"The laziest port in recent memory."

(this is a review of the downloadable patch for Super Street Fighter 4, and not the retail disc of Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition)

Anyone who has followed Capcom over the years knows how they like to milk every red cent from the consumer with the most asinine tactics. In the past, minor revisions in their fighting game releases was the flavor of the day (minor changes plus boss character availability from Street Fighter II to Street Fighter II Championship Edition) while the current trend has consumers spending money to unlock extras that came within the disc, but only released via 140kb downloads from the marketplace (extra outfits in Super Street Fighter 4, mostly completed characters in Marvel vs Capcom 3.) It’s a rather dirty practice, but the demand is out there, and with the demand comes more useless content supplied on a disc that can only be purchased. A year ago Capcom released Super Street Fighter 4, which tweaked many of the present cast, and added nearly a dozen fighters to the mix as well. At a reduced price of $40, it seemed like a passable deal, although most of that could have been DLC for Street Fighter 4 and sold for 1600 points. A year later, gamers witnessed a ”DLC pack” for Super Street Fighter 4, which is basically Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition. Four new characters, character “balancing” and tweaking performed, and a $15 price tag for the download. Capcom has already stated that this will be the final installment of Street Fighter 4, and thank the lord, cause this DLC pack screams laziness.

Arcade Edition ports over the four new to Street Fighter 4 characters that were featured in the hard to find US arcade release: Evil Ryu (no where as menacing as he was in previous games) Oni (a take on Shin Akuma, though he plays more like Gouken meets Akuma) and the two near broken twins from Street Fighter 3, Yun and Yang. While Evil Ryu doesn’t feel imposing enough and Oni has his moments of trickery, Yun and Yang are both borderline busted characters. Their priorities, speed and playstyles easily throw them at the top three in the AE roster. They are both a blast to play even still, but it feels almost as if you are on auto pilot when playing Yun. Less so with Yang, though he has his own perks, especially with a lower body invulnerability on his jab palm strike feign. While Oni and Evil Ryu provide a slight deviance in the generic shotokan style character (more Oni than Evil Ryu), Yun and Yang will quickly become the staples of many gamers, with even the most inexperienced Yun players being able to pull off some ambiguous tactics with little effort, and reap a maximum benefit.

The rest of the cast received their own tweaks here and there. While some remain nearly identical (C. Viper’s only change of note comes with the size of her hit box on her Ultra 2) some characters feel drastically altered in some respects (Gouken’s counter attacks have been remapped, his light palm strike is now stationary.) To the most casual fan of the series, many of the changes will never be noticed, outside the most extreme cases (which isn’t an overwhelming case.) For the frame nerds and tournament level players, quite a bit has changed overall, with many more gripes than past revisions. While some of the more overpowered characters remain nearly as inane (Balrog) some of the default choices like Ryu are notched down a bit. It’s still not a balanced fighting game whatsoever, with or without Yun and Yang included. Then again, most fighetrs are not really balanced to begin with.

And….that’s really about it. When I say this, I mean it. Each of the four character have their own intros, theme music and endings, but that’s it. No Trail mode additions for them to help learn some of the more advance combos, no new backgrounds, no dialog between them and their rivals to further explain any kind of storyline they poorly developed….for crying out loud, the title screen is exactly the same. The only notification that you’re playing Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition is a small golden box on the right side of the menu screen, and the same golden box between character portraits before the match starts. Nothing else was added, nothing further was tweaked. There are added options for online play such as Replay changes where you can ”follow” “elite” players and view their replays, but they are minute additions that pander more towards advance players that wish to view some of the “better” online players. While this is a straight up port of what was in the arcades for nearly a year, that doesn’t excuse the half assed effort that Capcom put forth overall. At least add in the Trial portions for each of the four new characters. Add in a new title screen to make it look like you gave more of a damn about an overall package as opposed to a quick and dirty payday.

Are you a casual fighting game player that never really cared about frames, negatives, positives and other tweaks that only a tournament player would cream themselves for? Then Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition will give you four new characters, character changes across the board that may mean nothing at all to you and little replay value to boot. Are you a tournament goer or any sort of high level fighting game player? Well now you have your Arcade Edition, with all of the character tweaking, frame adjustments and hit box changes that only you will notice and care about. As a whole, it’s a quick and dirty patching that feels like no effort was put forth to mask the laziness of the developers, not even to properly balance certain aspects left from their halfass arcade attempts. If you never enjoyed the Street Fighter 4 series, nothing whatsoever will pique your interest here or change your stance. It’s still the same game at its core, which was never really that impressive to begin with (from a fighting engine standpoint.) There’s a lot worse you can do with 1200 points, though the level of effort on some of the worst seem far and away less appalling than the lack of effort in this release.

Rating: 4.5

On Monday afternoon, Capcom released a near 90 second trailer of the upcoming re-release of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike for the Xbox Live Arcade (and presumably  PS Store, though the logos were not readily available at the end of the video.) Here’s what we got from the video trailer (credited to SRK):

• The visuals have taken a high definition route, providing smooth character models and backgrounds
• As one of the selling points stated within the video, 3S Online is going to be Arcade Perfect….
• ….yet we noticed every character has the same sized stun bars
• GGPO enabled, giving online play as smooth of an experience as possible
• Youtube Sharing, which should allow for some intriguing and intense battles to never go unseen

According to an interview conducted last month with Capcom’s Christian Svensson, no characters were redrawn or even added, enforcing the notion that this is to be as arcade perfect as possible. While the streamlined stun bars still remain a mystery, animation, likenesses, backgrounds, super bars and so on, all retain the look of the arcade classic released in 1999. According to one screenshot, there seems to be an in-game form of achievements as well, rewarding players for a myriad of accomplishments, such as the number of parries performed, as well as the number of EX attacks thrown out. This has also become the highest budget downloadable game from Capcom, beating out the beautifully redrawn Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix released in 2008. Currently 3rd Strike Online is scheduled to be released sometime this summer, which adds to a huge number of fighting games already released since the new year (Marvel vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II, Arcana Heart 3, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition.) Stay tuned to Chocolate Lemon for more information as it becomes available, but for now, take a look at some of the stills provided (click to enlarge):

• Twitter: @chocolate_lemon
• Facebook: Search for and “Like” Chocolate Lemon
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/choc0latelemon

Furthermore, you can follow some of us on an individual basis via Twitter and Youtube:

Twitter:

• Chocolate (Phire): @thegloryofphire
• Lemon (Justin Wong): @JWonggg
• Jason V. (Jason Velez): @Jas0nVelez
• Krismas (Kristian Galan): @Your8BitHero
• ForteWally (Wally Oruam): @WallE132
• ExpertPenguin (Lucien Wyatt): @ExpertPenguin
• Allowei (Alexandra Triplett): @Allowei

Youtube:

• KatieBangs: http://www.youtube.com/user/KatieCuppyCakeMakeUp
• Jason V.: http://www.youtube.com/user/Galarian

Feel free to Like us on Facebook and come follow each of us on Twitter. Trust me when I say that some of us are quite mental on Twitter, making for some occasional hilarity (especially Monday nights!)

Chris “Phire” Scott (Chocolate)

What can I say that you don’t already know about the game at this point. I played it at E3 and Comic Con and it was fast paced and simple. Now that I have the console version. I don’t know if I can seriously play this game. It’s not a bad game, I just think some of the things in the game are ridiculous. But that’s the way it goes with the VS series. I think this game is very polarizing in the community; players either hate it or love it. It is very accessible meaning there will be a ton of mashy scrubs online that are doing crazy combos because they are so easy to do.

Let’s get down to business - this game looks really good. I like the models and the cast of characters. I don’t know why they included M.O.D.O.K. but it’s ok. The controls are straight forward and easy to pick up. Sometimes I do feel that some inputs do not come out because almost every move in the game is cancel-able. The voice acting is amazing as most of the characters have interactions with each other. They also brought back individual character themes! That was one of the best parts of versus games in my opinon, the music.

I don’t know if I can play this game seriously because it’s sooo crazy. I may stick to Super (the farewell tour is off btw, I like AE Cammy) and go back to my first love Guilty Gear. I do like Phoenix I’ve always wanted Jean Grey in one of these games.

Justin Wong (Lemon)

According to Seth Killian, he said that Marvel 3 is a big sandbox. And from my experiences it is true. Marvel 3 has endless possibilities. There’s no limit to what the character cannot pull off. The combos are beautiful yet very dangerous. Each character can basically perform a killer combo that could possibly kill you in one touch. Of course, tiers do exist but the face that every character in Marvel 3 seems viable due to the trailers and all, they all look very dangerous. Some of my favorite characters that I like in MVC3 from what I have seen is Spencer from Bionic Commando, Spider-Man, and Storm.

I love Spencer because I think the grappling hook function is really unique and his combos hurt a lot. I know that Spider-Man is a returning character but they gave the web slinger a lot more useful tools. His web swing is actually safe on block which never was meaning you can actually use more than just web ball. He can combo his maximum spider in the air after a web swing which is totally awesome. He has a new move which I call the spider slingshot. It is very similar to his air dash but he propels himself at you which is a new type of air dash and its an attack at the same time. This gives Spidey more momentum than ever. I am notorious for using Storm in MVC2, so I have to play my favorite character. I love the fact that she can actually combo into her hail storm and some of her moves are jump cancellable which makes her more fearsome in terms of rush down. I love the fact that her typhoons are actually useful and fast in this game, unlike her previous builds.

The one thing that I do not like about MVC3 is the x-factor system. I think it last too long, it gives way too much perks, and the comeback factor is way to easy and huge. X-factor Chun Li’s the most craziest, fastest, uncontrollable character I ever seen. I don’t like it at all. Its basically playing the game on the highest speed setting possible. And one last thing to worry people who love calling that assist. Be careful, they will die so fast. They must take 3x the damage than normal.

Jason Velez (Burrito?)

I’ve always enjoyed the crossover battles between Marvel and Capcom. Other than maybe Marvel vs Capcom, none have underwhelmed me whatsoever. I have my qualms with the fact that for high level play, Marvel vs Capcom 2′s roster only had about five viable selections. But for beginners to hardcore fighting game enthusiasts, each installment of this famed series of games has provided countless hours of tag team battles. Now with Marvel vs Capcom 3, there seems to be a but of a division amongst the player-base. Many of the hardcore tournament players are complaining that it’s too easy, too scrubby, too dumbed down, while the more casual fans are enjoying the somewhat lack of complication. With a somewhat polarized field of consumers, is either party correct with their views?

As someone who’s only real care for hardcore fighting game tournaments coming from Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, I can understand both sides quite clearly. The button layout closely resembles Tatsunoko vs Capcom, a crossover battle exclusive to the Nintendo Wii, which was elementary enough for those coming into the genre, and still had enough flexibility to feed the needs of those that want to test their skills on the big stage. Weak, Medium, Strong and a Launcher buttons are your attacks, with two separate buttons acting as assists. Combos in general seem much easier to pull off, especially longer, juggle type ones. Then again, doing a 100% damage combo with Sentinel with a command throw, rocket punch, XF and other simplicity, but so can infinites from MVC2.

Probably the biggest impact in MVC3 comes from the X-Factor. Pressing all four attack buttons puts you in a state of enhanced power, health regeneration and speed boosts. You can cut short a long combo that ends with a super with an X-Factor, and basically have more time to pull off more attacks in a combo (if you’re fast enough). The potency of the X-Factor is boosted with each character defeated on your team. Using Sentinel as an example again, his regular damage output is already absurd. With an X-Factor at level 3 (two of your characters defeated) he can take out any character in the game with a simple {standing W, low M, S, super jump, M, H, S}. Certain character with inherent weaknesses, such as Phoenix (lowest health in the game), if her Dark Phoenix form is activated with X-Factor level 3, in the right hands she can be way too powerful. Moreover, there’s no way to disable X-Factor in multiplayer bouts.

The intent of X-Factor was to give hopeless odds an evened out playing field, when in fact, it really does turn things lopsided. Again, the more hardcore scene might feel appalled by this, however there are plenty of players that won’t really care. These are the same players that play MVC2 and use any character, and not just the same five characters that every tournament player has to use. Personally, I have mixed feelings with X-Factor. I appreciate the extended combo usages by popping a level one, though the potency of a level three on certain characters can definitely make things feel unbalanced. I completely agree with Justin on how it lasts way too long. If Capcom added an option to disable XF, I can see a lot more people that are on the fence about MVC3, hopping over into Capcom’s camp.

If you treat MVC3 casually though, even with the X-Factor madness, there’s a ton of quality from top to bottom. The soundtrack is a rather stellar set of remixed titles, along with a rather impressive set of voices and sound effects. The voices, while not Hollywood quality, all seem to fit each character, though Sentinel’s MVC2 sounded more menacing. The visuals match the somewhat 2.5D standard set by Capcom a couple of years ago with Street Fighter 4. The mixture of styles seem to mesh well together, with no character seeming out of place. Characters like Arthur from Ghosts ‘n Goblins has an overly simplistic look when compared to the likes of MODOK, but neither clash with each other when they are on screen. It’s definitely not a MUGEN production. Each background looks quite impressive, however the Resident Evil themed stage runs noticeably choppier than the others, as if it was created at 30 frames per second. Annoying, but still quality work all round.

The lack of modes isn’t a massive downer, though some online aspects are. Not being able to spectate is quite annoying, especially if there’s six players ahead of you in the queue. Sometimes it’s a battle just to find a game to connect to. When you do, you can’t even scope out their connection or stats; MVC3 just throws you into a Ranked battle without any knowledge of the player you are about to face. Granted, this sounds good in theory so you won’t cherry pick games, but considering the fact that playing others from a completely different continent is a lagfest (4 minutes to go from 99 to 54 against a player from Australia), if you don’t have a powerful keepaway character to spam attacks between lag spikes, you lose.

It’s a polarized release for sure, but to be fair, Capcom is out to make money. While it is apparent that there were attempts to satisfy both casuals and hardcore players, Marvel vs Capcom 3 ended up being a more generalized experience, with a few aspects that will definitely turn away many hardcore fans. As a mostly casual fighting game fan, the simplicity of the battle system, the diverse cast of characters and pulse pounding multiplayerbattles with friends has definitely satisfied my Versus needs. It’s definitely not a bad game at all, especially given the fact that the alternative right now is a pretty miserable fighter (Super Street Fighter 4). Is it button masher/newbie friendly? Unfortunately it is. Can it be broken? Occasionally it feels more broken than MVC2. Is it a good time, whether you’re casually or seriously playing? Quite honestly, it can be.

How have your experiences been? Too scrub friendly? Leisurely satisfying?  Leave a comment below and share your views with us!

It’s been over half a year since Super Street Fighter IV has dropped into gamers laps. While I did enoy Street Fighter IV for the most part, it didn’t come close to matching the precison and grace of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Barely a year later, Capcom unleashes Super Street Fighter IV, reawakening nightmares of constant retoolings of the same formula, and ending up with something that’s barely changed for the better. With a sizable number of new fighters included, new backgrounds, better multiplayer lobby systems and character balancing tweaks, one would think these changes would be enough to raise the approval rates of those that weren’t necessarily all in for Street Fighter IV. In some ways it has, in key matters, it hasn’t.

Fundamentally, this is the same core game, with some of the horribly out of balanced characters toned down, a new Ultra added to each characters arsenal, new fighters thrown in and less incentive to play through the single player, thanks to every character being unlocked by default. The flimsy addition of Focus Attacks still doesn’t enhance much to the gameplay, the attack linking system would have been better if they were set like chain combos (like Street Fighter Alpha) and the general battle strategy doesn’t feel as deep as it should. Granted, it’s still a thrill to play against a group of friends, as with just about every iteration of the Street Fighter franchise; it just lacks that spark that would truly set the fighting genre ablaze. For some odd reason, Super Street Fighter IV doesn’t even have the same replay value hook as Street Fighter IV. Annoyances such as auto correct positioning when trying to pull off crossover attacks, focus attacks and such, occasically spazzes out, allowing some absolute harebrained things to happen, from hits that land which shouldn’t land, to totally facing another direction.

The $40 price point is a generous offer by Capcom, and more incentive to put down that amount of cash if you had even the most remote satisfaction from Street Fighter IV. Although it remains the best fighting game on an Xbox 360 DVD, you could easily purchase Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix, Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves for the same amount of money, with three vastly more gratifying experiences. While it seems this is nothing but a bash against it, Super Street Fighter IV is not a game that provides dissatisfaction. It just doesn’t provide that “wow” factor that you would expect the series to give you at this point in its history. If you got some friends coming over for some multiplayer gaming, you’ll see where Super Street Fighter IV shines. Online and solo, it’s just not as impressive.

Rating: 7.5

Every gamer through all walks of gaming life hashad that fascination with one game that literally sucks up more time than any other game has before it. You may not invest ten hours a day on it, $15 a month supporting your habit, or even engage in its gameplay for 36 hour marathons, but you might have found yourself playing it for well over five, or even ten years running. A large percentage of you may point out that World of Warcraft is your vice. Just as many of you may say that the puzzling world of Tetris has kept you rotating blocks since even before the Game Boy incarnation was released. Hell, I’ve had several addictions myself, ranging from ten years of off and on investment with Everquest, to well over a dozen completions each of Suikoden and Final Fantasy III/VI. But there’s one addiction that has had its off and on periods since 1999, one that has consumed not only an extraordinary amount of time, but an exuberant amount of money. An addiction that I still consider pound for pound the most well rounded, strategic and exciting of its genre. An addiction that has once again consumed me after nearly a year of downtime:

Between visits to Chinatown Fair, playing a 3rd Strike arcade machine at my very first job, and the numerous console incarnations, both Japanese and American, I can safely say that not only have I invested well over two grand of my own money but I probably spent more than five thousand hours with the various incarnations as well. Although each comeback I make to the world of Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike reminds me how diminished my skills have become, there’s no denying that this chess match of a fighting game has not only left a lasting impact in my gaming life, but legitimately offers more strategy and more intensity than any fighter on the market before, or after its release.

Before we go into the layers of complexity and what really makes 3S tick, lets get any kind of negative vibes out of the way. The number of fighters available, while they cover most every type of style you could want to play as, could have used maybe two more combatants. It’s not much over an oversight really, thanks to the diversity presented, with most die-hards swearing up and down that the roster is as close to perfect without being over-saturated by clones. Then there’s the novice fighting game fan, who will more than likely being chewed up and spit out for the foreseeable future, thanks to the more complex nature of 3S when compared to most any other fighting game out there. If you don’t have an extra serving of patience, you’ll end up with egg on your face, pancaked between the steep learning curve of parry timing and the usual fighting game learning curves. There’s also the issue of how sleep inducing it is to watch two Chun Li’s or two Ken’s battle it out via tournament play, but that’s more for the voyeur than the one that participates in those fights.

Everything else decimates any other fighting game before it, and still stands the test of time.

Being the third title in the Street Fighter 3 line up, 3rd Strike is the most refined of the particular series, not to mention the most refined in the Street Fighter franchise as a whole. Arguably the most visually pleasant Street Fighter game before 4, 3rd Strike contains clean character sprites, a vivid, though not entirely lively backgrounds and some of the best 2D animation of its time.

The character line up ranges from grab characters (Hugo) to hybrid fighters with close quarters attacks and grapple moves (Alex) to the series version of Dhalsim meets Blanka (Necro). Just about every major fighting style that mattered from the previous Street Fighter titles makes a return, with a commendable success.

Not necessarily the best of the series, the music in 3S is nevertheless well composed. It’s a line up that you’ll warm up to over time, and more than likely have a displeasing initial encounter with. Each character does not necessarily have their designated theme song, nor do they all have their own backgrounds, but that doesn’t detract much, if any, from the overall package. As always, Capcom managed to craft a control system that’s fluid, providing the player with a no fuss method of unleashing a beating on their opponents. Super jumping is a painless procedure, especially if you’re used to performing them in the Capcom Versus series.

When selecting each character, you’ll have the opportunity to choose from three different super moves that you can perform when your super meter is filled to the appropriate measurement. Each super is drastically different from each other, giving you quite a bit of range as to how you would like to approach each battle. Do you want to juggle your opponent in the corner with Remy’s SA1, or would you rather chance a SA3 during the fight, which will counter any physical hit placed upon you, but leave you wide open if you time it wrong? Do you want to unleash a chain combo of attacks with Yun’s SA3, or are you better off with a decisively more powerful SA1? There’s a lot to think about when selecting your super, although the benefits of a few outweigh just about everything else when choosing one over the other.

You’ll also have to take in account the fact that each super you choose will be represented with a different sized bar that you’ll be required to fill. Some are much longer than others, with up to three stocked supers being possible. However, your super bar means more than just unleashing a potentially game changing super move. By performing special moves with two of the same set of buttons pressed, you’ll perform what’s called an EX move (hold down for a second and press up plus two kicks to perform Chun Li’s EX Spinning Bird Kick). Sometimes you’ll add a hit into the mix, while other times you’ll totally change the way the move comes out. Throwing an EX fireball with Ken will throw out a two hit fireball, which will knock down an opponent if it lands clean. Chun Li’s Spinning Bird Kick will become stationary, allowing for a good wake up counter. There’s definitely a ton of experimentation that can be performed, and it further changes the pace of the game.

The game changer of all game changers, and the one aspect that sets Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike apart from the rest of the pack is the parrying system. Introduced to the Street Fighter series with Street Fighter 3: The New Generation, a parry is performed by pressing into an attack. For example: Ryu throws a fireball towards you. As it gets towards you and is about to hit you, tap your controller towards it, as if you were going to walk into it. This will initiate a parry, which negates any damage taken, as well as give you a split second to counter-attack. You can parry in the air as well with the same motion (tapping towards the attack just before it lands) as well as low attacks (press down right before that low hit lands).

This is where a layer of depth appears, and gives 3S  its breakout  complexity, depth and ultimate mind games setting. Parrying is not an easy thing to do; to even master the basics of parrying projecting and jump in attacks takes an immeasurable amount of practice. To build up an instinct as to when to parry what attacks from close quarters, is an art that not many will ever master. If you can build up at least an intermediate mastery of the parrying system, you can blow the doors of 3S wide open. Everything short of command grabs, regular throws and the final bosses full screen super can be parried, if you know how to time it.

The timing changes are subtle between Street Fighter 3: The New Generation, Street Fighter 3: Double Impact and Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike. In 3S, the timing feels refined, allowing an almost instantaneous memorization of when to parry each attack of certain attacks thrown at you. Parry timing between many supers are shared, leading to a slightly “easier” time parrying them. For a fighting game heavily focused upon a specific gameplay gimmick, Capcom got it just about perfect with 3S’s parrying system, as even today it feels more fleshed out and intuitive than focus attacks, which were introduced nearly ten years later in Street Fighter IV.

Sadly though, the more casual fan will get lost with the deep fighting system present. As mentioned earlier, 3S is definitely not a newb friendly title, nor is it even friendly to anyone that isn’t gung-ho, all for learning the ropes and investing ample amounts of time to perfect your skills. While there can be fights in which parrying would not be a focal point of the battle, having a firm grasp of the mechanic will do you more good than anything. Unfortunately in order to establish that firm grasp on the system, you’ll need to invest tons of time with the basics, and incorporating those basics into your fights.  However, becoming accustomed to the parrying system, as well as the other layers of depth present will provide you with some of the most gratifying feelings of accomplishment in gaming.

Lets say you’re a novice player in the fighting world. Lets also say that all of your friends don’t take fighting games seriously, and just want to have a good time. Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike can provide you with this, and then some. If you’re a casual fighting game fan that plays with a hardcore brawler, one that learns the ins and outs of each fighting game he or she picks up, you will hate life playing them. To the die-hard fans who stick with a game until they master every nook and cranny there is, for the tournament player, for the perfectionists out there, 3rd Strike represents the fighting game genre in ways that no other title has been able to, even to this day. As with the classic Street Fighter 2 titles, this one will offer you incentives to keep coming back for a long time to come. One of gaming’s finest gems.

Rating: 9.6

"Something for every fighting game fan of every walk of light."

Packaged, repackaged, and packaged again, Capcom has distributed their Street Fighter titles in so many ways that it’s impossible to count them all. Regardless of that fact, you can count on the fact that Street Fighter Alpha Anthology is one of the heartiest collection of titles ever brought together in one package. You’ll receive Street Fighter Alpha and its chain combo goodness, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and it’s custom combo appearance, the somewhat tweaked Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold that introduces Cammy to the fold, the star of the collection in Street Fighter Alpha 3, and finally the leisurely take to the collection, Super Gem Fighter (formerly Pocket Fighters). What’s so welcoming about this set of games is that no matter your level of Street Fighter experience, you’ll have something geared towards that specification. Want something cutesy and doesn’t aggressively ask much of you in terms of skills? Super Gem Fighters will fit that bill quite nicely. Got some pro Street Fighter players coming over and want to test your technical prowls? Street Fighter Alpha 3 and its numerous ways of playing the core game will satisfy everyones needs. Each game (aside from Alpha 2 Gold) offers something completely different, but completely engrossing. The only knock that could be found is with the sheer simplicity of Super Gem Fighters as a whole. The thing is, it perfectly fits a steadily increasing depth flow, from welcoming to challenging, though not daunting. Thankfully with the near perfect conversions of the audio, video and controls, Street Fighter Alpha Anthology doesn’t suffer in the ways that other compilations or ports do, and turns out to be one of the top tier collections ever released. A definite must buy for fighting game fans.

Whether you're a newb to the genre or a hardcore pro player, Street Fighter Alpha Anthology will perfectly suits your needs.

Rating: 9.1

I never had the privilege of owning a Sega Saturn until 2008. With this, I missed out of a number of key 2D fighting titles done right. Thanks to the extra memory, the Sega Saturn was able to pump out Capcom fighting games with just about arcade perfection, while the Sony PlayStation suffered from many limitations. One of my all time favorite arcade fighting games, Marvel Superheroes, was ported onto the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. With the memory limitations of the PlayStation, does the game still hold up well enough to the point where the detrimental do not outweigh the fun?

With most Capcom fighting games on the PS1, animation is removed and sometimes backgrounds are a bit simplified in terms of animations or scope. Marvel Superheroes manages to retain a faithful enough feeling in terms of looks and fluidity. Some backgrounds were dummy-down, like Hulk’s amusement park stage. There’s no type of animation or movement from the Ferris wheel in the background. Some of the changes really do not impact me that much, as the gameplay is what hooked me in hardcore for a long long time. Animation wise, while it’s not choppy, it’s not arcade perfect. It moves well enough, and the characters all look as colorful and comic book like as they did in the arcade.

Most of the characters featured in MSH took part in the battle with Thanos in The Infinity Gauntlet #4 & 5. Some, like Psylocke, were just thrown in for the sake of saving time and not putting in major characters, like Silver Surfer, or Thor.

Controls are about as good as they get with this type of game. They feel faithful enough, and the PS1 controller handles movement and attacks well. Nothing will ever replace an arcade cabinet and those beautiful controls, however Capcom still managed to make the controls work as a whole. The refining of the air combo and chain combo systems served as the launchpad of such classics as X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

What helped give Marvel Superheroes the most innovation from the other Capcom fighters, was loosely basing the story around the Infinite Gauntlet saga. Thanos obtains six gems that help to complete the mastery of absolutely anything in the universe. Those gems are Time, Space, Power, Soul, Reality and Mind. But throughout the game, you fight characters holding one of these gems, sans Mind. Pick up a gem from your opponent and activate them with a quarter circle back and all three punches. Each gem has a different power. Soul heals you slowly for about 5-7 seconds, Time makes you move and attack faster, space provides super armor (two hits before you can be stopped and slowed down) and so on. Each character has their own specific gem that they receive an added advantage with, like Magneto gaining a force-field with Space, and Psylocke gaining two clones to fight with her when using Time. The system worked so well, and added a layer of depth to the game that I feel worked better than partner assists in the Marvel vs. Capcom series.

MSH also ushered in the era of air combos, giving guys like Justin Wong more ways to own you ten ways from Tuesday.

Audio wise is where things start to turn south. The voices sound like they were recorded in mono, totally dislodging its self from the cleaner sounding music, although the music its self is not really memorable. Sound effects also lack somewhat. While they don’t sound like the were recorded in mono, the power behind it is not there anymore. To begin with, MSH never had anything that memorable, or to be quite honest, good. So the home port was faithful to that degree, but sound samplings don’t sound as good.

There’s also a bit of slowdown when there’s a lot going on, or with both characters up in each others faces, attacking each other. If you have the game speed set to normal, often times it feels unplayable, because the game moves at such a slow pace. Put it on Turbo and although there are still some slowdown pockets here and there, it doesn’t hamper the action as much as if you had left it on Normal. The load times are a bit painful though. Between fights and even between the end of a fight and your little victory spiel.

Finally, while I do appreciate the character selection, and although most move commands are similar to each character, MSH could have benefited immensely from four more characters, tops. I was a HUGE fan of the Infinity Gauntlet series, but I don’t once ever remember seeing Psylocke, Juggernaut or even Magneto is the pivotal battles against Thanos for control of the Infinity Gauntlet. The use of stock characters was a massive letdown, as Capcom missed out on adding some of the heavyweights into the game. I don’t remember Thor being a minor character in the battle with Thanos, same with Silver Surfer, who nearly stole the gauntlet from Thanos in issue four. I can understand recycling characters from X-Men: Children of the Atom, but hell, if you wanna use stock characters, put Cyclops in the game. He was very much visible in that battle with Thanos, and was in the previous Capcom Marvel game.

Stunning Thanos in Marvel Superheroes -- not an easy thing to do!

While the omissions are disappointing, to say the least, and there are a number of technical faults, Marvel Superheroes is still a great game, and a lot of fun. The game holds a special meaning to me, as I was one of the people responsible for its creation. No lie. Many years ago, while the Infinity Gauntlet comic series was wrapping up, I had filled out one of those Capcom suggestion cards from a copy of Street Fighter 2: Turbo for the Super Nintendo, and suggested that they’d make a fighting game based off of the Infinity Gauntlet series. Years later, my suggested looked to have been taken. So for all those that enjoyed the game, whether it was the PlayStation, Saturn or arcade version, you’re welcome!

Rating: 7.4

Chocolate (phire) :  has joined the ranks. With more free time he has been to a few events with New York-Tokyo. The most recent events were the Tekken 6 tournament at the White Rabbit and Emily Cook snowboarding event. There was the second Street Fighter Fight Club that was attended.  What has he been playing? Demon Souls, DJ Hero, the last few days of the Mag Beta, Tekken 6, and some Dragon Age.
Lemon (jwong) was in an issue of  Gamepro along with his rival  Daigo.  He also attended the SFFC, you can read his thoughts on it here. He fought in Seasons Beatings and lost only to Daigo for second place. What has he been playing?  The usual; Street Figher, Tekken, and some Dungeon Fighter Online.
Galarian: Due to all his retro reviews is currently caught in a time warp and is working on a way to get back to the present.
Megumi: is lost somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, was injured during a game of MAG.
Krismas: Is currently dressed up as Snake and behind you.
Wally: Is still in shock about reciving his first set of press passes for NYAF along with a reviewer’s copy of FairyTale Fights. He will be working with Jessness to cover that game.
Jessness: Avoiding her mob of fans and doing the school thing. Also maintaing high levels of Jessness. Working on the review for FTF.
Allowei: currently time travelling but still making time to write. Is working with Mircosoft to make sure you’re playing good games.
Beast: has been dealing with deleting data on his hard drive.
Expert Penguin: is in hiding due to the fact he made the switch from pad to stick after being so set in his pad player ways.
Everyone else has been off doing err something or the other in filler episodes obviously. That brings us up to date and that is (wait for it) the story thus far.

Sign up for the newsletter.  There is going to be tons of good stuff in it.

Keep on rocking!