Recensione: Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (PS4)

Each gamer has left a part of their heart in video games or, why not, in a saga. Maybe it will be the title that marked him the most, the one that involved him the most, or, perhaps, the video game that made it. to thrill for the first time and that he always remembers with affection. In this last respect, we all owe a lot to Street Fighter. The Capcom saga not only made us spend entire afternoons in the never too regretful arcades of the 80s, but also had the merit of laying the foundations of the fighting game genre. Well, just to properly celebrate the thirty candles of one of its flagship franchises, the Japanese publisher has decided to publish Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, a box set that includes 12 chapters of the fighting game par excellence.

We had the opportunity to "flesh out" this collection properly and, below, we will tell you if the dear, old Street Fighter is aged well or less.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: a blast from the past

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Although the world of fighting games has come a long way since now far 1987, the legacy of Street Fighter continues to be clearly perceptible. The most important proof of what has now been stated consists in the fact that, to date, no video game belonging to the genre in question has ever completely deviated from the mechanics of the second chapter of the saga. Although now most of the users of this genre pass through the home consoles, we cannot fail to pay the right homage to those places where Street Fighter has laid the foundations of its world fame: the games rooms. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is a real tribute, an ode to the arcade, re-proposing, to the current generations of gamers, 12 chapters of the saga.

The home screen shows us the following titles to choose from: Street Fighter, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Turbo, Street Fighter: Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter II: Super, Street Fighter II: Super Turbo, Street FIghter III, Street Fighter: Alpha, Street Fighter: Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter III: New Generation, Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. As you may have noticed, in the box they are present several iterations of the same chapters, which aim to make us notice the biggest changes that have affected the saga, even after a few years.

If the Champion Edition of Street Fighter II makes the characters Barlog, Sagat, Vega and Bison playable, the following versions will see the introduction of new combos and an increasingly fluid gameplay, which reaches its peak in Street Fighter III: Third Strike.

Un’ode all’arcade…

As pointed out at the beginning, this box set offers us a substantial number of Street Fighter incarnations, without omitting the very first chapter of the saga, which is made playable as it was in 1987: woody as never before and with a frightening input lag. Even the subsequent Street Fighters, when compared to a modern fighting game, are rather woody, but it is incredible to note how many of them, even today, manage to impress and keep up with the competition, making the reasons for their success clear to all.

Capcom's work has not been limited to providingmodern interface to all these titles, but he even made it back playable online four of them (Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter II: Super Turbo, Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Street Fighter: Alpha 3), complete with ranked matches and lobbies, and has set up a real section "Museum“, Including the sketches and the unforgettable pieces of the soundtrack.

From an "aesthetic" point of view, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Edition offers us the titles listed without too many "modernizations". It will be possible to play by being able to choose between ben three different filters. Among these, the “Arcade” filter is the one that, more than any other, manages not to show excessively the age of the video games in question; We do not recommend, however, the filter that widens the screen to embrace the entire TV screen, due to the inevitable "graphic deformations" that will ensue.

… With some small flaws

Perhaps the least convincing aspect of this Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Edition is its own online component. We know very well how much Capcom, with Street Fighter V, wanted to steer towards the world of eSports and, precisely for this reason, we could not but expect a competitive multiplayer also in this box set. The real problem is, in this case, the netcode: The online gaming experience is quite mixed, and almost seems to vary from connection to connection.

Secondly, there is also the choice to "force" the player to use basic commands, without the possibility, for example, to assign multiple keys. However, Capcom is likely to be able to fix some of these minor issues with a corrective patch.

Final judgement

Capcom could not have better celebrated the thirty candles just blown out by its Street Fighter. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection succeeds in the task of reviving a substantial number of titles from our videogame past, allowing the "new generation" to touch the glorious past of what is the fighting game par excellence. Don't expect remasters or remakes of any kind: all the games in this box set are exactly as you remember them, with their strengths, their flaws, and their charm completely intact. If you can turn a blind eye to an online sector that can be definitely improved, you can enjoy one of the best boxes currently available on the market.

We sincerely thank Capcom for providing the copy required for the review.