Capcom Fighting Collection Review: A Great Way to Play Arcade Classics
Fighting games are now in the midst of one of their better eras yet, but it's truly hard to capture the feeling of being a fighting game fan within the 1990s arcade era of the genre. It was at this peak where competition was stiff in both the opponents you would stand next to and play against, but the number of games that you could potentially place your quarters at. Even with the prominence of arcades, there were many games that didn't make it outside of Japan, and many fans of these classic arcade titles have been wanting to play for quite some time.
Capcom Fighting Collection takes some of those hidden gems from deep inside of Capcom's fighting library, and brings a few over from Japan that have either never been released overseas or have been playable outside of arcades in general. While this has been the case with some of the previous digital releases and previous collections for some of the games in this particular bundle Capcom has had in the past, this time around there have been plenty of smaller adjustments to make this the best way to play any of these particular games.
Capcom Fighting Collection gathers 10 classic titles with some of them like Vampire Hunter 2 and Vampire Savior 2 being previously unavailable outside of Japan. Red Earth is even playable for the first time in any from since its original arcade release. The rest of the titles such as Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, Vampire, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, Cyberbots, and Hyper Street Fighter II, have been previously released either digitally or in other collections like this one.
It's quite a bit different this time around, however, as there was a lot of care put into bringing these titles out in a wholly new way. Not only does each title feature online play (with rollback netcode), there's a pretty neat way it does it too. You can set it up to where you can choose any of the titles to play online in, and head into a completely different one and play single player until it picks up. For example, you can be working through Red Earth's arcade mode yet get an online notification for for Hyper Street Fighter II.
There's also an ease to how quickly you can pick up and jump into each of the titles in the collection. From the main offline menu, you can choose to either select a Japanese or English version of a particular title, change game settings, map buttons to your preferred controller layout, and more depending on the title. Some even go further with titles like Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix allowing you to jump straight into its training mode. Some of the game settings also get very specific too such as making hidden characters playable, choosing difficulty, increasing damage outputs, and more minutiae that the more dedicated can dig into.
There are also tons of smaller extras such as achievements to unlock when playing certain titles, music, art galleries, and more. In terms of the actual gameplay for any of the respective titles, they each feel just as tight as they did back in their original releases. Some of them feel even better to play than one would expect such as how Cyberbots and Red Earth feel super quick despite not being easily playable for quite some time. In fact, Red Earth is the real standout of the package overall since it's the most distinct from the other titles.
You might recognize some of Red Earth's sprites from Capcom Fighting Evolution, but this title has been dormant for quite some time. It's got a single player focused arcade game where you fight bosses instead of other selectable fighters, and it's the most unique title in the entire collection. It's probably the first you should seek out when playing before jumping into all of the other offerings.
Capcom Fighting Collection is the best way to play many of these classic arcade titles as there have been enough adjustments to each title and adjustments to the ease of playing each one that it marks this collection as the best one of these re-release packages yet. It's a great step in the right direction for the future of collections of this ilk, and a great first collection for fans who might have never checked out one of these before. There are some repeats, but the new additions make up for it.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Capcom Fighting Collection releases on June 24th on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review, and it was reviewed on a PlayStation 5.