It wasn't so long ago that Capcom released Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers
as one of their earliest efforts for the then-fledgling Nintendo Switch, and yet the arrival of Street
Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection barely a year later is likely to leave Nintendo fans
asking, "Ultra Street Fighter what now?"
That's because 30th Anniversary Collection almost completely invalidates Ultra Street
Fighter II just by its mere existence.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo — which Ultra Street Fighter II was based on and modified
from — represents just one of the 12 games included in 30th Anniversary Collection's
generous lineup.
And with full online play supported for four of the most popular games in the collection
as well as a wealth of well-considered supplementary content for the game's exhaustive Museum
mode, it's hard to argue with everything on offer here.
If it already sounds like I don't have much of anything negative to say about Street Fighter
30th Anniversary Collection, well, that's because I don't.
Now, hardcore Street Fighter players will likely point to a few perfectly valid grievances,
such as the fan-favorite Street Fighter Alpha 2 being one of the offline-only titles or
Training Mode only being available for the four online-enabled games.
But for casual World Warriors like myself and, I suspect, all but the fussiest of pro
players, 30th Anniversary Collection represents Capcom's most exhaustive and exciting compilation
of playable Street Fighter history yet.
Included in this 30th anniversary celebration are the original Street Fighter, five different
iterations of Street Fighter II, the entire Street Fighter Alpha trilogy, and all three
versions of Street Fighter III — for a grand total of 12 Street Fighter games that are
playable offline, either solo or against a friend via good ol' head-to-head versus
play on a single console.
And even if Capcom had simply left it at that, it would be hard to argue against such an
exhaustive lineup of games.
But Capcom instead went the extra mile, making four of the most popular games in this collection
— Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha
3, and Street Fighter III: Third Strike — fully playable online and over local wireless.
Now, like I said earlier, while it's certainly a shame that specific fan-favorite games like
Street Fighter Alpha 2 aren't also playable online, I feel like the four games Capcom
did choose to update with online play are well positioned to please the widest possible
swath of fans and are well representative of each distinct " era" of Street Fighter's
gameplay.
And here's the really good news: based on my pre-release tests at least, Capcom has
not treated the online portion of 30th Anniversary Collection as an afterthought.
While it's true that online matches were hard to come by in the days leading up to
this review and I still haven't managed to find anyone playing Street Fighter II Hyper
Fighting online, I'm pretty confident that has more to do with the limited pool of people
playing 30th Anniversary Collection prior to release and I don't expect to have matchmaking
issues once the game is publicly available.
Why am I not all that concerned?
Well, because the online matches I did get into — whether by searching for a casual
or ranked match, joining an existing lobby, or having the game find me a challenger while
I played Online Arcade mode — were pretty smooth and enjoyable across the board.
Now, that's not to say I didn't encounter any lag or input delay, particularly during
a couple of Third Strike matches, but the majority of my online brawls in Third Strike,
Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo were stable and lag-free, if not
always perfect.
Of course, an online match is only as good as the Internet connections of its participants,
and indeed, any connection problems I encountered while playing online during the review period
seemed to occur on a player-by-player basis.
But I will be further testing 30th Anniversary Collection's once the game's public release
has introduced the requisite load on the game's servers, and if the online play doesn't
pass muster under real-world circumstances like it has during the review period, I will
be sure to post an addendum to my review saying so.
As far as the experience of actually playing the collection's 12 included games is concerned,
these ports all look and feel to be as arcade-perfect as one could possibly want from a collection
such as this.
That said, it is important to note that these are arcade ports, so those of you who grew
up with the console versions of these games may be in for a bit of a surprise.
Still, the fact that Capcom has wisely seen fit to issue a day-one patch in response to
fan feedback that adds a local versus mode for all 12 games — as well as a fully-featured
training mode for the four online-enabled titles — means that while 30th Anniversary
Collection remains firmly focused on recreating each game's arcade experience, it still
delivers some of the console-focused modes and conveniences that players at home have
come to expect.
30th Anniversary Collection includes the usual smattering of display size options, allowing
you to play any of the 12 games at their original aspect ratio, with the image stretched to
fit just the vertical edges of the screen, or with the image stretched to fit the entire
screen itself.
You can also turn on image filters approximating the appearance of a CRT TV or old-school arcade
cabinet if you so desire, and the included border art for each Street Fighter series
represented here look especially nice on the Switch's screen.
While it goes without saying that the Switch's various control options are ill-suited to
the precise directional inputs Street Fighter games require, all but the most serious players
will likely find that the Pro Controller and Joy-Con are good enough for casual play in
TV and handheld mode, respectively.
Fortunately, fight sticks are available on the Switch for hardcore fans who require them,
allowing players of all stripes to interact with 30th Anniversary Collection's games
in the manner that suits them most.
So we've established that 30th Anniversary Collection generally delivers on its promises
when playing one of its 12 included games on- or offline, but how does it fare when
browsing all of the bonus content tying it all together?
Well, Derrick has been taking the PS4 version of this collection for a spin while I've
been playing the Switch version for this review, and we both agree: 30th Anniversary Collection's
Museum mode delivers and then some.
In addition to a super-detailed interactive Street Fighter timeline recounting the series'
entire 30-year history from 1987 up to the present day, the Museum also offers a wide
range of detailed character profiles for nearly every fighter appearing in the games represented
here, a music player collecting the songs for all 12 games, and a "Making of" section
featuring genuinely cool curiosities such as the original Street Fighter's pitch document.
It's all really great stuff, and serves as a fantastic complement to the games included
here, filling out 30th Anniversary Collection's supplementary content in an exciting, meaningful
way.
One especially cool aspect of the Museum that I feel deserves particular mention is the
sprite viewer, which is baked into each character's profile and offers up a selection of that
character's in-game sprites to browse through at your leisure.
Even better is the fact that characters appearing in multiple generations of Street Fighter
games have each of their incarnations represented in the sprite viewer as well, so for example,
the sprite viewer for Chun-Li includes not only some of her animations from Street Fighter
II, but Super Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, and Street Fighter III as well.
Considering how the Street Fighter series is well-known for producing some of the finest,
most iconic sprite art and animation of all time, this particular aspect of the Museum
feels especially well-considered and is a huge plus.
The Switch version of 30th Anniversary Collection has one exclusive feature in a special Tournament
Mode that can be used when playing Super Street Fighter II locally, but it requires four Switches
to use so naturally, I wasn't able to test this out myself.
Obviously the appeal of this mode will be very limited given the hardware required to
use it, but the fact that it's included at all is a nice bonus for Switch owners who
play with other Switch-owning friends regularly.
Despite everything Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection does so right, there is one area
in which I have found it to be seriously lacking, and that's in the design of the menus and
other user interface elements tying all of the collection's content together.
Now, granted, this is an arguably minor point compared to the representation of the games
themselves, the quality of the online play, or the breadth of the Museum's complementary
bonus content.
But when you consider the inspired, franchise-appropriate designs of the UIs and menus in other recent
Digital Eclipse offerings like Mega Man Legacy Collection and The Disney Afternoon Collection,
it's hard not to wonder what went wrong here.
The menus and overall UI in 30th Anniversary Collection are perfectly functional, of course,
but that's about all they are — functional.
They otherwise look and feel completely devoid of any personality or branding that would
make one feel like they're playing a collection celebrating 30 years of gaming's most important
fighting game franchise.
This extends to the music used for the various menus as well, which unfortunately consists
of the emptiest, most forgettable, zero-excitement rearrangements of classic Street Fighter tunes
I think I've ever heard.
Now again, none of this is a particularly big deal in light of 30th Anniversary Collection
really sticking the landing in all the ways that matter most, but it's worth mentioning
nonetheless.
I also encountered a single bug in the form of some major stuttering that began as I started
up Street Fighter I, but that only happened once; backing out to the Home menu and relaunching
the game quickly fixed it, and it hasn't happened again since.
Hopefully this can be fixed in a future patch, but it's a very minor issue all things considered
and it certainly hasn't negatively impacted my experience with the game in any meaningful
way.
And really, that's a perfectly apt summation of my time with Street Fighter 30th Anniversary
Collection in general.
There's a staggering amount of content on offer here, and the promise of 12 arcade-perfect
ports spanning Street Fighter's 30-year history is largely delivered on.
Sure, playing with the Switch Pro Controller or Joy-Cons makes for an intrinsically flawed
control experience, but that's not a fault of the collection itself and I otherwise love
what Capcom and Digital Eclipse have put together here.
All early signs point to the online play being solid even if it needs further testing, and
the utterly exhaustive, well-curated Museum content is sure to be a treat for Street Fighter
historians.
Other than a strangely bland, completely forgettable user interface that doesn't exactly feel
celebratory, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is an excellent birthday present
for fans of the 2D fighting series that started it all.
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