The fighting collection

KOCHI: Last month, Capcom released an optimised and curated showcase of ten of their popular vintage arcade games as part of the ‘Capcom Fighting Collection’. Capcom’s fighting games go back decades, and form an important part of videogame history, having been played a lot in arcades during the late ‘90s. This collection contains Street Fighter 2, Red Earth, the Vampire hunter/Darkstalker series, and some other stray fighter games that feature recurring characters from all these games.

I must give credit to Capcom in its efficient translation of arcade games to a modern console format. For example, we can now modify the very grainy pixel graphics and make them smoother, or even change the aspect ratio for gameplay. The most notable of the customisation options is to personalise your buttons for special combos, and options to reduce difficulty. Now these aren’t revolutionary changes, but very thoughtful updates that Capcom has provided, considering that these games are originally coin-operated arcade games.

Capcom has also introduced an online play mode where you can be paired with other players on the same platform. Being constantly thrashed by the AI on Street Fighter 2, I haven’t had the courage to try the online mode yet. The current collection is available for the PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and Xbox. I played this on the Switch myself, and recommend playing these games with a controller, rather than with keyboard/mouse.

My personal favourite from the collection is “Red Earth”, aka “War-Zard”. Red Earth features only 4 playable characters — but each of these characters have their own storyline, with different cutscenes that introduces the story for them. The game also spawns monster enemies, making each battle something like a boss battle. The progression in the offline mode felt quite different compared to the rest of the collection.

“Super Gem Fighter” and “Cyberbots” were also visually amusing, with interesting animations resulting from the combo moves. I also liked “Puzzle Fighter” because I could win it without breaking a sweat. As a tetris-like puzzle game, this is the only non-fighter game in the series. I love that the collection also has a “museum” in the menu, which gives us access to the original art for these games. It gives a sense of perspective of how these games were painstakingly designed at the time. It’s easy to rank this collection with a 7/10 — I enjoyed playing most of them.