Collection essentials #333: Street Fighter Collection (Saturn)

What we have here is a compilation that includes three titles across two discs. The first disc contains the last two of the many interactions of Street Fighter II, those being “Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers” and “Super Street Fighter II Turbo”. The second disc contains an updated version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 (the sequel to the previous game I talked about) called “Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold”. 

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers didn’t make quite the splash that the previous versions of Street Fighter II did. It was still popular of course, but the four characters the game introduced are not nearly as iconic or famous as the previous 12. It’s not too surprising, since releasing updated versions of the same game too many times means that fewer and fewer people are going to be interested in keeping up with whatever the latest version is. 

Now, Super Street Fighter II Turbo similarly didn’t approach the levels of popularity of the earlier versions of Street Fighter II, but it is nonetheless a very significant entry in the series for a couple reasons. It was the first Street Fighter game to have a “super meter” which builds up while fighting and can be spent when full to unleash special powerful attacks. It wasn’t the first fighting game to have a feature like this, but it brought this mechanic into the most popular series of the genre and helped make it a genre staple as it remains today. Another reason for its significance is the introduction of the villainous character Akuma, who is arguably the most popular and iconic Street Fighter character in the series outside of Street Fighter II’s original 12.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 greatly adds to and improves upon the previous Alpha game. There are more characters, including several returning characters and a schoolgirl newcomer named Sakura who is one of the more popular fighters in the series. I’m not going to go into detail about all the changed or added gameplay mechanics. Perhaps the biggest one is the “Custom Combo” system, which lets players swiftly link together a series of whatever attacks they wish. Alpha 2 was well-received when it came out, and today it is one of the most highly regarded and popular fighting games from the ‘90s, and for good reason.

These are excellent arcade ports. The Saturn was the most powerful console at the time for 2D graphics, so these versions of these games are better than other console versions that were out at the time, practically indistinguishable from the arcade versions to the average casual player aside from some loading times. The Saturn controller is really great for these types of games, too, since the controller has six face buttons that match up perfectly with the six buttons these games’ arcade cabinets use. 

This copy of the game that I have in the photo represents a buying mistake on my part. You may notice that I’m not showing off the back of the box as I usually do. That’s because the original rear artwork of this game’s case is missing. When you see a picture of a Saturn game from the front, you have no way of actually knowing if the rear artwork is included or not. And so I bought this game on eBay seeing a photo of the front and assuming it was complete. Oopsie. I haven’t had a great opportunity anytime recently to right this wrong. 

There are modern ports of the games in this compilation. I’m not really sure what are technically the optimal versions to play, but these are definitely the best ports of these games from back in the day and I want them in my collection.