While the Street Fighter II games kept their levels pretty much the same, the Alpha and III titles kept swapping stages and even music, such that the third game in each series was markedly different from (and better than) the first.Ĭapcom could have satisfied a lot of players by just bundling the final iteration of each franchise, but including all the interim titles lets you experience different settings as you fight. See and hear dozens of levels, including forgotten variations Some of the details are great - early logos, abandoned designs, and even hints as to why Final Fight characters joined the Street Fighter Alpha series.
The female ninja Ibuki, mystical Rose, and freaky science experiments Necro and Twelve introduced new fighting styles and character types that broadened the spectrum of fighting games.Įnjoy plenty of Street Fighter (and Final Fight) historyĬapcom also includes an in-game museum, showing off obscure screenshots, sketches, and promotional materials for various SF games, plus character bios and Making Of sections for each of the major releases. What was Capcom thinking with this guy?īut there are lots of interesting fighters, too. In a postmatch cutscene, you can see Alex insulting Elena, the game’s first African combatant, even though she’s a much better character, has fantastic animations, and fights on stages that are downright gorgeous compared with Alex’s trashy New York City levels. Take blonde wrestler bro Alex, who Capcom designed to become the star of Street Fighter III, despite being even less charismatic than the Russian grappler Zangief. Learn about Capcom’s biggest characters - and mistakesĮver wonder why Street Fighter fans get so excited when new games (such as IV and V) bring old fighters back? Well, there are a lot of them, including some odd ones.
Nintendo’s Switch gets a special nod here, as nearly the entire Street Fighter series can now be (mostly) enjoyed in a portable format. The retention of “everything” becomes more impressive with each successive title, as Capcom added more animations and better backgrounds as each series continued.
Look carefully and you might notice that the floor in Guile’s SF2 stage has been changed for some bizarre reason, but most of the original games are faithful to the originals. Here, you get all the original parallax scrolling layers, breakable objects, and character animation frames, plus the original sound effects and music. Truly arcade-perfect Street Fighter ports used to be rare because consoles couldn’t match Capcom’s arcade hardware - developers had to cut corners, particularly with the backgrounds.
Except for the Switch-exclusive Tournament Battle mode discussed below, all of the other games run only offline with single- and two-player options. Four of the games - Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Street Fighter III 3rd Strike - work in either local or online multiplayer modes across multiple consoles. It’s available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PCs I tested the Switch version.Ībove: Street Fighter III unsuccessfully attempted to pass the torch to a “new generation” of fighters, but over time, some of those characters have become popular in newer series releases.Ĭapcom presents each of the games in its original arcade format, pixel-perfect, with no internal loading times. We measured two entire generations of consoles in part by their ability to faithfully reproduce various Street Fighter games.Īs a longtime fan of the franchise, I’d call Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection a dream come true - Capcom and developer Digital Eclipse (the studio behind excellent retro compilations such as The Disney Afternoon Collection) include no-compromises, zero loading time ports of every major Street Fighter arcade title from the 1987 original through the 1999 release of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. I can’t overstate Street Fighter’s impact on the gaming industry: Capcom’s series of 1-on-1 fighters defined an entire genre, redefined competitive gaming, and led multiple companies to create some of their most famous franchises. Join gaming leaders, alongside GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming, for their 2nd Annual GamesBeat & Facebook Gaming Summit | GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2 this upcoming January 25-27, 2022.