Capcom Fighting Collection review – Hi, Felicia

When it comes to the fighting game genre, Capcom has long been the gold standard that has set the bar for an entire industry. While its two-fisted offerings mostly focus on Street Fighter–and for a good genre-defining reason–there’s more to Capcom than just Hadokens and Tiger uppercuts in that particular space. The Capcom Fighting Collection is a prime example of this, a tribute to the company’s past that bundles up 10 games and slaps on many extra features.

This isn’t the first time that Capcom has dipped into its vault of classic games, as the Capcom Arcade Stadium showed how to emulate arcade games on newer hardware and make them feel fresher than ever with a few well-received tweaks. For the Capcom Fighting Collection, the focus has been on adding rollback netcode for online play, a training mode to help you get to grips with some of the odder entries in the collection, and a museum that you can get lost in for days.

So what’s inside the new digital package? Plenty of Darkstalkers, a touch of CyberBots, a sprinkling of Vampire Saviors, and a hint of Street Fighter:

• Darkstalkers
• Night Warriors (a Darkstalkers game)
• Vampire Savior (a Darkstalkers game)
• Vampire Hunter 2 (a Darkstalkers game)
• Vampire Savior 2 (a Darkstalkers game)
• Red Earth
• CyberBots
• Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
• Hyper Street Fighter II
• Super Gem Fighter Minimix

For fighting game purists, that’s a treasure trove of content right there. Hyper Street Fighter II is a classic genre-defining Street Fighter in one of its best forms, while Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is an adorable game of puzzles and punches that still packs a knockout blow with its appeal. In the CyberBots department, you’ve got a terrific brawler that feels like Pacific Rim meets Transformers, with its fast-paced action and satisfying feedback.

Red Earth is an underrated fantasy fighting game that had some novel ideas built into it that were clearly ahead of its time, and it’s an absolute delight to see it thrust back into the spotlight given its obscurity. From there, the focus is on Darkstalkers, one of Capcom’s most beloved franchises that fans have been dying to see revived. While a new Darkstalkers game likely won’t be seen for many a year, this collection of titles from the series still has plenty of old-school charm and style to spare.

Suppose you ever wondered why Darkstalkers fans sing the praises of this series. In that case, the included set of games will get you hooked with their smooth combat, chaotic strings of attacks, and an amazing roster of varied supernatural warriors. It has been almost a decade since Darkstalkers Resurrection was released in 2013 on Xbox 360 and PS3, but this selection of arcade classics had me tossing coins at my screen thanks to the sheer abundance of genre quality on display.

Every game in the Capcom Fighting Collection also comes with a few handy quality-of-life upgrades. You can easily save your progress through each game; you don’t have to worry about running out of tokens thanks to each title being set to free play mode (unlimited lives!); and controls now feature special moves assigned to the left triggers and shoulder buttons. These aren’t major upgrades, but they’re very inviting for anyone picking up games with some mechanically complex combos for the first time ever – making the compilation more accessible overall.

Each game also benefits from Capcom’s eye for authentic detail, as you can apply several different filters that make each title look like the real deal. From more polished pixels to CRT scanlines, you can recreate an arcade experience that’s so believable you’ll be double-checking to see if anyone left a token on the cabinet to call dibs on the next round. You can also apply custom frames, track in-game challenges for extra digital kudos, and pay a visit to an arcade tour of the past that’s got more content than a wing of pilfered national treasures locked up in the British Museum.

Easily the biggest upgrade here, though, is the aforementioned rollback netcode. If you’re unfamiliar with this term and why it’s the most requested feature in a fighting game, it’s because the service delivers almost zero-lag gaming from across the world using clever software, uncanny predictions, and possibly black magic. It just works.

In an age where couch co-op isn’t so commonplace, that makes setting up a few rounds of Hyper Street Fighter II or Darkstalkers an absolute breeze. Plus, you can select any game you want to queue for at the same time so that you can be dropped into one of these classics when the time is right. But what’s the catch here? At the time of writing, the Capcom Fighting Collection doesn’t include crossplay between platforms. This means that grabbing a random round of dark magic pugilism can become a waiting game.

With a large number of games that already splits the playerbase up significantly, and locking online to specific platforms, that base is fragmented even further. Custom lobbies do provide some relief though, and I have to admit that I’m absolutely enchanted by watching high-level Vampire Savior matches before I hop in and get absolutely trounced by the pros. Hopefully, this is one area that Capcom can rectify soon in an otherwise superb package.

Cult-classic fighting games, unheard of curios from a bygone age, and the effortlessly charming appeal of chibi street fighters pummeling puzzling jewels in a race against time, makes for a great compilation of retro combat.