Tag Archives: collection

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics — Issue 55

Posted on by

Lat­est fight­ing col­lec­tion is a mod­ern Marvel

I might have got­ten mad at Cap­com with this release if they had­n’t includ­ed every­thing I need­ed for a mod­ern Ver­sus col­lec­tion. As I am wont to do when there is a new Cap­com cash grab, I take a hard, long look at the offer­ings and judge whether it’s worth my dol­lars or is skip­pable. With Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Fight­ing Col­lec­tion: Arcade Clas­sics, that judg­ing pro­duced a win­ning run on my wal­let quickly.

Let’s get straight to the point. The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com col­lec­tion, while great, is exact­ly like the oth­er col­lec­tions Cap­com has released in the past four years. If you already bought the Cap­com Clas­sics Col­lec­tions with the entire Vam­pire series and then Cap­com vs. SNK 2 and Rival Schools, you already know what to expect with this. The pack­age of games this time, how­ev­er, is strict­ly Ver­sus series titles. Every­thing from the start of the series is includ­ed — start­ing with X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and end­ing with Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. All ver­sions fea­tured are the arcade ports of the respec­tive games with train­ing modes and secrets unlocked from the begin­ning. So, no, you won’t have to play to unlock all char­ac­ters in MvC2 or go through the round­about unlock­ing process in MvC. That makes it eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, which I need because I’m not about the unlock­ing life at this stage of the game.

The col­lec­tion looks and plays like the oth­er col­lec­tions. There is a sound­track mode and gal­leries with infor­ma­tion and pro­mo­tion­al art­work for each game along with leader­boards and online play for all games. Cap­com did­n’t rock the boat with the pre­sen­ta­tion and I guess fig­ured, it worked for the oth­er pack­ages we’ve released so don’t be dif­fer­ent. I’m not com­plain­ing because that’s exact­ly what I expect. I want famil­iar­i­ty so I can just jump right in when I’m ready. And as with the oth­er pack­ages, I love the but­ton set­up customization. 


There isn’t too much that I don’t love about the col­lec­tion. Going in and out the train­ing mode is slight­ly tedious — as it is with the oth­er col­lec­tions — but it’s not a deal­break­er. The announc­er for the over­all col­lec­tion is also a bit weird, but it, too, is not some­thing hold­ing the game back. These are admit­ted­ly nit­pick­ing things about the game, and it does­n’t sub­tract from the over­all package.

The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Fight­ing Col­lec­tion is the quin­tes­sen­tial col­lec­tion of Ver­sus games. It super­sedes any oth­er mod­ern Mar­vel col­lec­tion released in the past 15 years and is the best col­lec­tion of the bunch so far that Cap­com has released. The fact that it’s all ear­ly Mar­vel Ver­sus games in a mod­ern set­ting and read­i­ly acces­si­ble makes this worth an imme­di­ate purchase.

 

Street Fighter Alpha Anthology & Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX — Issue 52

Posted on by

Street Fight­er Alpha 3 Max (PlaySta­tion Portable)

Let’s get this out the way quick­ly: Alpha 3 Max is the best portable ver­sion of Alpha 3 avail­able. It’s even one of the best ports of Alpha 3 among the numer­ous ports of the game. It has every­thing that its big broth­er con­soles have and then some, with the mas­sive final updat­ed ros­ter that each suc­ces­sive entry has intro­duced, and improve­ments made to the dif­fer­ent estab­lished modes. 


The graph­ics are nice and large, and the music is still as top notch as ever. But there is a catch because there always is: This is only avail­able for the PlaySta­tion Portable. So, if you can track down that defunct sys­tem, get this to have it on the go and have a blast as only one can with Alpha 3 in its final form glo­ry. It’s worth a look just for the com­plete ros­ter alone.

Score: 4 out of 5

——————————————————————————————————————–


Street Fight­er Alpha Anthol­o­gy (PlaySta­tion 2)

This col­lec­tion of Street Fight­er Alpha games is sub­lime, espe­cial­ly if you have a PlaySta­tion 2 lay­ing around. It fea­tures all the Alpha games, remix­es and arranged ver­sions, the Alpha 2 Gold revi­sion and a nice port of Super Gem Fight­er Mini-Mix. The best part of the col­lec­tion is that it plays nice­ly in every game. It plays like a dream and han­dles well with a good PS2 con­troller or joystick. 

 

Even bet­ter is the includ­ed Hyper Street Fight­er Alpha, which allows pit­ting dif­fer­ent Alpha char­ac­ters against each oth­er using that spe­cif­ic game’s mechan­ics and rule­sets. Think Alpha 2’s Rose ver­sus Alpha 3 V‑ISM Rose. That’s the hid­den draw of the game, one that’s not adver­tised and that you won’t dis­cov­er with­out time invest­ed. How­ev­er, with smooth play and con­ve­nience much like 30th Anniver­sary col­lec­tion, this is a must buy for the PS2 collection.

Score: 4.5 out of 5

Mega Man X Legacy Collection — Issue 47

Posted on by

A good start to a long-last­ing legacy

I’m a huge Mega Man fan. It start­ed with the orig­i­nal series and evolved to include the X series. Fear­less GI leader Lyn­d­sey gift­ed me a trea­sure trove of Mega Man X games wor­thy of Cap­com’s next gen­er­a­tion blue titan, and Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion has risen to the top of the pile.

The first disc of Lega­cy Col­lec­tion cov­ers the first four MMX games that were released for the SNES and PSOne. In these games, you con­trol our favorite hero in blue or his lat­er part­ner Zero in their quest to achieve peace in the future. Each game has a dif­fer­ent sto­ry that builds on the pre­vi­ous game, but over­all X and Zero are the stars of the show with var­i­ous ver­sions of long­time antag­o­nist Sig­ma attempt­ing to achieve world dom­i­na­tion. Each of the first four games has var­i­ous boss­es X or Zero faces with the suc­cess­ful result of gain­ing the boss’ weapon or skill that can be used for var­i­ous lev­els. X has a slight advan­tage in the game by using hid­den upgrade cham­bers designed by the late Dr. Light that increas­es fire­pow­er, speed and protection. 

The val­ue of the first disc is per­fect for fans or those begin­ning the X series and increas­es with the ani­me-inspired designs of heroes and vil­lains, which encour­ages replay of all the col­lec­tion’s games. This first disc also has a lot of inter­est­ing ele­ments that include pre­sent­ing 16-bit and ani­me-style inter­mis­sion screens that were includ­ed when the games were orig­i­nal­ly released. Cap­com also intro­duced a high-res­o­lu­tion fil­ter, giv­ing the game’s graph­ics a stream­lined yet col­or­ful approach and a unique box frame for each game. A music play­er con­tain­ing all the music from the orig­i­nal games also rounds out the pre­sen­ta­tion extras, which were nice. 

One of the oth­er cool addi­tions is the X Chal­lenge, which pits you against two leg­endary boss­es of the series while choos­ing three weapons to use. This requires some fore­thought and under­stand­ing of the series’ mechan­ics, which is a wel­come change of pace when you want some­thing dif­fer­ent from the sto­ry modes. I also thought that the art gallery and the ani­mat­ed movie focus­ing on Sig­ma was a nice touch. 

The only crit­i­cism I had of the col­lec­tion is with some of the oth­er extras. Cap­com decid­ed to show off nev­er-before-seen Mega Man X col­lectibles that were only avail­able in Japan. Cap­com nev­er did license these out­side of Japan, mak­ing fans like me curse them for their dense busi­ness prac­tices. Because, real­ly, why would you tease oth­er regions with this, know­ing Mega Man is glob­al? It just seems like anoth­er slap in the face where Mega Man is concerned. 

Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion is a great trib­ute to the X series. Despite my hang-ups with Cap­com, this is a great love let­ter to Mega Man X fans and can be a tem­plate to con­tin­ue the sto­ry of X and company.

Final Fantasy Anthology — Issue 42

Posted on by

Reach­ing a new audience

Chances are, if you’re think­ing about buy­ing this retro pack­age of Final Fan­ta­sy, you’ve already played at least one of the two games includ­ed. So, why buy this? Because the pack­ag­ing is the draw, and it’s a must-own if you like the Final Fan­ta­sy series.
Let’s start with the obvi­ous: Final Fan­ta­sy Anthol­o­gy does not have a lot of Final Fan­ta­sy games includ­ed. Two clas­sics with inter­est­ing and sto­ried back­grounds are here: Final Fan­ta­sy V and Final Fan­ta­sy VI. Until this release, Final Fan­ta­sy V had nev­er been trans­lat­ed and released in the U.S because it was deemed too hard for the mar­ket. Final Fan­ta­sy VI was released in the U.S. as Final Fan­ta­sy III. It was a crit­i­cal dar­ling in both mar­kets and is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the best retro-era Final Fan­ta­sy games and role-play­ing games ever. So, Square Enix putting these two games togeth­er in a pack­age would kill two birds with one stone: Good sales — near­ly a mil­lion copies sold — and intro­duc­tion of a “lost” game to the bare­ly tapped mar­ket. Square Enix suc­ceed­ed on both fronts.
Released in the U.S. and PAL regions, FF Anthol­o­gy fea­tures FFV and FFVI in full with new CG intro­duc­tion movies for both games. Although we have reviewed FFV pre­vi­ous­ly (see 2Q2010 issue), we have nev­er reviewed FFVI. Just know, how­ev­er, that both games are fan­tas­tic, with FFV as our choice to play in the pack­age. Both games have a deep sto­ry with mem­o­rable char­ac­ters that you come to know and love by the end of your adven­ture, and beau­ti­ful graph­ics and stun­ning sound­tracks. It’s a tes­ta­ment to the strong sto­ry­telling found in the retro FF era, and the pack­age is bet­ter for includ­ing these two games particularly.
Round­ing out the pack­age is the oth­er high­light: The includ­ed bonus sound­track CD. The sound­track fea­tures 22 of the best tracks from both games, with our favorites com­ing from the FFV por­tion. FFVI does have some bangers, also, so the sound­track is great addi­tion all around. 
What you should care about — and why you should buy this pack­age — is the fact that you’re get­ting the best of the 2D Final Fan­ta­sy games. Add in that sound­track CD, which is like a gate­way to FF music, and you have a good deal with in-depth game­play to boot. This is Square Enix at its best before it embraced the 3D era for its flag­ship role-play­ing series.