Tag Archives: fighting game

Garou: Mark of the Wolves — Issue 53

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Garou: Mark of the Wolves
SNK Play­more, 1999

Leav­ing an indeli­ble mark

SNK is still around doing things in this mod­ern fight­ing game land­scape. Their lat­est release, Garou: City of the Wolves, is a cer­ti­fied banger and is get­ting a lot of play in the crit­ic sphere because the orig­i­nal is so beloved. And that’s one of the best things Mark of the Wolves man­aged to do: Leave a good lega­cy and stay rel­e­vant 25 years later.
Mark of the Wolves does a lot of things with the Fatal Fury name for the sake of progress. Tak­ing place 10 years after the death of crime lord Geese Howard dur­ing the King of Fight­ers Tour­na­ment as depict­ed in Real Bout Fatal Fury, Mark intro­duces a new cast with Ter­ry Bog­a­rd return­ing to the fray to lead the charge. Ter­ry takes the young Rock Howard, Geese’s scion, under his wing to fight for South Town and jus­tice in gen­er­al. But the specter of Geese haunts them. And there is a new vil­lain in the mix, Kain, to take Geese’s place and up the stakes. The plot is inter­est­ing and engag­ing. Get­ting used to a whole new cast minus Ter­ry takes a minute and learn­ing their back­ground and moti­va­tion is fun.

The char­ac­ter designs are cool, as they are in most SNK games. The sprites look great and are large and detailed. The back­grounds, while col­or­ful, aren’t near­ly as detailed, though there are a lot of ani­ma­tions going on that make them live­ly. Over­all, the look isn’t too dif­fer­ent than what you’d expect from an SNK arcade game, but the Dream­cast does give it a lit­tle boost. 

The sound­track is a lit­tle gener­ic, which is sur­pris­ing because I was expect­ing some nice tracks. I’m spoiled by the often-maligned SvC Chaos, which had a great sound­track despite the sur­round­ing mess, because it was released in the same era by SNK. How­ev­er, despite the gener­ic under­tones, the sound­track does­n’t deter the sur­round­ing over­all product.

And the sur­round­ing prod­uct, game­play-wise, is fine. New mechan­ics, like the Tac­ti­cal Offense Posi­tion and Just Defend, are wel­come new pieces in the series’ reper­toire. Just Defend, which is like Street Fight­er III’s par­ry mechan­ic, has hung around and made appear­ances in oth­er games such as Cap­com vs. SNK 2’s K‑Groove so I’d say it’s a good addi­tion 25 years lat­er. And with the new mechan­ics, the game plays well, too. If I could pick it up and play it with lit­tle expo­sure to SNK’s style of fight­ing and do well, it’s safe to say that Mark has a good feel. That feel is present in the var­ied modes, with Sur­vival as the most fun out of all offered.

Mark is a great fight­ing game and still holds up well. It has the attrac­tion of ear­ly 2000s fight­ing game finesse, and it serves as a good intro­duc­tion to the world of SNK if you’re not well-versed in the series. A well-round­ed fight­ing game with strong mechan­ics and good envi­ron­ment are the marks of a future legend.

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 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

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.

Samurai Shodown — Issue 50

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Samu­rai Shodown has mag­nif­i­cent origin

The leg­endary fight­ing game series has impres­sive start with SNES adaptation

Fight­ing games were built a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly back in the day. They were expect­ed to be an exact copy of the arcade ver­sion they were borne from, they need­ed to play just as well as their arcade par­ents, and they need­ed to set up the next arcade ver­sion. The Samu­rai Shodown series was no stranger to these expec­ta­tions. And it could rea­son­ably meet them with the Neo Geo arcade sys­tem. But the debut 16-bit ver­sion of the beloved Sam Sho is a dif­fer­ent tale of the tape.

Samu­rai Shodown tells the sto­ry of revenge wrought by the res­ur­rect­ed Amakusa in 1787 and 1788 as he sought to avenge his exe­cu­tion by the Shogu­nate in 1638. Amakusa made a deal with the demon lord Ambrosia and drew oth­er fight­ers to him. Now-famil­iar faces dot the cast: Naoko­ru­ru and Haohmaru (from Cap­com vs. SNK fame), Gal­ford, Char­lotte, Earth­quake, and Jubei. It’s a fight­ing game with an inter­est­ing cast and sto­ry based on a few real fig­ures in his­to­ry, so it’s bound to draw interest. 

How­ev­er, what should real­ly send you is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Samu­rai Shodown — as not­ed in our review of the 2019 remake (Edi­tor’s note: See Issue 39 for the review) — is one of the most beau­ti­ful fight­ing game series ever cre­at­ed. And while we ini­tial­ly heaped that praise on the mod­ern ver­sion, it also extends to the retro ver­sion as well. Begin­ning with the intro­duc­to­ry screen, Samu­rai Shodown does not dis­ap­point in the visu­als. The lush, beau­ti­ful graph­ics go a long way in set­ting the scene of the vio­lence and beau­ty of the Edo peri­od of Japan­ese his­to­ry. Sim­i­lar­ly, the sound­track does­n’t dis­ap­point, either. Every­thing about the pre­sen­ta­tion is invit­ing if you’re into this sort of thing; spoil­er alert, I am, which should be obvi­ous by now with­in the con­text of Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion. It’s just that there is so much gor­geous to go around, and it should be praised because this is game graph­ics at its best, even in the 16-bit era.


Slight­ly less praise­wor­thy are the con­trols. Retro Samu­rai Shodown is noto­ri­ous­ly hard to nav­i­gate, and that’s on full dis­play here. Some­times I could get moves off clean­ly; some­times I strug­gled just to get a com­mon pro­jec­tile motion to work. It’s easy to pick up, but there is strug­gle, and it’s worth con­sid­er­ing if you can tol­er­ate that enough to con­tin­ue through the game. Also, real­ize now that in Arcade Mode, you’re going to fight every­one in the cast. There is no “let’s select six to eight oppo­nents from this very full cast;” no, you’re fight­ing every­one before you even sniff Amakusa so you will get lots of prac­tice with those hard movesets. How­ev­er, it is bro­ken up with pro­gres­sive­ly hard­er mini games, so this isn’t unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry. The Count­down Mode, a sort of ear­ly sur­vival mode, is a decent chal­lenge that also gets pro­gres­sive­ly hard­er. There is replay val­ue there, so that adds to the charm of an oth­er­wise bare­bones game.

If you can move past the so hard it’s a good hurt men­tal­i­ty of the orig­i­nal Samu­rai Shodown, there is a crown jew­el wait­ing to be played and dis­sect­ed. The death poem that is the dif­fi­cul­ty and con­trols in con­cert may be a detrac­tion but know that it remains beau­ti­ful lat­er down the fight­ing game road with improve­ments. It must start some­where, and this is a good start.

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.

Star Gladiator — Episode 1: Final Crusade — Issue 43

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Cap­com’s space opera side series sad­dles up

I pre­vi­ous­ly reviewed Plas­ma Sword, the sequel to Cap­com’s 3D weapon fight­ing game Star Glad­i­a­tor. I played Plas­ma Sword and real­ly liked Cap­com’s approach that com­bined ele­ments from Star Wars with ele­ments of ani­me and fight­ing games. Years lat­er, hav­ing played games like Soul­cal­ibur, I want­ed to play a fight­ing game with weapons. I’m glad I got my hands on the first game in the series, Star Glad­i­a­tor — Episode 1: Final Crusade.
In Star Glad­i­a­tor, in the year 2348 humans have explored space for cen­turies, allow­ing for reg­u­lar peace­ful and trade rela­tion­ships with var­i­ous alien life­forms. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some alien species have made threats against Earth, result­ing in a defense project cre­at­ed by Dr. Edward Bil­stein that uses ener­gy of the human mind or plas­ma pow­er. Once the project became known, Bil­stein gained fame and prof­it. How­ev­er, the Earth Fed­er­a­tion uncov­ers that Bil­stein engaged in unlaw­ful human exper­i­men­ta­tion dur­ing plas­ma pow­er research and impris­oned him in a satel­lite. Four years lat­er, a fed­er­a­tion base was attacked by dis­ci­ples of Bil­stein known as the Fourth Empire. With the Fourth Empire’s attacks toward Earth con­tin­u­ing, the Fed­er­a­tion’s hopes rely on a project allow­ing plas­ma-pow­ered users to acti­vate their gifts on a whim. That pro­jec­t’s name is Star Gladiator.
Star Glad­i­a­tor is a com­plete depar­ture from usu­al set­up for fight­ing games like Street Fight­er and Dark­stalk­ers. Instead of using a six-but­ton scheme for punch­es and kicks, Cap­com used a four-but­ton set­up that resem­bles Soul­cal­ibur. You have but­tons assigned for kicks, defense, and weapon attacks. I found this sim­ple and easy as I did not strug­gle with fight mechanics. 
You also have use of two counter moves called Plas­ma Revers­es: One is called a Plas­ma Reflect, which allows block­ing of an oppo­nen­t’s move and stun­ning them for a brief peri­od. The oth­er, Plas­ma Revenge, allows you to counter an oppo­nen­t’s fast attack while you unleash your own light­ing attack. Star Glad­i­a­tor also intro­duces the Plas­ma Com­bo Sys­tem, which allows you to set­up rapid attacks that, with the right tim­ing, can result in a tech­nique called Plas­ma Final that inflicts major dam­age. Final­ly, anoth­er stand­out fea­ture in Star Glad­i­a­tor is the plas­ma strike abil­i­ty that lets you deliv­er heavy dam­age, if timed per­fect­ly on the opponent. 
Keep­ing with the mechan­ics, let me deliv­er a safe­ty warn­ing: This game has a rotat­ing and hov­er­ing are­na that may cause motion sick­ness. With the rotat­ing are­na, if you are knocked out of bounds, you will lose auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I learned a hard les­son about using the Plas­ma Reflect and Plas­ma Final tech­niques: Like any oth­er weapon-based fight­er, your tim­ing must be accu­rate; oth­er­wise, your char­ac­ter will be open for a ring-out attack or Plas­ma Final that will end the round before you can blink. And, for those who see the Plas­ma Strike as an easy use any­time weapon: Plas­ma Strike is an impres­sive move; how­ev­er, it can only be used once per round. 
The graph­ics and music are top tier for a 3D fight­ing game from the era it was released. It looks good and tries hard but with­out being over the top. The replay val­ue is strong and is a great show­case for the start of the 3D weapon fight­er genre. 
Star Glad­i­a­tor is a clas­sic 3D fight­er that showed how fight­ing games tran­si­tioned from the arcade to the home mar­ket. I com­mend Cap­com for think­ing for­ward and not rely­ing on the same for­mu­la. Star Glad­i­a­tor is an exam­ple of Cap­com’s bril­liance in the fight­ing game are­na and the series is long over­due to return. There’s cer­tain­ly room for it in today’s space.