Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection review code provided by the publisher.
With games being pulled off digital platforms such as PSN, Steam and Xbox Live at the whims of their platform overlords and often without warning, it’s arguably more important than ever before that the gaming industry addresses the conservation issue that has long shadowed its outward and future focused ambitions.
So it is then that Capcom should be commended for what they’ve wrought with the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection; a careful curation of Street Fighter’s best two-dimensional, sprite based endeavors that has had an extraordinary amount of love and care lavished upon it, this is the best way right now to experience the landmark labors of the most recognizable fighting franchise in the industry.
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection Review: A Superb Collection
As would be expected from its collection suffix, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection punches well above its weight from a value perspective as it packs in a dozen games that collectively span some twelve years of Street Fighter history.
Starting with the very first Street Fighter, though rightly credited as the beginning of what would later be the most popular fighting franchise ever known, Street Fighter the First is in fact a bit poor to say the least with high latency, unfair AI enemies that do more damage the further you get into the game and extremely limited fighting mechanics. The nadir of the package to be sure, but one which is good to have all the same for reference and completionist purposes if nothing else.
With the Street Fighter II series of games, of which this collection encompasses five different iterations (The World Warrior, Champion Edition, Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super and finally, Super Turbo), we finally see Capcom’s venerable fighting franchise hit its stride and even some 27 years later these games all hold up as resolutely great examples of the genre in their own right. Fascinatingly, the presence of all five variations of Street Fighter II in this package also allows players to see how Capcom gradually evolved the base Street Fighter II experience into something far more formidable with the final arcade title in the series Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
Beyond Street Fighter II, this collection also packs in arcade perfect versions of Street Fighter Alpha 1, 2 and 3, in addition to equally arcade perfect versions of Street Fighter III: New Generation, Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact and finally, Street Fighter III: Third strike. Quite honestly, this collection is worth owning for just the Street Fighter Alpha games alone as this compilation marks the first time all three of these games have been playable since the PS2 days, while the games themselves introduced whole new aspects to the Street Fighter franchise such as air blocking and Chain Combos and remain eminently playable and highly enjoyable in their own right.
Then there’s Street Fighter III. Arguably one of the greatest fighting games ever made (2D, or otherwise) in the mind of this author, Street Fighter III’s ambitious overhaul of the series fundamentals alongside the introduction of new elements such as parries, leap attacks and Super Arts all add up to create a game that even today still has a solid place in the competitive fighting game scene. Simply put, if you’ve never played the Street Fighter Alpha or Street Fighter III games before then this is the best time to remedy that particular transgression.
Though the dozen-strong offering that the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is undeniably compelling, the absence of the video game adaptation of Street Fighter: The Movie rankles somewhat as the game is referred to in the collection’s historical materials and it would have been nice (much like how it is ‘nice’ to have had the very first Street Fighter game included, for instance) for players to be provided with the opportunity to play this particular stinker, if only to fully appreciate the full scope of the misstep that Capcom made with that game.
Furthermore, the comprehensiveness of this collection gets called a little more into question when we consider the fact that the games included within its offering are arcade perfect, rather than ‘home perfect’. This is a somewhat of a larger issue that it might initially seem as all the games that are included in the collection are the untouched, vanilla editions that appeared in the arcade and weren’t the beneficiary of the additional tweaks and content that the later released console versions would receive.
An example of this is Street Fighter 3 Alpha. After its debut in the arcades, there were no less than three additional editions of the game that were released on home consoles which brought a range of extra characters and tweaks. When compared to Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX which released on the PSP, the version of the game that you get in this collection is seen to be missing no less than 10 characters from its roster, including the likes of Evil Ryu, Maki and Fei Long to name just a few. It’s possible of course that such issues might be addressed by a healthy amount of post release patching, but as it stands right now, this collection isn’t as perfectly comprehensive as it could be.
In terms of the multiplayer side of things, all twelve games support local competitive multiplayer but only four of the games, Street Fighter II: Turbo Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike are able to accommodate online multiplayer, ranked matchmaking and online lobby functionality.
Though this will surely prove a blow to the three people in the world who are looking to test their skills against the rest of the planet on the very first Street Fighter, it makes sense for Capcom to prioritize their network infrastructure to encompass the more popular and recently realized versions of these games given the activity of the competitive scene that still surrounds them. Oh and speaking of which, the netcode appears to be flawless when played across all four titles, with no discernible latency and game sessions that were quick to get into.
Beyond the largely stellar offering of fighting game goodness that this collection provides, so too does it seek to educate on the storied history of the franchise. The museum section where such factoids are stored isn't just a love letter to the rich heritage of the Street Fighter franchise, it's an entire postal depot that is painstakingly dedicated to providing historical facts of all the games, music for each title, bios for each fighter and even frame by frame breakdowns of many of the characters moves across all the games they star in. It’s a loving act of scrutiny on the history of one of the greatest franchises in the industry today, and both series veterans and the uninitiated will find plenty of interesting things to uncover as they delve into the heritage of Capcom’s magnum opus.
More than just a commendable exercise in video game history preservation, Capcom has not only managed to assemble some of the greatest fighting games of all-time under one roof on a contemporary PlayStation home console, but they’ve also infused such a passion for the history of the Street Fighter franchise that other collections in the future will now have a soaringly high benchmark to clear. Though not quite perfect, such a fact detracts little from one of the most compelling fighting game ensembles in recent years.
If you enjoyed our Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection review, you might want to take a peek at our constantly updated feature that covers some of the best fighting games you can get on PS4 right now.