Collection essentials #503: Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (PS2)

I’ve talked about Street Fighter before, as well as Street Fighter Collection specifically. This time we don’t merely have a Street Fighter Collection, we have a Street Fighter ANNIVERSARY Collection!! Well, unfortunately the names of these compilations don’t do a very good job at all of communicating what’s actually in the package. You can imagine that they contain multiple Street Fighter games, but there are quite a few of those. Do either of these have all the Street Fighter games that existed at the time of release? Heck no! 

Okay, that’s a pretty negative way to start this write-up, but I don’t mean to say that I think Street Fighter Anniversary Collection is bad or anything. If I thought it was, it wouldn’t be here. What this collection DOES contain is two games, which doesn’t sound like much, but they are two very good games that were worth porting to this general of consoles.

The first is called “Hyper Street Fighter II”, which is yet another version of the smash hit Street Fighter II from all the way back in 1991. Previously, there had been FIVE iterations of that game released in a three-year span. Each of the five versions did make significant changes, adding some combination of new mechanics, new character, new gameplay features, and/or balance changes among existing characters. That last point is key to understanding why Hyper Street Fighter II exists. Certain characters in the roster were made stronger or weaker as the different versions came out to try to keep the whole cast on roughly the same power level.

The fun part of Hyper Street Fighter II is that balance wasn’t the focus this time. The selling point for this version is that, before selecting your character, you get to pick which previous version of your character you’d like to play as! In other words, you may select the original Street Fighter II, then select Ryu, and you will play as the original version of Ryu that existed in that game. You may also select, say, the Super Street Fighter II Turbo version of Ryu, and he will have all the balance changes made to THAT version of the character, as well as access to the super meter and super moves which were introduced in that version. Does this provide for a balanced experience? Heck no, but this is a super neat and creative feature that’s very welcome!

The other game in this compilation is one that I haven’t talked about yet: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Now, Street Fighter III is an interesting game. You’d think that Capcom would have made it before very long, capitalizing on the popularity of Street Fighter II, and indeed fans were anticipating it. However, instead, Capcom kept churning out more versions of II, and then gave us the Alpha series instead, as well as other spinoff games like Pocket Fighter or crossover games like X-Men vs. Street Fighter. By the time Street Fighter III actually came out in 1997, it shockingly made very little splash, in part because the genre had become so saturated, thanks in part to Capcom themselves. It also featured a mostly-new cast with few familiar faces that fans had become attached to.

Like Street Fighter II before it, Street Fighter III would receive multiple updated versions, culminating in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike in 1999. 3rd Strike was a substantial improvement, but the game only saw modest success…in terms of sales and general popularity, that is. The hardcore fighting games, though, fell in love with 3rd Strike. To this day it is one of the most popular 2D fighting games among dedicated fans of the genre, held in the highest regard. The game is perhaps best known for its “parry” system, giving players the ability to nullify enemy attacks when timing a parry with perfect precision.

And, well…the sad part is that I can’t really say much more about Street Fighter III, because the reality is that I’ve barely played it in my life. I was simply more interested in the many other Capcom fighting games back in the day, and I still have never gotten around to getting familiar with 3rd Strike. And I’ve only ever really been a casual fighting game player, so that may have something to do with it, since the game seems to be most rewarding for real serious fans who wish to dedicate a great deal of time to honing their skills. 

You could argue that Street Fighter Anniversary Collection should have included more games in the series. But it wins points for the creative twist it brings to its version of Street Fighter II, which helps it stand out as more than a simple compilation. For that reason, it gets my stamp of essential status.