> Street Fighter Anniversary Collection: Written by: Chris "CBN" Nimmo 

 Publisher: Capcom  Price: 29.99  Genre: Fighting   T for Teen

 

For 15 years, Capcom has rocked our world with the awesome Street Fighter series… What a rough decade-and-a-half it’s been—pun very well intended! Thousands of broken controllers, egos, and virtual fighter’s limbs later, the company releases a celebratory Anniversary Collection for all their fans. 

Included in this package are Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and Street Fighter 2: Anniversary Edition: a special version of SF2 including all versions of the game ever released. It’s nice to see Third Strike, as well as the beefed up version of SF2, but you can’t help but ask: Where’s everything else? For a game that’s supposed to flaunt the series’ fifteen years of dominance, this one needs a little more muscle on its bones to truly show off. 

But, with two great games at only 30 bucks, it doesn’t get any better than this. These are some of the coolest games…well the coolest games…circa 1993. If that’s a problem for you, you might not want to shell out for this game… Go finish Soul Calibur you graphics monger! 

Complaints are actually pretty minor… Other than the fact that certain SF games were left out of this edition, it’s all here. The old school and hardcore alike can binge on the Anniversary Edition, which includes every single edition of the original SF2 game. This means that finally Turbo Ryu can square off against the original Chun Li. Not even to mention Third Strike, the seriously overlooked Dreamcast game of yesteryear. Both games are a lot of fun, and even more fun as a trip down memory lane. Although it’s rare to find mainstream gamers interested in the games of lore, any youngster wanting to take a look at fighters before the 3D era should look no further than this game. 

The graphics for SF2 are actually pretty dated… It’s really not a problem per se…but you may find them to be sore on the eyes at times. Third Strike however has some nice 2D drawings anyone can appreciate. By no means is Third Strike a Guilty Gear, but it’s certainly solid. 

The sound department is kind of hard to judge on a classic game. While some would argue that 8-bit graphics are beautiful in their own right, the majority of the sounds the 8 and 16-bit days produced were pretty laugh-worthy. The tunes are decent to the ear, but if you’re expecting Mozart, you might be a little let down. Don’t forget: these games came from a simpler time! Lighten up and you can enjoy it. 

Something about the controls in these games just…feels right. It’s hard to explain, but this series has always hit this department head-on. And as ports of the originals placed with arguably the best controller of the three major consoles, these games aren’t any different. While the combos are much slower than the King of Fighters games, they feel great in their own right. Very well done. 

These types of games were destined for multiplayer. If you don’t keep an arcade-sized crowd in your bedroom at all times with some hapless punk always willing to square off…well, you might get a little bored with this one. For me, memory lane was enough to keep me occupied for some time, but I can certainly understand why some would get tired of it… Well, it does have a pretty cool anime movie included based on Street Fighter 2. I guess you could always watch that! 

Yeah, this game didn’t get the M-rating, but there’s something else we need to talk about—Chun Li’s hindquarters, or lack thereof. You see, in the original SF2 anime, there was a very tasteful and well-done shower scene featuring the sexy Chinese warrior Chun Li. In this scene, you get to see her butt, but now they’ve gone and edited it. I really don’t see why, since the portion of her buttocks and its posture in the scene were no different than a diaper commercial. I hardly think two small cheeks a little ways below the waist are going to corrupt America’s youth, but whatever.  

Overall, I must admit the game didn’t quite hit like I thought it would. An online mode of some sort would have really helped this one in terms of replay (editor’s note: an online mode flaunting full Xbox Live support launches for the Xbox later this year)… Not to mention adding more of the Street Fighter games… But, overall it’s a solid purchase and I wholly recommend to most everyone.

Graphics: 8.0 | Sound: 8.0 | Control: 9.0 | Replay: 7.0 | Overall Game Score: 8.5