Capcom Classics Collection

"What a deal! 22 of Capcom's greatest arcade hits!"

Capcom has finally decided to release a compilation of their greatest arcade games. It's about time! Personally, I go cookoo for retro game compilations, and I ate this one all up. So far, excluding the Atari game compilations, this is the largest collection of retro classics currently available, with 22 games. And believe me, it's quite an impressive list of games.

I'm not going to write this review how I usually do when I review games, because there are to many to list and I don't feel like writing separate ratings for each individual game, so I'll just list this collection's pros and cons as a whole.

PROS (the good stuff):

1. Firstly, the fact that this collection contains 22 games on one disc is hugely impressive, out-beating Capcom's previous and upcoming collections, "Megaman Anniversary Collection", which contains 10 games, and "Megaman X Collection", which will contain 7. And Capcom included many of the greats. Among those greats, Final Fight, Street Fighter, Gun.Smoke, and Forgotten Worlds stand out the most. These games, with the exception of Gun.Smoke, are the graphically superior games on this collection, but all four, including Gun.Smoke, left their mark in the gaming industry.

2. Bonus unlockables for each of the 22 games can be opened up by meeting certain requirements as you play those games in question. These methods include requirements like reaching a certain score in the game, beating the game, beating the game on a harder difficulty level, to something so simple, like picking up certain items in the game. These bonus unlockables include goodies like the games' history (their release date, genre, the hardware they ran on, and a brief paragraph or two about the game and the impact it made on the gaming industry), the game's artwork and concept sketches drawn during planning, tips and strategies, and a cast list of some of the games more notable characters and brief descriptions about each one mentioned, and lastly, the game's soundtracks. Quite nice.

3. You can adjust the game's individual options before loading them up, such as difficulty levels, control scheme, how many lives you have and the scores upon which you receive extra lives, how many continues you get before getting game overs (including infinite continues), and if applicable, original or remixed music. You can also choose to have your games save automatically, or save and load them manually (this saves high scores and stuff).

4. Generally, the games on this collection are pretty much arcade-perfect. You'll be happy to note that Final Fight is the exact ARCADE original, right down to the appearance of Roxy and Poison, and the Industrial Area stage excluded from the Super Nintendo home port. The sprites and music are also exact Arcade rips, not the redone SNES ones (though the SNES ones aren't that bad... personally, I hate Cody's arcade sprite but love his SNES and Gameboy Advance sprite). The only altered things about these games are, as previously mentioned, is the ability to modify the game's settings, which you couldn't really always do on the arcade machines. Another welcome change is the game's speed. The arcade originals used to slow down in places and get choppy and glitchy (you know, where part of the sprite fades away on and off because there are too many sprites on screen). All of this was completely fixed and the games have no noticeable graphic problems anywhere. Thumbs up, Capcom!

Now, the Cons.

CONS (the bad stuff):

1. This collection is mostly a shooter collection. About half of the games in the collection are shooter games, both horizontal and vertical. While it's a fun genre, it's quite boring that shooter games outnumber any other genre found on this collection. Another upsetting fact is that Action games make up nearly the rest of the collection. Yawn. The remaining genres covered on the disc are 4 Fighting games (beat-em-up and tournament-style) and 1 platformer game. I would have liked Capcom to mix and even the collection up a bit.

2. Some of the huge games that deserve honorable mention didn't make this collection. Those include the following Street Fighter (are you listening Capcom?), Magic Sword, Strider, and, hey, why not include some games that were never released in the US (this collection has one or two of those, *points to Pirate Ship Higemaru), like Three Wonders, Adventure Quiz: Capcom World, and Quiz Nanairo-Dreams Nijiro-Cho no Kiseki? Let's also throw in some not-so-classic-but-very-obscure and little known games like Red Earth and Cyberbots? Take notes Capcom. There's a "Vol. 1" on the spine of CCC's case. That should be a hint that a Volume 2 will come out sometime. Take notes on what you should put in it. And you better include the exclusives from the PSP version of CCC coming out soon.

3. False advertising. There's a selectable option in the game's list in blue text that reads "Capcom Extras". These "Extras" include the collection's credits, which don't count as anything special considering the credits are also listed in the game's manual, and it also includes a trailer for the DVD release of the recently made anime, Street Fighter Alpha Generations. That seems like an "extra" to me, as in singular, not plural, meaning we got hosed out of extras. Eh, shouldn't matter much though. All the bonuses that you can unlock for each individual game sort of makes up for that.

Well, that about does it for my review. Over all, I'd give this collection an 8/10. It lost a point for having too much of one or two types of games, completely ignoring the important games from other genres, and it also loses a point for leaving out so many awesome games, notably the Street Fighter, which STILL has yet to get a home console release. They're throwing it in the PSP version of Capcom Classics Collection. They damn well better include it on a Volume 2 disc for the Xbox and PS2.

Capcom Classics Collection, Final Score: 8/10: Buy it if you are a retro collection fan!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/06/06