Tag Archives: Capcom

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

Ultra Street Fighter II — Issue 51

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The sixth time’s the charm

Ultra Street Fight­er II needs to be the final final challenge

As a Street Fight­er fan of a cer­tain age, I can remem­ber the many jokes back in the day about Cap­com nev­er learn­ing how to count to three. It was­n’t a lie, though. Cap­com could­n’t count to three because they con­tin­ued to make major revi­sions to Street Fight­er II while oth­er fight­ing game series were start­ing and mak­ing sequels. More than 30 years lat­er, even after Cap­com learned what trés meant in New Gen­er­a­tion, Giant Attack and 3rd Strike, we’re still return­ing to the SFII well and I don’t know if this return trip with the buck­ets was worth it.

By now, we all know the sto­ry of Street Fight­er II: A bunch of World War­riors get togeth­er and fight the mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal dictator/drug runner/supernatural enthu­si­ast M. Bison. Some­one among the based crew that is Ryu, Chun-Li and Guile got their revenge and faced him at the end of the sec­ond World War­rior Tour­na­ment until the ever-present Aku­ma showed up and prompt­ly took Bison out with a well-placed Rag­ing Demon. Except that giv­en the sto­ry events of Street Fight­er V: Cham­pi­onship Edi­tion, this no longer holds true exact­ly (see Bison’s res­ur­rec­tion in Street Fight­er 6’s DLC). Any­way, at the point of Ultra Street Fight­er II: The Final Chal­lengers, Bison is dead, on his way to hell with gaso­line under­gar­ments on for his var­i­ous mis­deeds. This has always been Street Fight­er II’s sto­ry­line in its basest form, and noth­ing notable has changed about it in Ultra. 

The con­trols also are the same old Street Fight­er II that’s been played and rehashed to death dur­ing the past 35 years. It’s the same shoryuken, hur­ri­cane kicks, and hado­kens you’re used to, and to Cap­com’s cred­it, that’s the best thing they could have ever done. Don’t fix what isn’t bro­ken and what gen­er­a­tions have learned to cut their teeth on. That said, if you can play Super Tur­bo, you can play this because that’s all this is in terms of how to play Street Fight­er II. And to mit­i­gate the poten­tial issues, buy­ing a Pro Con­troller is a smart idea, but you already knew that if you bought this port because there is no way you’re casu­al­ly play­ing a port of a 35-year-old fight­ing game with­out know­ing you need a decent controller.

Now, the one thing that has changed is the graph­ics. Graph­i­cal­ly, this is more in line with the weird Street Fight­er II HD Remix that fea­tured ani­me style graph­ics. It’s kind of gor­geous but also kind of not. It feels a lit­tle like a rehash of that port and not too many peo­ple were clam­or­ing for it out­side of the fact that it was one of the few ports of Super Tur­bo released in the U.S. Some of the stages look great and ben­e­fit from the art style change and some of them just look rather meh. Also, one of the few things that mer­ci­ful­ly stayed the same is the sound­track. SFII has always had an excel­lent sound­track and it, too, is untouched from the Super Tur­bo version.

The new addi­tions to this are what’s going to influ­ence your deci­sion to get this or pass. On the ros­ter side of things are new­com­ers Evil Ryu and Vio­lent Ken. Why, they aren’t new you say? Exact­ly. They aren’t new at all if you care about Cap­com fight­ing lore. Evil Ryu is a main­stay evil ver­sion of the beloved Ryu who’s been hang­ing around ever since Cap­com USA for­got to ask if he was real or not in the hey­day of Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Vio­lent Ken is a lit­tle deep­er but not by much. If you played the weird SNK vs. Cap­com Chaos — bet­ter known as SNK’s attempt in the Cap­com vs. SNK series — you’d rec­og­nize this ver­sion of Ken. He also kind of made a what-if appear­ance in Street Fight­er Alpha 3 in the arcade sto­ry mode. While I get that they’re a nov­el­ty and peo­ple love these char­ac­ters for what­ev­er rea­son, I’m not sure I under­stand why we need­ed anoth­er ver­sion of Street Fight­er II to include them. Because for the folks play­ing along at home, this makes the sixth ver­sion of the game to be released as an offi­cial port. By the time this was released, Cap­com was talk­ing seri­ous­ly and mak­ing a lot of noise about Street Fight­er V, so this is unnec­es­sary quite hon­est­ly. And throw­ing in the mori­bund and extra Way of the Hado mode does not jus­ti­fy the need for a whol­ly new ver­sion of this game.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Street Fight­er II. It was instru­men­tal and paved the way for my favorite genre of video games. I’ve played every ver­sion of SFII at this point and every spin­off of it, too. But when it comes to these high­ly unnec­es­sary retreads of the same game that Cap­com won’t let loose, I have a prob­lem. As much as I have come to love the fran­chise in my lat­er years, I can’t stand that Cap­com beats the SFII horse to death while ignor­ing their oth­er viable fight­ing game fran­chis­es such as Rival Schools/Project Jus­tice and Vampire/Darkstalkers. We get it, Street Fight­er II is extreme­ly pop­u­lar. But Cap­com has released enough ver­sions of it to last a life­time and this ver­sion is not need­ed. Cap­com real­ly needs to let this be the final chal­lenge for sure.

Mega Man X Legacy Collection — Issue 47

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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.

Devil May Cry 2 — Issue 47

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You may cry over this dis­ap­point­ing sequel

 

 

 

 

Dante, Dante, Dante. Cap­com’s res­i­dent demon hunter/investigator has con­tributed great­ly to the com­pa­ny’s for­tunes. From var­i­ous mer­chan­dise and endorse­ment deals to a Net­flix series due lat­er this year, Dante is liv­ing large. How­ev­er, there are games in the Dev­il May Cry series that almost destroyed his ris­ing star. Dev­il May Cry 2 is one of those games.

In Dev­il May Cry 2, Dante and a new com­pan­ion, Lucia, join forces to bat­tle demons led by an inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­man named Arius whose com­pa­ny called Uroboros estab­lish­es itself on the island of Vie de Mar­li. Arius’ true goal is to find holy relics called Arcanas so that he can obtain the pow­ers of the ancient demon Argosax. Now locked in a race against time, Dante and Lucia must bat­tle against Argosax and put an end to Arius’ mad­ness before the world is plunged into eter­nal darkness. 

DMC2’s graph­ics and pre­sen­ta­tion had a nice approach instead of the usu­al hap­haz­ard scenery found in most hack-and-slash games. It’s nice that the DMC2 devel­op­ment team took inspi­ra­tion from West­ern Europe and the Mediter­ranean region and com­bined that with var­i­ous ele­ments from Japan­ese, Latin and Greek cul­tures and var­i­ous reli­gious ele­ments. How­ev­er, the parts of the deal­break­er with DMC2 soon appeared with var­i­ous scenes as poor­ly done clay sculptures. 

Fur­ther in the game, the graph­ics became more of a dis­ap­point­ment, despite giv­ing lee­way to the PlaySta­tion 2’s hard­ware capa­bil­i­ties in its ear­ly years. One of the most glar­ing issues involved the cam­era. The in-game cam­era was weird and clunky, zoom­ing in and out odd­ly in under­ground areas. And, it was too rigid when it need­ed to move with Dante. The con­trols were tank-like — Cap­com’s nor­mal stan­dard oper­a­tional pro­ce­dure — but it was more annoy­ing when I was shoot­ing at ene­mies long dis­tance and wast­ing ammo and mobil­i­ty. The tank­ing of Dante is counter to him being agile, which was a major sell­ing point that cat­a­pult­ed him to star­dom. Anoth­er issue was that the in-game store sold var­i­ous skill and weapon upgrades includ­ing health items but were ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive despite me hav­ing the abil­i­ty to gath­er more coins seam­less­ly here than in the orig­i­nal game. That’s a major turnoff because it’s a chore. More work for more expen­sive rewards is not fun.

The music of DMC2 was ser­vice­able; it feels like Cap­com’s renowned music team was told to phone in their work that was at best chop­py but accept­able. That’s a shame because all of it just seems mediocre and not the best that Cap­com could do for a series of DMC’s caliber.

While Cap­com attempt­ed to strike hot with a glob­al smash-hit prop­er­ty, they man­aged to fail because they treat DMC2 like their oth­er crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed series (Mega Man, Rival Schools, the Ver­sus series and Onimusha) not named Street Fight­er: like FLAMING GARBAGE. As a fan of DMC, Mega Man, Onimusha and var­i­ous Cap­com games, I’m incensed that these titles are beloved glob­al­ly, yet Cap­com does very lit­tle or noth­ing to do prop­er pro­mo­tion for them, yet they prof­it HUGELY from them. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Dante fell vic­tim to the Cap­com curse for which he can­not blame his black sheep broth­er — this time.

Dev­il May Cry 2 should have been the light­ning that struck twice. For­tu­nate­ly for Dante and Co., Cap­com man­age­ment saw the fol­lies of mis­treat­ment of a hot prop­er­ty and applied lessons learned in its future install­ments. As we say in GI HQ, “Know bet­ter, do bet­ter.” Cap­com should have done bet­ter with this sequel because they knew bet­ter. Dante should have been able to keep it styl­ish, but this is a major stum­ble in an oth­er­wise stel­lar jack­pot of a series.

Capcom Fighting Collection — Issue 47

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Give this col­lec­tion a fight­ing chance

Cap­com tends to tread a lot of the same ground these days. Whether it’s “get­ting back to their roots” with Street Fight­er’s mod­ern ver­sions or return­ing to the past with a lot of upgrad­ed col­lec­tions, Cap­com sure has a way of remind­ing you that, yes, they made Street Fight­er and a bunch of oth­er fight­ing games. The ques­tion is do we care? Yes and no, if this cur­rent col­lec­tion is to be judged.

I will admit that, despite being a strict Mor­tal Kom­bat old head, I am inclined to speak up about my favorite genre in fight­ing games and how it relates to Cap­com. This col­lec­tion, filled to the brim with noth­ing but Cap­com fight­ers, aims to show that Cap­com had some hits and mem­o­rable prop­er­ties. Fight­ing Col­lec­tion fea­tures 10 entries: Vampire/Darkstalkers 1–3, Vam­pire Hunter 2, Vam­pire Sav­ior 2, Cyber­bots: Full Met­al Mad­ness, WarZard/Red Earth, Hyper Street Fight­er II: The Anniver­sary Edi­tion, Super Gem Fight­er Mini Mix/Pocket Fight­er and Super Puz­zle Fight­er II Tur­bo, with the North Amer­i­can or Japan­ese ver­sions avail­able for play. In all cas­es, these are arcade rom ver­sions gath­ered togeth­er in one spot and you can freely switch between them on free play. Col­lec­tion-wise, this is a top-tier pack­age for those who love fight­ing games made by Cap­com. Main­stream mon­ey mak­er that’s still around today? That’s Hyper Street Fight­er II. Obscure weird fight­er that no one even knows that Cap­com made it? Take your pick from Cyber­bots and WarZard. Cutesy, chibi fight­er that unabashed­ly mocks its mak­er? Puz­zle Fight­er and Pock­et Fight­er have that on lock. Defunct series that should still be a thing, but Cap­com does­n’t pay atten­tion? All of the Vam­pire you can pos­si­bly shake a stick at sat­is­fies that require­ment. There is lit­er­al­ly some­thing for every­one here. But the ques­tion is, do you want it, espe­cial­ly now that you know what’s avail­able here? As ear­li­er, yes and no.

While the pre­sen­ta­tion is top-notch, the actu­al assort­ment of the games involved is a mixed bag. Gen­tle read­ers, I just com­piled and cre­at­ed an entire issue devot­ed to Vam­pire (Edi­tor’s note: That’d be Issue 46. Go down­load it now if you haven’t.) and its inner work­ings and the his­to­ry behind the series. Know­ing that, please explain to me why I have Vam­pire burnout and why I had it before I did that issue because of this col­lec­tion. Cap­com does this song and dance every sin­gle time Vam­pire is whis­pered some­where by some unsus­pect­ing gamer who loves the series and wants to see it once more have its day in the sun. I wrote an entire col­umn in that pre­vi­ous issue dis­cussing the need for a Vam­pire revival — a new game, not an old rehash — and how we were nev­er going to get that because Cap­com does the series dirty constantly. 

Well, would­n’t you know it, Cap­com pulled a skunk out of their hat by includ­ing all of the Vam­pire games here. It’s like they said, “Well, you asked for more Vam­pire. Here, be sat­is­fied that we released all of them final­ly in North Amer­i­ca and shut up.” You know, I’m slight­ly hap­py but I’m more offend­ed than any­thing else. Because, as you should have read by now gen­tle read­er, Cap­com is nev­er going to give us a new Vam­pire game with­out there being some weird­ness attached. And because this col­lec­tion sold “OK,” — not great, just OK — you know we aren’t get­ting a new game. Because it did­n’t set the world on fire in sales does­n’t mean the demand isn’t there. But I digress. Every­thing else in this col­lec­tion has been released in some way, shape or form in either region, so it was­n’t nec­es­sary for their inclu­sion, either. 

What I would have pre­ferred to see are Rival Schools, Project Jus­tice, Star Glad­i­a­tor and Plas­ma Sword. These are defunct Cap­com series that they also like to act like they did­n’t cre­ate. Rival Schools and Project Jus­tice are espe­cial­ly egre­gious because while they’ve been port­ed to PlaySta­tion Net­work, we haven’t got­ten a full, unal­tered port of either game. A mod­ern trans­la­tion of the board game and sim­u­la­tion mode in both games is not that hard, but I digress again because we know we are nev­er get­ting it. It’s a shame because this col­lec­tion as pulled togeth­er in 2022 could have used some bet­ter curation.

While I love Cap­com fight­ing games, I’m OK about this col­lec­tion. It’s nice to have these in a mod­ern pack­age for mod­ern con­soles but I’m not enthused about the behind-the-scenes fool­ish­ness that could have been avoid­ed with bet­ter curat­ing on Cap­com’s part. There are some heavy hit­ters that could have been includ­ed imme­di­ate­ly that would have made it a bet­ter pack­age, and the extras includ­ed could have been bet­ter also. How­ev­er, it’s not a ter­ri­ble pack­age and is infi­nite­ly use­ful and valu­able to the fight­ing game pop­u­la­tion so it’s not a total wash. Cap­com could col­lect bet­ter, though.

Darkstalkers Resurrection — Issue 46

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Dark­stalk­ers com­bo a fun,
fright­ful fight

Duo of Vam­pire Hunter, Sav­ior offered in package

At this point, we know what Dark­stalk­ers is and isn’t. My wor­ried brow of con­cern isn’t with get­ting a new one but more with the re-releas­es of the tril­o­gy of games and the two sup­ple­men­tal games released as upgrades. We know what to expect when it comes to Dark­stalk­ers, but as occa­sion­al com­pi­la­tions are released, we have to take a crit­i­cal look at whether it’s worth your time and cur­ren­cy to engage in Cap­com’s release the Krak­en in the form of remakes strategy.

Dark­stalk­ers Res­ur­rec­tion aims to do what Cap­com’s pre­vi­ous release in Mar­vel Origins

Vam­pire Sav­ior: Mor­ri­g­an vs. Jedah

did: Release two games in the series as start­ing points to get you to explore more. Res­ur­rec­tion con­sists of two games: Night War­riors: Dark­stalk­ers’ Revenge and Dark­stalk­ers 3. Both games are includ­ed in their entire­ty as Amer­i­can arcade ports emu­lat­ed on disc with extras added for the home release. Much as with Mar­vel Ori­gins, there’s online play and gallery unlocks from chal­lenges added. Every­thing has been giv­en a fresh coat of paint with new­er art and visu­als, which means a lot con­sid­er­ing Dark­stalk­ers 3 was released in 1997. All of this results in a nice-look­ing, souped-up package. 

Vam­pire Hunter: Dono­van vs. Jon Talbain

The game­play is as clean as it ever was, and because it’s emu­lat­ed from the arcade ports, it’s bet­ter than any oth­er release that came before it with the excep­tion of the PlaySta­tion 2 Vam­pire Col­lec­tion. Every­thing works the way it should in terms of com­bos and Dark­stalk­ers’ noto­ri­ous­ly hard-to-do moveset. The moves land the way you want and there’s no lag. Not­ing that this is an accept­able port for high-lev­el com­pe­ti­tion, Res­ur­rec­tion hits the right spot in terms of playa­bil­i­ty. If you want­ed to know how Dark­stalk­ers played in the arcade with­out try­ing to emu­late it with MAME or Fight­cade, Res­ur­rec­tion is your answer.

There real­ly isn’t any­thing wrong with Res­ur­rec­tion, either. The only annoy­ing thing about the game is the fact that it did­n’t sell well. That isn’t the game’s fault, though. This is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound port of two fan­tas­tic fight­ing games that play well and work well in what they’re being asked to do: Be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a long-dead fight­ing fran­chise to intro­duce new­er folks to the Vampire/Darkstalkers scene. It’s done its job admirably with strong mechan­ics and gor­geous updat­ed visu­als. You can’t ask for more from a retro fight­ing game. This fan­tas­tic fight­ing fright fest deserves more respect for its abil­i­ty to shine 25 years after its last release and should scare up a spot in your fight­ing game collection.

Demon’s Crest — Issue 46

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Fire­brand reigns supreme in ghoul­ish, ghost­ly, fiendish romp

Cap­com is known for its glob­al­ly renowned ros­ter of video game char­ac­ters. From Mega Man to Neme­sis, these char­ac­ters have cement­ed their lega­cy. Fire­brand, the red demon of death that is on that renowned ros­ter, made his bones and shows up to show out in Cap­com’s Demon’s Crest (no, not the dev­il’s toothpaste).

In Demon’s Crest, you take the role of the fire-breath­ing, head-butting hero Fire­brand through six stages as he tries to recov­er mag­i­cal crests, which are arti­facts with con­trol of the ele­ments and time. Accord­ing to Demon’s Crest leg­end, when these items fell into the demon world, a civ­il war erupt­ed with Fire­brand as the vic­tor claim­ing the crests of Earth, Fire, Wind, Water and Time. Fire­brand fought anoth­er demon named Somu­lo, who held the crest of Heav­en, and secured a vic­to­ry over the rival demon. How­ev­er, anoth­er demon named Pha­lanx attacked Fire­brand while he had low health, tak­ing pos­ses­sion of all the crests. This allowed Pha­lanx to sum­mon anoth­er crest that con­trols infin­i­ty. While Fire­brand recov­ered, he was impris­oned in an are­na guard­ed by the revived Somu­lo. After defeat­ing Somu­lo, Fire­brand begins his quest for vengeance and recov­ery of his well-earned spoils of war. 

Game­play is a com­bi­na­tion of plat­form­ing and Japan­ese RPGs mixed with ele­ments from Castl­e­va­nia and Metroid. Fire­brand has the usu­al plat­form­ing moves such as run­ning, and jump­ing, but can climb walls, tem­porar­i­ly float, and launch pro­jec­tile attacks with the help of the Fire crest. Fire­brand can pick up var­i­ous powerups from fall­en ene­mies to increase health and attacks in addi­tion to col­lect­ing coins to pur­chase for var­i­ous items found in shops through­out the demon realm. I also love that Fire­brand has some allies: Phora­pa, a demon who sell potions with var­i­ous abil­i­ties; Mal­wous, a demon that tells Fire­brand the secrets of tal­is­mans found from the human realm; and, Morack, who sells mag­ic spells to boost Fire­brand’s arsenal. 

The con­trols are sim­ple, yet require some nuance to remem­ber all of Fire­brand’s abil­i­ties. The fact that Cap­com decid­ed to take a fresh approach on the plat­form­ing instead of mak­ing anoth­er Ghosts n’ Ghosts was a wise choice to make here. The music fits the theme of each stage and main­tains the theme of the stage well. And much like the music, the graph­ics also won me over for the col­ors and artistry, espe­cial­ly when played on a mod­ern television. 

While I love most parts of Demon’s Crest, there are some not-so-good nit­picks to make. Cer­tain stages where per­fect tim­ing is need­ed to land on float­ing plat­forms across killer obsta­cles are annoy­ing. The pre­ci­sion isn’t there and it’s frus­trat­ing to attempt it mul­ti­ple times. Anoth­er strike comes when you play the bonus game. You must time your head-butting attack against demon skulls in a Whack-a-Mole-style game with a time lim­it. Con­sid­er­ing that if you lose, you also lose mon­ey, this is a prob­lem with the in-game econ­o­my. It makes you not want to play the mini-game at all. I also had issues with the Mode 7 view in Demon’s Crest. Although awe­some most of the time you use it in nav­i­gat­ing the demon realm, it weird­ly affects your vision if you fly around for a pro­longed time. 

Demon’s Crest comes from Cap­com’s attempt to do some­thing new and excit­ing. Ush­er­ing in a new era of plat­form­ing and hop ‘n bop action was Cap­com’s agen­da and it paid off. In the case of Demon’s Crest, they under­stood the assign­ment and passed.