s a game where you just mash buttons and cool shit happens, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There is still fun to be had in a button masher. I would argue they’re some of the most fun games to play on a casual level.

The problem with Plasma Sword is there’s just not enough depth to the combat. Character move sets are small; they don’t have many combo routes, and they only have three or four special moves each. Even then I find for most of the cast they have one special move that’s clearly better than the others, so most matches end up with you spamming the same move repeatedly.

Yeah I know, insert that’s every fighting game joke here, but it really does feel like that with this game. It’s fun for a couple of rounds, but it loses its lustre fast. There’s not enough depth here to keep you invested for very long.

Not that they didn’t try mind you. There are still some interesting mechanics here. Plasma Sword has not one, but two different counter attacks called Plasma Reflect and Plasma Revenge. The latter being a standard counter, while the former stuns the opponent and lets you follow up with an attack of your own.

Good ideas, but why have two of them? They both accomplish the same thing except Plasma Reflect is far better. I could understand it if they countered different things, but they don’t so having two options ends up feeling superfluous.

The other mechanic is a bit more interesting, the Plasma Field. This is a sort of super state that a character can enter for a brief time if they’re able to hit the opponent with a field of energy. The effect of this state differs between characters, some get longer range on attacks, some grow giant, some freeze time and some gain projectiles that fire from their normals and more.

The closest equivalent to compare it to would be the Dark Force in Vampire Saviour, and like that the effects get wild. This is easily the most fun mechanic in the game. it’s fun activating these and just going nuts with them, but you also have to time it right to activate it so their still some thought required in how you use it.

Sadly, it is not that balanced. Some Plasma Fields are overpowered to an absurd degree while others are just lame. I know this is the case for most fighting games, but the discrepancy between the strong Plasma Fields and the weak ones is jarring.

The last mechanic is the Plasma Strike, which are just supers. Big flashy attacks that do a lot of damage, standard stuff really. Every mechanic I mentioned costs meter, and you only have three bars to work with. While this may make you think you’ll have limited resources, you earn meter so quickly that it never becomes a problem.

This game wants you to use its mechanics as much as possible, so it gives you all the resources you need. When you get into it, Plasma Sword can be a pretty intense and crazy game, but it never feels as deep as it’s contemporaries. It’s still a simple game that rewards button mashing as much as skilful play.

There are a few other problems the game has too, mostly due to its age. Since this is an earlier 3D fighter it suffers from some of the jank that a lot of early 3D fighters did. It holds up better than most, but you’ll still feel it from time to time. I felt it mostly when it came to doing Plasma Strikes, sometimes they wouldn’t come out and it’s hard to counter Plasma Strikes with your own since the games locks them out until the current one is finished.

Then there’s the roster. The game has twenty-four playable characters, but this is a façade. It actually only has twelve characters, with the other spots being taken up by mirror characters that play like the others. The only difference between them being the Plasma Strikes.

Ignoring how lame it is that half the roster is just made of clones, it also means that which character you prefer is entirely dependent on the Plasma Strikes. Some characters Plasma Strikes are clearly better than their mirror counterparts and vice versa. There’s no reason to ever pick the other character, especially since they don’t offer anything differently.

I don’t hate the idea of having two versions of every character. Samurai Shodown did something similar with the Bust and Slash system and I liked that. If Plasma Sword had done something similar it could have worked. Instead, it just feels like a lazy attempt to expand the roster size. I love a lot of these designs, but the roster needed better variety to the fighting styles.

I’d be lying if I said Plasma Sword was an underrated gem. It got middling reviews at the time and while a lot of that was down to it being compared to Soulcalibur, I can see where they are coming from.

This is not Capcom’s best work. The graphics aren’t bad, but did feel dated on Dreamcast, the music is fine but ultimately forgettable, and the gameplay ends up feeling like a shallow button masher with very little of the depth you’d expect from a Capcom fighting game.

All that being said, I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t have any fun with this. It may be a simple button masher but there’s still fun to be had with those, and the Plasma Field mechanic has a lot of wacky shit you can pull off with it. it’s simple, but it still has some sauce to it.

I liked Plasma Sword overall, though a lot of that is because of the theme and art direction. I like this anime take on a Star Wars type universe, and the fact it’s one of a handful of sci-fi themed fighters makes it stand out even more. It’s probably the best Star Wars fighting game out there even if it isn’t technically Star Wars.

I think Plasma Sword just suffered from being an early 3D fighter. Capcom were still trying to figure this whole third dimension out, and they would eventually crack it but only after Plasma Sword came out. I wish they had made a third game in the series since there’s some good ideas and characters here, it just needed a little extra polish.

It could have been a truly great series, but as is the Star Gladiator games are seen more as an early experiment. A test of the waters to see if Capcom could do a 3D fighter. That might be true, but I think Plasma Sword is still a decent enough game that’s worth trying out. It’s not the best game in the collection, but it’s far from the worst.

And that is that. We’ve gone through every game in Capcom Fighting Collection 2 and my god was it an ordeal. But why don’t we go the distance and wrap this up with a nice little ranking. Here’s every game ranked from best to worst.

1.      Capcom vs SNK 2

2.      Project Justice

3.      Power Stone

4.      Power Stone 2

5.      Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper

6.      Capcom vs SNK Pro

7.      Plasma Sword

8.      Capcom Fighting Evolution

And with that I thank you for reading this, and if you read it all I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care and next time I’ll have something a bit more digestible.