Capcom Fighting Collection

[Creamy Goodness]

The hits keep coming with Capcom rereleases. They just announced the Capcom Fighting Collection. 10 games most of which coming from the Darkstalker series. I think a couple are the Japanese versions of Darkstalkers 2 and 3. It also has Super Gem Fighter, Super Puzzle Fighter and Red Earth. Only games on the collection to have been released recently are Cyberbots and a new version of SSF2Turbo. All I know is this is a day 1 physical purchase for me if available.

https://youtu.be/SRhZubDIytc

[jonatan33]

The Darkstalkers' affection for one another is really wonderful! The last time these games were re-released was on the PS3 and Xbox 360, so it's fantastic to see them coming to newer consoles, especially Red Earth, which has never been released on a home console before! Even if you're not particularly talented at fighting games, these are still worth picking up to show your support for Capcom and to express your want to see more of their older titles brought back.

[BEAMLORD]

I'm not much into tournament fighters on the whole, so not especially bothered about this release. But I'll echo some of the opinion I saw over on the Twitterz, in that I wonder what it means for the future of Capcom Stadium Arcadium?

I was looking forward to some rolling augmentation to the game roster, there. These games would've been ripe for the pickings.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I'd definitely rather get genre-grouped proper releases like this ahead of expanding the Arcade Stadium package. They might dump the games in eventually anyway - I think everything from the Belt Action collection is in there, but only some of the Street Fighter one.

I wonder if this, being Darkstalkers-heavy, will be used to gauge whether a new Darkstalkers would be worth them investing in? But also, debut home port for Red Earth - no idea if it's any good though!

[Jeneki]

Always nice to get another release of Puzzle Fighter. Oh, they toss in some extra games with it as well? I guess that's ok.

[velo]

I'm not much into tournament fighters on the whole, so not especially bothered about this release. But I'll echo some of the opinion I saw over on the Twitterz, in that I wonder what it means for the future of Capcom Stadium Arcadium?

I was looking forward to some rolling augmentation to the game roster, there. These games would've been ripe for the pickings.

If Capcom is making noise about this and still saying nothing about Stadium, I think it's GOT to be dead.

I'd definitely rather get genre-grouped proper releases like this ahead of expanding the Arcade Stadium package. They might dump the games in eventually anyway - I think everything from the Belt Action collection is in there, but only some of the Street Fighter one.

I wonder if this, being Darkstalkers-heavy, will be used to gauge whether a new Darkstalkers would be worth them investing in? But also, debut home port for Red Earth - no idea if it's any good though!

I was hoping they'd add online to CAS. Now they're selling CAS games individually rather than in packs, so we the consumers don't seem to be coming out ahead with mandatory bundles. Knights of the Round and King of Dragons never made it to CAS, and somehow neither did the western version of Powered Gear (Armored Core).

[Sima Tuna]

So here's the thing. I was super excited when I saw the announcement, but then I had this thought when I saw the number of games listed.

"What if they just fill this shit out with stuff that's already been released and only give us one or two really big hits?"

Well... They didn't exactly do that, but I still kind of think that's not too far from the mark.

I am a massive Darkstalkers fan.

Spoiler

I discovered it on the psp, then got really mad when I realized how bad the input delay of the psp version was. So I downloaded the ps1 version of DS3 off PSN and it controlled a lot better. I don't know what the actual lag numbers are, but I can tell you that the psp collection had lag you would definitely feel, which is a killer for games with such precise inputs.

I have purchased darkstalkers, by which I mean all 3 games, at least twice over per game. I ended up buying every version of Darkstalkers you could buy on the PSN. I love, love Darkstalkers.

But we didn't need 4+ Darkstalkers games on this collection. We only needed DS3 with really good netcode. Darkstalkers 1 and 2 are kinda cool, but Dark3 is the showstopper. It's like putting Hyper Fighting in with SFII Turbo on CAS. At a certain point, you're just putting in filler so you can inflate the number of games.

Some of these other fighting games have also been released recently. SSF2Turbo has been released a billion times on every modern system. Cyberbots is on CAS (btw, this is probably proof CAS is dead.)

Gem Fighter Mini Mix and Red Earth are cool. Those are fun games and it's nice to see them finally. But I wouldn't buy a $40 collections for two games. Gem Fighter probably isn't a game most people will dig deep into. I have played it and it feels a little shallow.

I mean, I would get this collection if it were $15-20, maybe. Just because it's fucking Darkstalkers and I love Darkstalkers so, so much. But I'd still feel like I'm throwing my money away. What do I even get? There's a bigger audience to play these era of fighting games on fightcade and single-player in old arcade fighting games is usually garbage. If you buy it on a console, eventually the online will probably go down and you won't be able to match with anyone at all, not to mention that PvP is always paid on console instead of free on PC. If I knew somebody else IRL who really loved Darkstalkers and I could get local matches or events going then it'd be another thing. Same for Red Earth.

There are only so many console players on any console who want to play SF2 Turbo, and they'll gravitate towards whatever version of the game retains the most players. If it's not this version then Capcom may as well have not included the game, tbh. Are there even people playing the CAS version of Cyberbots online now on consoles??? I mean, that game is two fucking dollars! If they won't play a $2 game then why would they play a $40 game?

It's weird to me they call this a fighting bundle when it's mostly darkstalkers games, too. Should have called it darkstalkers complete collection, sold it for $20 with Red Earth/Gem Fighter as extras. As always, Capcom are refusing to include all the cool licensed shit that people really, really want, like xmen vs SF, MvC, Capcom vs SNK 2, JoJo etc. They won't release AvP to the beat em up bundle and now they're releasing a "fighting game bundle" that lacks most of their famous fighting games because of licensing yet again. Capcom is a successful company and you'd think they could pony up enough cash or a fair enough split to get other companies on board with releasing this stuff. Especially SNK.

TL; DR I think the collection is too expensive for what it offers and most of the games will lose their playerbases very quickly. Darkstalkers 3 has a niche and SF2T could become "the" version if the port job is good enough. But, for example, all those extra versions of darkstalkers are probably gonna sit there alone and unloved a majority of the time. The cross-section of people who a) know what darkstalkers is b) love it, c) want to buy it instead of playing on fightcade, d) care about the different games and want to play all of them regularly is probably pretty tiny.

I also think Capcom should have included Alpha 3 MAX if they're gonna start throwing in shit they've released before.

[Austin]

Nice to see Darkstalkers getting some more love, but the "10 games!" marketing is BS.

[Rastan78]

I think it's really hard for a collection like this to hold its value for more dedicated online players bc we've reached the age where so many have moved on to fightcade. I remember the days of playing 3S on the online edition for 360. There were robust features, good net code and you could easily invite players to a lobby, save your replays etc. There was a large player base from beginner to expert. SF 30th was a big step back. You will mostly find scrubs playing SF 30th. So I'll be surprised if this holds up in that regard.

FYI that's not ST on this collection. It's the Hyper SF Anniversary game that came out in the early 2000s for arcade and PS2. The main draw to this version is you can pick any character from SF2 history. So you can get super cheap and play broken CE Bison etc.

[velo]

If they *hadn't* included all the DS games, people would have faulted them for laziness. DS3 + HSF2 + Red Earth + [choose one puzzle game] with decent netcode for $40 is about par for course. They made some minor bug fixes as well. SF 30th supposedly had all kinds of problems, so if this is better-executed, perhaps the online will be more lively.

[Sima Tuna]

I think it's really hard for a collection like this to hold its value for more dedicated online players bc we've reached the age where so many have moved on to fightcade. I remember the days of playing 3S on the online edition for 360. There were robust features, good net code and you could easily invite players to a lobby, save your replays etc. There was a large player base from beginner to expert. SF 30th was a big step back. You will mostly find scrubs playing SF 30th. So I'll be surprised if this holds up in that regard.

FYI that's not ST on this collection. It's the Hyper SF Anniversary game that came out in the early 2000s for arcade and PS2. The main draw to this version is you can pick any character from SF2 history. So you can get super cheap and play broken CE Bison etc.

I would almost argue there's no point in porting a fighting game, no matter how good it is, if the audience isn't going to be retained. I'm reminded of that recent VF5 re-release. It died off in a month. Is VF5 a great game? Hell yeah. But it's old (VF5 was a xbox 360 launch title or close to it) and Tekken is new. Do the math. Player bases aren't infinite. Fighting games aren't like shmups or beat em ups, where you can enjoy them in single play for years and years, and where quality porting is so valuable to game preservation. Fightcade, as you said, really invalidates a lot of these fighting game ports. Fightcade is the most accessible and runs on a wide variety of machines. There are always matches on Fightcade.

Also hyper sf anniversary is bullshit garbage. All these "ultimate" versions of SF2 end up being trash. Even at its most balanced, SF2 is jank as hell and has actual rng in the form of random dizzy. Adding even more jank, unpolished, unbalanced characters just removes any interest for tournament/high level players, which is where the bulk of the player base for these super old fighting games is drawn from.

Most of the games in this collection are curiosities rather than titles one would expect to sink 100+ hours into mastering.

[D]

Warzard/Red Earth is an amazing game. I played it once on an arcade cabinet. I hope there will be a special collectors edition with cd ost's.
I thought I saw something like a special edition which just consists of this and the street fighter 30th. Which makes no sense. Who like fighting games and wants this, but not already owns 30th? no one.