Up for another version of Street Fighter II on Switch?
Much like with their Street Fighter Collection before, these are slightly tweakable Arcade Roms, which is disappointing. For instance, no version of DarkStalkers has the full 18 character roster, unlike the PS1, PS2 and PSP console releases. Other games, like Cyberbots, had bonus characters on their console releases which, sadly, aren't here, so no Cyber-Akuma for anyone. This also means that you get nothing besides Online Play, Arcade Ladder and a Training Mode. That said, you can play around with damage/handicap values, number of rounds, make secret characters easier to select(Not that the game tells you how it works), etc.
Onto the games!
Darkstalkers: Has aged pretty well, it features 10 characters, 12 counting the bosses. It was pretty fast-paced, which I didn't remember. All the characters are freaks or monsters of different kinds, which, you know, can somewhat get in the way of finding YOUR character. If you like sexy girls you are in luck, however, as the females are pretty much human-like. Bishamon can kill opponents by cutting them in half, which was pretty neat. Another thing that I found surprising was that Super moves have no freeze-frame or fanfare. Overall? I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I've always been so used to DarkStalkers 3 on PS1 that I felt previous iterations, considering every subsequent entry expands on the previous one, wouldn't be as enjoyable, but I was wrong.
NightWarriors: Darkstalkers Revenge: Two new characters, Donovan and Hsien-Ko, plus, the bosses from DS are now playable by default. Now the Special Gauge behaves more like a Super gauge, you can stock it and what not, and use it on EX or Super moves when you wish. All the stages from the previous game return, albeit recolored, which is kinda lazy, and the default(weak punch) colors for every returning character was changed, sorta like Street Fighter Turbo did, but at least you can find their older colors. Oh, and it has the same endings for returning characters. All in all, it's Darkstalkers 1 but slightly better.
Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire: 4 new characters: Baby Bonnie Hood, Q-Bee, Lillith and Jedah. The last two I love and are among my favorite fighting game characters EVER. However, it removes Donovan, Pyron and Huitzil, which is rather baffling. Very similar to the previous game, but now you fight with a double lifebar instead of having rounds, and you can use Super Stocks on DF powers, some characters having access to two different DFs, that grant them extra abilities for a short while.
Vampire Hunter 2: Darkstalkers' Revenge: No Jedah, Q-Bee, Lillith or BBH... but Donovan, Huitzil and Pyron are back. DFs were removed. Endings are just a text scroll. In Japanese. As you can tell... I didn't really care about this one, as it's missing my favorite characters in the series.
Vampire Savior 2: The Lord of Vampire: Has Donovan, Pyron and Huitzil, as well as Jedah, BBH, Q-Bee and Lillith... but no Sasquatch, Rikuo or Talbain. No endings. Yeah, not much else to say about it. If I had to play VH2 or VS2 I'd go with this one, since I can play as Jedah and Lillith. I sorta miss Talbain, tho.
Cyberbots Full Metal Madness: This one features 6 different pilots, which is basically 6 different arcade routes, as well as 4 robot lines with 3 variations each. That's a grand total of 12 characters, 16 counting the bosses. Gameplay is a bit different from the previous games, as this one has 2 attack buttons as well as a Weapon buttons for offense. One of the fun bits about this game is that enemies can lose limbs, and therefore, access to certain moves, until they pick it up again. It's an interesting game, but it's no Gundam Battle Assault. That said, this is the game from which Jin Saotome, of MvC fame, originated!
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: Has 11 characters, as well as 3 secret characters, all of them brought from DarkStalkers and Street Fighter... as well as one from Cyberbots. They have been super-deformed, so as too look cutesy. It's a competitive take on Tetris. It's decent, but not my cup of tea.
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix: Taking the very same style, as well as a few sprites, from SPFIIT, this one is a traditional fighting game, albeit much simplified and cute-ified. Characters range from Warzard, DS, SF II, Alpha and 3. You get three atack buttons: Punch, Kick and Strong. Strong is sort of a special button, as you can use different moves by holding down a direction on the dpad, and charge them. For a ton of Super and Strong moves, the characters will do wacky staff, such as cosplay other Capcom characters(Felicia dresses up as many DS characters, as well as Megaman!) or dress up in different costumes, like Ken turning into a Cowboy or Sakura into a cheerleader. Landing attacks, or getting attacked, makes the victim drop gems that can be picked up by any combatant, and these gems power up your special moves! As cute as this game is... Dan's ending has Sakura call his moves retarded!
Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition: A version of the PS2 release of SFII. You can play as any version, from any of SF II's major iterations, of every character. Arcade Route defaults you on Super Turbo opponents, however. It's... well, it's another version of Street Fighter II. Probably the most interesting one, but, another version nontheless.
Red Earth: I have always LOVED this one, always used to download the rom on every new Computer I got. I liked it that much. It only has four playable characters.... because this is an RPG/Fighting hybrid. You take one of your four characters and battle 8 boss-opponent-monsters on 1 on 1 fights, leveling your character as you go along, thus getting new moves and increased stats.
While most of the games in this collection are DarkStalkers, in a way, I think this is a better set of games that the one in Street Fighter Collection. Mind you, Apha and 3 are brilliant games, but eventually you can get tired of so many iterative games. This one has much more variety, which is a huge advantage, plus, the difficulty settings for these games are much more accessible, read, less CHEAP and unfair. Hyper SF II is still pretty bad about it, however, with the AI downright cheating. Regardless, I think this is a fantastic collection of games, and I hope Capcom keeps doing this with their old games. Now, even if it's just an emulator running roms, I hope Rival Schools and its sequel are next!
8.5
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