Tag Archives: Lyndsey Hicks

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein — Issue 54

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Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein (SNES)
Bits Stu­dios, 1994

A Crea­ture this piti­ful should have shuf­fled off the mor­tal coil

Mary Shel­ley, in her gild­ed cof­fin of prose and man and mad­ness, must have rolled over in her grave when this abom­i­na­tion based on her great­est work was released. As if the ’90s did­n’t have enough ter­ri­ble movie-to-game ties, along sham­bles the vit­ri­olic cash grab that is Mary Shel­ley’s Frankenstein.

The plot is tied direct­ly to the 1994 movie direct­ed by the inim­itable Ken­neth Branaugh and star­ring the leg­endary Robert De Niro. Vic­tor Franken­stein, a med­ical stu­dent, brings his cre­ation to life through sci­ence. The Crea­ture, which is sound­ly reject­ed as an abom­i­na­tion by soci­ety, wan­ders the Earth attempt­ing to find Vic­tor and exact revenge. 
The orig­i­nal sto­ry is com­pelling. The video game ver­sion is not. As some­one who read Franken­stein, Or the Mod­ern Prometheus pre­vi­ous­ly, I have expo­sure to the sto­ry and the char­ac­ters. The game does noth­ing to tie the movie or the sto­ry to the game. You start the game as a being with no expla­na­tion of who you are or what you’re sup­posed to be doing. The strug­gle is imme­di­ate­ly and painful­ly obvi­ous once you’re dropped on the scene of a tired brown vil­lage. As I lat­er learned, I start as the Crea­ture, and I’m sup­posed to be flee­ing the vil­lage. The vil­lagers assume the Crea­ture is a demon and are try­ing to kill him while he’s on the way to find and kill Vic­tor. That’s the gist of the sto­ry, but I had to piece that togeth­er while watch­ing oth­er playthroughs. That was atro­cious in 1994 and is still atro­cious today.


Equal­ly ter­ri­ble are the game­play and graph­ics, which go hand in hand. There is noth­ing redeem­ing about play­ing as the Crea­ture. He ani­mates ter­ri­bly and plays just as ter­ri­bly. He moves slow­ly through every motion and looks hor­ri­ble while doing so. His shuf­fling gait stark­ly con­trasts with his spry yet stale jump­ing, and his abil­i­ties to swing a weapon are sub­par at best. Of spe­cial note, the plat­form­ing ele­ments are absolute­ly garbage. Egre­gious­ly, there is no map to indi­cate pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed areas or loca­tions of inter­est. That’s nec­es­sary if you’re ask­ing me to back­track and solve hid­den item puz­zles in a large play­field. In an age where Super Metroid had been recent­ly released, there is no excuse for this type of ludi­crous over­sight. Sure, this is a quick movie tie-in, but the least you can do as a devel­op­er is take notes from a mas­ter of the craft and at least halfway attempt to steal basic con­cepts such as a map. 

And about the only redeem­ing fac­tor is the music. The tracks are repet­i­tive but they’re 1990s house music and goth­ic mean­der­ings so it’s tol­er­a­ble. But that can’t save the oth­er­wise mediocre prod­uct that groaned out of Mary Shel­ley’s mas­ter­piece novel.
The obvi­ous draw of Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein is, in fact, the Crea­ture but you would­n’t know it from the way this plays over­all. There is noth­ing here, except for the sound­track, that is worth both­er­ing with and even then, that’s ques­tion­able. Much like De Niro’s choice to play the Crea­ture, the biggest ques­tion of this whole trav­es­ty is why?

House of the Dead — Issue 54

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House of the Dead
Sega, 1998

Retro House of the Dead sets up shop for franchise

Ah, the progress that has been made. The on rails shoot­ers genre has made strides in the last 27 years. Mod­ern con­trols — includ­ing light guns avail­able for the home mar­ket — have made play­ing a lot more enjoy­able. And that has made the House of the Dead series — and espe­cial­ly the orig­i­nal game — a tad bit more tolerable.

House of the Dead starts off as most zom­bie hor­ror games of the day did: A mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal weirdo is mess­ing with bioter­ror­ism unnec­es­sar­i­ly and has cre­at­ed a mess. And by mess, I mean mutat­ed, trans­formed humans with a taste for flesh. That’s lit­er­al­ly the plot of the game. There’s some­thing about a fiancée that needs sav­ing and stop­ping this blight from spread­ing to the rest of human­i­ty, but that’s the basics. It’s ser­vice­able and real­ly does­n’t do much to affect the game­play. You’re killing zom­bies, boss zom­bies and most like­ly the end boss guy who cre­at­ed the prob­lem. Clean it up and go on in future sequels to take on an even larg­er threat in the bad guy’s boss because, of course, he has a boss.


Clean­ing up the prob­lem is the fun part here. The con­trols are your stan­dard light gun shoot­er but they’re fine. Aim­ing and shoot­ing was­n’t bad, though lin­ing up my shot some­times was not exact­ly sharp. There were a few times fight­ing some of the aer­i­al boss­es that the cur­sor just was­n’t keep­ing up so I took cheap hits. As an arcade old head, I know that’s the name of the game here: It’s designed to be a quar­ter-munch­er. But by the time I get home, there should be a bet­ter under­stand­ing that this isn’t going to fly. Thank­ful­ly, cheat codes exist so it’s not a prob­lem. But for arcade con­di­tions sake, this real­ly isn’t cool.

Because this is a 1998 prod­uct we’re talk­ing about, I’m also not expect­ing the graph­ics to look like much. And they don’t, beyond these zom­bies look­ing OK. Keep in mind that these graph­ics did­n’t real­ly improve until well beyond the sec­ond game/Typing of the Dead, so you’re going to be see­ing them for a long time. The music fares about the same, too. They are decent enough for the late ’90s, and they work well in the con­fines of House of the Dead.

House of the Dead has made many improve­ments in the near­ly 30 years since the orig­i­nal game. It did­n’t set the barn on fire then but it’s a nice rail shoot­er if you’re into zom­bie hor­ror and like what the series has to offer. Per­son­al­ly, I’m more apt to play Typ­ing of the Dead before House of the Dead, but that’s because I pre­fer to be a key­board sharp­shoot­er these days. House of the Dead­’s ret­i­cle is set in the mid­dle with the abil­i­ty to go higher.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — Issue 54

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Castl­e­va­nia: Sym­pho­ny of the Night
Kon­a­mi, 1997

Sym­pho­ny of the Night plays a sweet song of woe

I ful­ly admit that I’m a lit­tle late for the Hal­loween par­ty that is Castl­e­va­nia: Sym­pho­ny of the Night. I real­ly stopped pay­ing atten­tion to the series after Super Castl­e­va­nia IV, most­ly because it’s a hard series and I have a lot of love for that game and the orig­i­nal. I did­n’t need any­more Castl­e­va­nia. But after coax­ing from friends, mak­ing the Metroid­Va­nia con­nec­tions and know­ing its leg­endary sta­tus, here we are, and it’s tak­en a bite out of me.

Sym­pho­ny of the Night, in all its goth­ic hor­ror, appeals to me on sev­er­al lev­els. The sto­ry is famil­iar in that Alu­card — son of Drac­u­la and a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in the third game — is attempt­ing to stop his father once again. That famil­iar­i­ty is enough to get me going because it’s all I need to know about what’s going on. Sure, I’m kind of used to a Bel­mont lead­ing the way, but Sym­pho­ny of the Night does­n’t need to rely on that kind of tradition. 

The tra­di­tion that it does lean on is game­play. The com­bat and move­ment are excel­lent, and it feels sec­ond nature to move around. Keep­ing it sim­ple but adding the RPG ele­ments was a fan­tas­tic design choice. Most of the new weapons are cool, and fight­ing ene­mies is a beau­ti­ful­ly built song and dance. Best of all, there is an in-game map includ­ed. For a sprawl­ing game requir­ing mas­sive plat­form­ing, a map is required, and Sym­pho­ny hits the mark by auto­mat­i­cal­ly includ­ing this. 


Graph­i­cal­ly, the game is gor­geous. Kon­a­mi did some­thing beau­ti­ful here and Castl­e­va­nia looks bet­ter than ever. The goth­ic details are some­thing to behold and are eye-catch­ing as well as pleas­ing to some­one with a goth sen­si­bil­i­ty and yearn­ing for video games. The sound­track is just as beau­ti­ful, neces­si­tat­ing find­ing the sound­track to add to the col­lec­tion. There are famil­iar riffs (Vam­pire Killer makes a cameo) and new chords to strike that are mas­ter­pieces, which is expect­ed of the leg­endary Kon­a­mi sound.

Alas, while try­ing to think of any­thing wrong with it, I’ve con­clud­ed that Sym­pho­ny of the Night is a well-exe­cut­ed mas­ter­piece. It hits all the marks and pulls no punch­es in ele­gance, crafts­man­ship. It’s telling that most Castl­e­va­nia games lat­er in the series use Sym­pho­ny as the tem­plate on which they build. Sym­pho­ny is a build­ing crescen­do of great­ness, cul­mi­nat­ing in sol­id sto­ry­telling, game­play and world-building.

Street Fighter 6 — Issue 53

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Street Fight­er 6

Cap­com, 2023

Per­fect Street Fighter

We love to say that this isn’t your old man’s what­ev­er when­ev­er some­thing has changed. As cliché as this is — and make no mis­take this is cliché — Cap­com’s newest entry in the old man fight­ing game that is Street Fight­er isn’t your dad­dy’s Street Fight­er. It isn’t even your broth­er’s Street Fight­er, where he used to let you beat him up in ver­sus mode and hit you with Flash Kicks to mag­i­cal­ly come back and win. No, this is the young man and casu­al’s Street Fight­er. This is a new era of fight­ing designed to get every­one involved whether they’ve exe­cut­ed a Hado­ken or not.

Street Fight­er 6 came out with a fresh coat of paint, new mechan­ics but some­thing dif­fer­ent under the hood. It plays like Street Fight­er V, but with­out the V‑Trigger mechan­ics. Now, it’s back to the basics and Dri­ve Gauge, a new mechan­ic that can turn the tide of a bat­tle quick­ly. The Dri­ve Gauge rewards offense and cre­ativ­i­ty in com­bos while dis­cour­ag­ing defen­sive turtling. This plays into the larg­er, estab­lished Street Fight­er reper­toire of super arts and par­ries. It’s nice for a vet­er­an because it’s some­thing new and good for new­bies to the world of Street Fight­er because it’s not super com­pli­cat­ed to learn.

Some­thing else new that ben­e­fits every­one is the intro­duc­tion of three types of con­trol schemes: Clas­sic, Mod­ern and Dynam­ic. Clas­sic plays much like the old Street Fight­er of yore with a six-but­ton lay­out (Jab, Strong, Fierce, Short, For­ward, Round­house), Mod­ern has a sim­pli­fied four-but­ton lay­out (think Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2) and Dynam­ic is an offline only slant where the CPU choos­es the most appro­pri­ate but­ton press­es for moves. It’s a strong, smart deci­sion designed to open the door for more play­ers to get involved in your long-run­ning series that seems over­whelm­ing and daunt­ing at first.
Anoth­er smart deci­sion includ­ed is the tuto­r­i­al and vari­ety of modes. SF6 does its darn­d­est to have some­thing for every­one, and it’s imme­di­ate­ly seen in the modes avail­able at the start. Fight Hub, a return­ing and revamped World Tour Mode and a robust train­ing mode make this a mas­sive buy and win for the fight­ing game con­nois­seur. Fight Hub is where you’ll prob­a­bly spend most of your time; it’s where match­mak­ing takes place as well as emu­lat­ed old­er ver­sions of Street Fight­er live. 

How­ev­er, I tend to live in World Tour Mode. As a devot­ed fan of the orig­i­nal mode (Edi­tor’s note: See Issue 52 for our cov­er­age of the pop­u­lar mode from Street Fight­er Alpha 3), as soon as it was announced I knew I was a day one pur­chase. And with more than two years of wheel­ing and deal­ing with my cre­at­ed char­ac­ter, I can enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly say I love it. I enjoy run­ning around the fleshed-out Metro City (of Final Fight fame) with my looka­like fight­er. I love that they took the con­cept born of Alpha 3 and gave it a soul and per­son­al­i­ty after so many years, and I love that it’s easy to get into and plays as well as it does.

The beau­ty of this new chap­ter of Street Fight­er also lies in the char­ac­ter and envi­ron­ment designs. Street Fight­er has always looked nice and SF6 is no dif­fer­ent. The stage design is gor­geous, and the char­ac­ter mod­els look nice. Even the weird cre­ations that can come out of World Tour Mode have a nice look to them. We spent time at GI going through some of the char­ac­ters and just mar­veling over how far Street Fight­er has come with char­ac­ter design because it’s evi­dent in this game just in the char­ac­ter select screen. The new­bies in Marisa, Manon, Kim­ber­ly, Lily and JP are fun and cool, and the old­er stal­warts like Ryu, Ken and Dhal­sim look fan­tas­tic. The sound­track, while lack­ing in some areas, does have some toe tap­pers. Though I’m not a fan of Juri, I love her theme and Luke’s has grown on me. I’m almost cer­tain there will be more addi­tions to my lik­ing as more sea­sons are released and revi­sions are made.

While there is so much to like here, I do have some nit­picks to address. First, while I’m a fan of see­ing famil­iar faces, there are so many return­ing folks that don’t need to be here. We are in a post-Street Fight­er III: 3rd Strike land in-game sto­ry-wise, so why are we still deal­ing with M. Bison/Super Dead Dic­ta­tor™? Cap­com said he real­ly was dead after the in-game events of Street Fight­er V, so hav­ing him as DLC is unnec­es­sary. Like­wise, I don’t need to know what Aku­ma is up to. I want more of the 3rd Strike char­ac­ters back and I want the mys­tery of G, my favorite Street Fight­er char­ac­ter, solved. Also, Cap­com bet­ter not give us a mil­lion paid revi­sions, either. They bet­ter roll out updates as free upgrades and act like they’ve learned their les­son dur­ing the past 34 years of Street Fight­er II agency. I say this because I can see the writ­ing on the wall, and I don’t want to have to pay for the next upgrade of the main­line series.

I love Street Fight­er 6. I love see­ing the plot pay­off of old­er games (i.e. Li-Fen, the young girl in the intro of 3rd Strike, is here and old­er, which helps tie down when the game takes place), and I love to see the con­ti­nu­ity of Street Fight­er and oth­er Cap­com games com­ing togeth­er. I real­ly enjoy play­ing SF6, it’s teach­ing this old dog new tricks and I find myself ful­ly invest­ed in the future of the grand­dad­dy of fight­ing games more than ever.

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

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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

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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

Street Fighter Alpha 2 — Issue 52

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Clas­sic Cus­tom Com­bo action

Street Fight­er Alpha 2 still a com­mu­ni­ty fave

Good but not great. That’s what Street Fight­er Alpha 2 rep­re­sents for me. I don’t hate the game these days. After a mature return to the game after many years spent ador­ing Street Fight­er Alpha 3, I can hon­est­ly say the game is a good set­up for the king of the hill that is Alpha 3.

Because Cap­com has advised that Street Fight­er Alpha 2’s sto­ry super­sedes Alpha’s sto­ry, we’re not rehash­ing any­thing here. Just know that every­one is after M. Bison at this point because he’s up to no good as he always is and will be, and Aku­ma enters the chat because he sup­pos­ed­ly killed Ryu and Ken’s mas­ter Gouken. Every­thing that hap­pens in Alpha 2 sets Alpha 3 up in a way that explains why M. Bison is so pow­er­ful by the end of the series and why he’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­er dur­ing Street Fight­er II. It’s com­pelling even if you’re a casu­al fan of Street Fighter.


The graph­ics haven’t made a sig­nif­i­cant leap between Alpha games and yet they some­how look clean­er. They’re chunki­er and larg­er, and you can tell they’re get­ting clos­er to the Alpha 3 stream­lined ver­sion that became the hall­mark of the Street Fight­er expe­ri­ence in the ear­ly to mid-2000s before the advent of Street Fight­er IV.

Thank­ful­ly, while there isn’t a big leap for­ward in the look between games, there is a siz­able improve­ment in the sound­track of Alpha 2. Quite a few tracks stand out and it’s worth hunt­ing down the playlist because there are some gems. It’s still not at the Alpha 3 lev­el but it’s get­ting there if you need reassurance.

What I did­n’t care for in Alpha has improved in Alpha 2: how it plays. The play feel has improved with the intro­duc­tion of Cus­tom Com­bos, and while clunky to exe­cute, it’s a nice change of pace for the series. They’re in their infan­cy here so don’t expect the absolute dom­i­nance of Alpha 3 V‑ISM but they are cool to see and it’s sat­is­fy­ing to get them to work con­sis­tent­ly in play once you know what you’re doing. Watch­ing high-lev­el play shows how Alpha 2 is meant to be played, and it demon­strates Alpha 2’s strengths: Nuanced strat­e­gy and a clean engine.

Alpha 2 does have its quirks, though. Some­times the game just does­n’t feel quite right and by that I mean, I don’t like how it feels some­times. It can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly feel slow and slug­gish but then it course cor­rects and the game plays like a dream. Com­bos work but then some­times, I strug­gle to get things going. I can’t place my fin­ger on it, even years lat­er, but there’s some­thing off about Alpha 2 but I’ve learned to accept it for what it is and over­all just accept Alpha 2. It may be because I did­n’t start the series until Alpha 3, but Alpha 2 does­n’t always feel right. I still pre­fer to play Alpha 3 in every respect, but accep­tance of Alpha 2 is a sign of maturity.

Alpha 2 is the mid­point of the Alpha series and that’s OK. It’s got its grow­ing pains but the growth is there and it’s still regard­ed as a strong fight­ing game. Alpha 2 has val­ue and as the mid­dle child of the series, it’s got a lot to offer and a cer­tain charm that is bright­ened by the fact that Cap­com learned its les­son and seem­ing­ly learned to count to three. Alpha 2 is a good bridge to greatness.

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams — Issue 52

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Start­ing at the beginning

Street Fight­er Alpha sets the tone for spin­off franchise

I promise I can see the poten­tial in the orig­i­nal Street Fight­er Alpha: War­riors’ Dreams. I can look down from my high perch of love for Alpha 3 and accept that the series came from some­where. After all, every series must have a start. But it’s a long hard stretch to say it’s an all-time great start.

Street Fight­er Alpha estab­lish­es the series’ sto­ry: After Ryu wins the first World Fight­ing Tour­na­ment (as depict­ed in Street Fight­er), he returns home to find his mas­ter Gouken mur­dered and sets out to get revenge. At the same time, Chun-Li, Guile and Char­lie — along with oth­er var­i­ous mem­bers of the cast such as new­com­er Rose — work togeth­er to take down M. Bison, who is work­ing to estab­lish his empire and achieve world dom­i­na­tion. Know two things about the sto­ry: One, it’s a sequel to 1987’s Street Fight­er and a pre­quel to Street Fight­er II; and, two, its sto­ry­line is sup­plant­ed by Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Cap­com deployed this strat­e­gy with the Darkstalkers/Vampire series as well, which was coin­ci­den­tal­ly cre­at­ed around the same time as Alpha. And this isn’t the only instance of crossover con­cepts, either.

Alpha plays and feels much like ear­ly Vam­pire as well. The new addi­tions of mul­ti-lev­el super com­bos and air block­ing are here, too, and like Vam­pire, rep­re­sent an upgrade from the days of Super Tur­bo. But, as much as I like the upgrad­ed mechan­ics, I don’t like how Alpha plays. It feels clunky and slow with a molasses edge to the movesets. While the series did even­tu­al­ly improve with time and speed adjust­ments, it’s painful­ly obvi­ous here that it need­ed a speed boost.


Alpha also resem­bles Vam­pire in pre­sen­ta­tion. The graph­ics are nice and big, and the sprites are nice­ly drawn. It’s an ear­ly ver­sion of the Alpha 3 pre­sen­ta­tion that we’ve come to know and love, and it’s pleas­ing to see it here. The music isn’t at the Alpha 3 lev­el yet, but there are a few tracks that might make you tap your toe. 

What I want­ed from the first game in the Alpha series shows up lat­er in the final game, but the start isn’t ter­ri­ble. It need­ed some work and giv­en that Alpha 2 made improve­ments on this sol­id foun­da­tion in Alpha, I think it’s safe to call this the beta of the Alpha series.

Score: 3 out of 5

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection — Issue 52

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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

Soulcalibur VI — Issue 48

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A new stage of history
Soul­cal­ibur returns to its roots

It’s been a long time since Soul­cal­ibur was good. And I mean, real­ly good, where it’s about the fight­ing and the locales and the sick char­ac­ter designs. Because make no mis­take, Soul­cal­ibur hit a brick wall right about the time of the fourth entry. Seri­ous­ly, no one asked for Star Wars draped all over Soul­cal­ibur, yet there we were with Yoda and the gang mak­ing them­selves at home in the series known for its sword and sor­cery. But then some­thing hap­pened: Some­one on Project Soul said, “you know what would be great? Return­ing back to the thing that made us suc­cess­ful in the first place: Soul­cal­ibur.” And here we are with the sixth entry and it’s a return to form.

Soul­cal­ibur VI is essen­tial­ly a retelling of the sec­ond game in the series, Soul­cal­ibur. The evil sword Soul Edge has fall­en into the wrong hands through­out his­to­ry, and it has now found its way into the embrace of one Siegfried. Sigfried, hav­ing lost his ten­u­ous grasp on san­i­ty and real­i­ty in gen­er­al, has trans­formed into the Azure Knight, bet­ter known as Night­mare, and begun wreak­ing hav­oc on the world in this demon­ic pos­sessed guise. There are those who seek the sword for right­eous rea­sons and those who seek it for greed and glo­ry, but the sword must be stopped. Because it’s a retread of Soul­cal­ibur, not too much has changed sto­ry-wise. The entire cast of the game has returned with some new folks sprin­kled in for good mea­sure. This is fine because that cast was leg­endary and set the stan­dard for future entries.


But what if you want­ed to do a lit­tle some­thing dif­fer­ent this time around? The excel­lent char­ac­ter cre­ator has every­thing cov­ered. This mode is so well done and such a time sink. I spent at least two hours mak­ing a rea­son­able fac­sim­i­le of the Cap­com’s Ruby Heart — my favorite pirate — and it was pain­less and easy to do, even with the default offer­ings. This cre­ator mode has been around a long time in Soul­cal­ibur — since the third game — but here it’s refined and pol­ished. I spent more time here than any­where else, and what I want­ed to make was only lim­it­ed by my lack of ideas.

Despite lack­ing in skill with Soul­cal­ibur over the years, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with the ease of jump­ing into fight­ing. I have had an extend­ed absence from the series, but I could still pull off moves and com­bos with old favorites like Mit­su­ru­gi, Cer­vantes, Ivy and Vol­do. The fight­ing felt pol­ished and clean, much like old­er entries, which is crit­i­cal in draw­ing in some­one like me that has­n’t real­ly played much since Soul­cal­ibur II.

Anoth­er good nos­tal­gic draw was the pre­sen­ta­tion. Soul­cal­ibur as a series has nev­er lacked in the aes­thet­ics depart­ment, and this game is no dif­fer­ent. It looks nice, with good char­ac­ter mod­els and entic­ing back­grounds. Because it’s basi­cal­ly a remake, the back­grounds are ref­er­ences to pre­vi­ous stages but with a more mod­ern cleanup job applied. I absolute­ly loved the orig­i­nal Soul­cal­ibur’s look and still do, and this ver­sion does good in remind­ing me of why that is. While not quite as ground­break­ing in its graph­ics as the arcade and Dream­cast port were 25 years ago, they’re still quite breath­tak­ing and beautiful.

And, there isn’t too much to dis­like about Soul­cal­ibur VI. I’m not fond of the AI dif­fi­cul­ty, which seems a lit­tle too spot­ty. A few match­es felt like rub­ber band­ing in the sec­ond round if I won the first round, but then if there was a third round, the AI would just stand there and let me wail away. That’s weird in a fight­ing game, but then again, most Soul­cal­ibur entries felt that way in the begin­ning of the series. I just wish that was fixed by the sixth game.

Over­all, Soul­cal­ibur VI tries to make up for the mis­steps of the past with a sol­id re-imag­in­ing and return to its roots. Though it’s been five years since release and no new con­tent has been on the hori­zon, it’s a still a viable fight­ing game for those who haven’t dived back into the world of souls. The soul still burns in this rehabbed and reformed sequel.

DanceDance Revolution Konamix — Issue 48

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Dev­il­ish danc­ing demon
There’s blood on the dance floor with Konamix

As a devout Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion fan, I’ve made it clear that qual­i­ty DDR is non-nego­tiable. And what I mean by that is, a mix has to be good. It has to have DDR orig­i­nals, maybe a few qual­i­ty licens­es and the inter­face has to be work­able. DDR Kon­amix, a North Amer­i­can port of DDR 4th Mix, is a semi-decent solu­tion to a real problem.

Kon­amix plays like every oth­er ear­ly pre-Super­No­va ver­sion of DDR. Step­ping on arrows in time to a song is refined by this point, so it’s noth­ing new, and scor­ing also remains the same as DDR 1st Mix through 3rd Mix. So, real­ly the most impor­tant aspect of this mix is the songlist, and there are some gems here. Some of our favorites appeared here for the first time in a North Amer­i­can release, such as PARA­NOiA Rebirth and SUPER STAR. The 52 songs in the track­list are all Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals, hence the name, and that’s a boon because that imme­di­ate­ly makes the list worth play­ing and makes up for a few weird issues.


But how does it play? In terms of DDR mix playa­bil­i­ty, it’s not user friend­ly like lat­er mix­es. The tim­ing is high­ly sus­pect, and adjust­ing that fea­ture in the options is stil­luse­less. Because of the dif­fer­ences in frame rates and mod­ern tele­vi­sions, try­ing to play this is a fool’s errand because it’s almost so off that you’re nev­er going to do well. The weird tim­ing issues mean a lot of Goods, Greats and Boos. Also, the inter­face is obnox­ious until you choose to use All Music. With every­thing unlocked, the All Music option makes the game tolerable. 

With a lot of flawed options and playa­bil­i­ty issues, DDR Kon­amix isn’t exact­ly a must-have. How­ev­er, only because of the Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals should you buy this; some of these beau­ties are rare enough that you’d need to import Japan­ese mix­es to see them again. While I have a nos­tal­gic fond­ness for Kon­amix because it was my first expo­sure to mod­ern DDR, I would only con­sid­er this mix if you want to be called a DDR master.