A slightly botched conversion of one of the included games leaves a sour feeling on an otherwise fine collection.
Capcom's Classics Collection does a pretty damn good job at meeting these criteria for the most part, except for some little niggly things which I will point out in this review.
One look at the back of the box will tell the retro gamer will tell you that this is a decent collection of games, although there are a few titles of dubious quality which is kind of expected in these kinds of compilations, after all part of the desire to play these games comes from nostaligia so if you haven't played the game in the past you'll probably be wondering what all the fuss is about.
With that in mind I should point out the games that I have no memory of playing in the arcades. These titles are, Bionic Commando, EXED Exes, Forgotten Worlds, Legendary Wings, Pirate Ship Higemaru, Section Z, SonSon, Trojan and finally Vulgus. If you are familiar with any or all of those games then you'll already have some idea of whether or not this compilation is of interest to you.
Here is the remaining list of included games, and no doubt the ones that influenced me to buy this compilation. 1942, 1943, Commando, Final Fight, Ghosts'n Goblins, Ghouls'n Ghosts, GunSmoke, Mercs, Street Fighter II.
There's also 2 other versions of Street Fighter II, Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting, along with another version of 1943 called 1943 Kai, and finally a game called Super Ghouls'n Ghosts which is actually the third game in the Ghosts'n Goblins series and is not actually an enhanced version of Ghouls'n Ghosts as the title would have you believe and is in fact a completely new game in the series.
I was really looking forward to this compilation and I thought it had the best collection of games of all the various classic arcades collections released thus far.
Unfortunately my heart was broken when I booted one of my personal favourite arcade games, Ghosts'n Goblins. The very first problem I noticed is the music is off pitch, and the second problem I noticed is that the pickup sounds are also off pitch compared with the arcade original. In both cases the audio is much higher in pitch than it should be. This is a real shame because this game has some of the best audio of it's time period in my opinion. The gameplay itself is intact, although I did notice that the game is slightly easier than the arcade version.
The good news is that all the rest of the titles appear to be in good working order. Except for Street Fighter II. This does not appear to be the arcade game, and if it is it's a different revision to the one I have played. As an example, in the version included here if you select Blanka as your character your first fight will be against Chun Li. Well, in the arcade version I have played the first fight is against Dhal Sim. As I have said this may be purely down to revisional changes made by Capcom, but on the other hand this may not be the arcade version. Either way it plays really well, and perhaps that is the most important thing. It's an issue that is really only going to concern the purist, and it's possible that such a person may already own a Street Fighter II arcade cabinet or board.
There are a few games which in my opinion do not deserve to be on this collection. Trojan, EXED Exes, Pirate Ship Higemaru and Vulgus immediately spring to mind. The two extra versions of Street Fighter II don't really add any value to this collection. Section Z isn't a bad game, but it's taking the place of the far superior game Side-Arms. 1943 Kai is essentially a harder version of 1943. Basically this compilation fails in the value department simply because it's overpriced, considering that you are only really getting 15 decent games. This point is really going to come down to personal taste, but I do own two of the Midway collections along with the Taito collection and I can say that while Capcoms collection has some of the best titles it's clearly the weakest in terms of value for money.
Here's the thing I find most annoying about this collection. All of the bonus material is LOCKED. To unlock it you must complete the specified challenges. For example, 1 challenge might be to beat the game, which is easy enough to do considering that you are given infinite credits. On the other hand the challenge of beating Street Fighter II without using continues or worst yet completing the game without losing a single round may be beyond the reach of some players including myself. This isn't really as bad as it sounds, as the bonus material for all games seems to be Concept Art (which is boring enough on DVD's, and just as boring for games), Artwork, Flyers, Music Remixes, Game Tips and another bonus called Cast which I have no idea of exactly what that is, but there you have it. I don't know about you but I actually like to see or hear retrospective interviews with the games designers in these kinds of compilations, and failing that some text trivia can go a long way. Thankfully Capcom have at least included some small snippet of historical text with each game, although there trivial piece about Ghosts'n Goblins being called Makaimura in Japan was not news to me (although they do actually translate this to English which was cool).
This is an essential purchase for anyone who likes these retro games collections, especially if you are familiar with a majority of the games included. The botched Ghosts'n Goblins conversion is always going to stick out for me though, but it's not enough to put me off buying the second volume of this collection when it get's released. You may want to check out the PSP version of this collection which includes a couple of extra games like the excellent trivia game Quiz and Dragons.