Game #883: Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

  Street Fighter's Alright Collection.

 Dude, I love Street Fighter. I can vividly remember LOVING the hell out of a bootleg family conversion of Street Fighter II. Years later, as a teen, I'd come across a bootleg copy of Street Fighter Zero II on a flea market, which would rekindle my love for the series. Heck, as of today, Street Fighter III remains one of my favorite fighting games of all times, the animation is superb and the Parry is the best mechanic ever added to a fighting game, having to tap forward, and thus forgoing the ability to block in coming damage for a change at avoiding chip damage or getting an opening on your enemy is PURE brilliance. And it's because I hold so much love for the series that I can't help but feel like Street Fighter: 30th Anniversary Collection could've been so much more.

 The game features 12 games. The first six are made up of Street Fighter 1, which is absolute garbage but a neat addition to a compendium like this, as well as five versions of Street Fighter II, vanilla, Championship, Turbo, Super, Super Turbo. Then we get Alpha 1, 2 and 3, as well as the three versions of Street Fighter III. It's a decent offering, although I would've quite liked Street Fighter IV thrown in here, but I guess having all versions of SFIV would've taken too much space, plus, the PS4 version of USFIV was poorly received. 

 So where does this collection come apart? Two words: Arcade Perfect. These are perfect conversions of the Arcade versions of these games, which is great for Arcade pundits, but... Most of these games received fantastic console ports with a bevy of additions that are sorely missed. There are 0 extra modes, no Survival, no Varial Battle, no Training, nothing but Arcade Ladder or VS player. And online, if you're into that. Street Fighter Alpha 2 had an upgrade, Alpha 2 Gold, that added Cammy, but that version of Alpha 2 isn't here. Alpha 3 is fantastic, but the console port added the missing SF II characters, like Guile and Blanka as well as a few others, but they are nowhere to be seen. Heck, even the PSP had the Alpha 3 Upper that included the bonus characters from the PS1/DC port, as well as the GBA bonus characters as well as Ingrid from Fighting jam. All the bonus unlockable colors from Street Fighter III? Tough luck.

 It's not just that, the games didn't even get tweaked just for convenience sake, having to go through dumb codes to pick the bosses in Alpha 1 is so dumb and archaic, was it too hard to add new slots to the character select screen? The fact that you can't map all three Punch and all three Kick buttons to a single button is downright offensive, considering pretty much every single Street Fighter home port had that option to make up for the joystick's button arrangement. Options for each game are very limited as well, you can only change the difficulty and sometime increase or decrease the damage or speed multipliers. You can't fiddle around with amount of rounds or time per round, which is frankly quite disappointing.

 And, by the by, the Switch is the least ideal console to play this game. The joycons just aren't up to snuff. Trust me, I've played the GBA and PSP versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3, I'm used to less than optimal controls, but the Joycons are easily the worst. I love having so many versions of Street Fighter on the go, and I can put up with these controls, but dang if they aren't wonky, I never struggled so hard getting super moves to go out.

 It's not all bad, y'know? The game offers a fairly extensive gallery, filled with art and information about every game and every single fighter, including being able to see the sprites for each of the characters' super moves. If it was up to me I'd have given access to the full sprite sheet for each character, but it's still a neat extra.

 Here's the thing... this is an average collection of a TON of great games. If you are into the competitive scene and grew up with Street Fighter on the Arcades, then this is everything you'd want and then some. But while I played a bit of Street Fighters on the Arcades, most of my experiences with the franchise came through the fantastic console ports. And while you could argue that the point of the collection was to bring Arcade Perfect ports to the consoles, I'd argue that they could've easily fit some of the console conversions in this pack. So, yeah, it's alright, and if I ever want Street Fighter III on the go I can simply pop this cart on my Switch and enjoy, but I think I'll stick with the PS2 ports otherwise.

7.0