A mild collection of peak early Street Fighter
There was a time when all the early generation Street Fighter games weren’t available in the same place. Us old-timers had to own multiple systems and collections on those systems to complete the library of fighting street games. But then along came the 30th anniversary of the landmark fighting game franchise and wouldn’t you know, Capcom thought it prudent to offer a bonanza of Street Fighter. Whether or not it’s a bountiful buffet is still up for judgment.
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection aims to do one thing: Give you all the Street Fighter you can shake a stick at. Included out of the box are: Street Fighter, all versions of Street Fighter II (including Tournament Battle, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch); Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper; and, Street Fighter III: New Generation, 2nd Impact: Giant Attack and 3rd Strike. This essentially covers all the bases for early Street Fighter, which is great. Give me everything in one package and let me choose what I want to play. But alas, there is a catch: All the versions included are the arcade versions of the games. That means, for example, with Street Fighter Alpha 3 you aren’t going to get World Tour Mode. Whatever you received in the arcade is what you’re getting here so I hope you like the vanilla versions because that’s what’s served here. That’s not a bad thing if you love Street Fighter, and it’s the smart solution because including the home additions would have pushed this collection to double discs or more.
The package is fine graphically. The games included are going to look exactly the way they did when they were released, which is exactly how they should here and isn’t the focus. What should be the focus is the surrounding package and it’s nice. The graphics look clean, and menus are inviting. However, I do have a gripe with the menus: Capcom is in dire need of a copy editor. I found at least one error in the text (Akuma’s bio in Super Street Fighter II X for the curious), and this isn’t the first time I’ve found this type of thing (there’s an error in Super Street Fighter IV’s text as well).
As a former professional editor, this type of thing in video games gets on my nerves. Capcom is a billion-dollar company; hiring a copy editor to spell check the menus and text shouldn’t be a problem. It reeks of sloppiness, though I shouldn’t be surprised as this is the same company that refuses to translate the board game in Project Justice or the dating sims in both versions of Rival Schools. But I digress. The presentation is good, and it looks fine on modern systems.
The music is the same as the graphics: just as you remember it and perfectly fine. There is a sound test and that’s helpful if you don’t already have any of the tracks in your music collection. There are a few remixes in the menus that you may not have heard before, but there isn’t anything noteworthy like say Mega Man X Legacy Collection. The extras are mid, though some of the artwork and the official timelines provided are neat. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of it and there should be with this many games included.
And just like the presentation, the playability is just as good as you remember. I was able to finish several games in the arcade mode — once I adjusted the difficulty, which is a godsend — and everything felt great even with a PlayStation 4 Pro controller. I also jumped online to test the netcode, and it was decent. However, with the superior Fightcade now in full swing, fighting online with 30th Anniversary has been made irrelevant.
This is the collection to end all Capcom collections for their fighting games. Yes, Capcom insists on releasing other collections with these games, but this is a good stop gap if you want the mainstream stuff all in one place. Come for the nostalgia and the convenience and maybe stay for the extras. Three decades of Street Fighter should be a spectacle to behold but it’s lacking in the knock your socks off draw-ins. It’s still a rad street fight, however.
Score: 4.5 out of 5