Capcom Fighting Collection review: A fun collection of niche, classic fighting games

With the Capcom Fighting Collection, ten fighting games from the ‘90s are coming together in one arcade-perfect collection. Several games new to the West, combined with a few arcade classics, bring great value to the price point.

The games themselves feel exactly as I remember them from the arcades, but there are a number of useful quality-of-life changes to make some things easier or more challenging as the player wants.

While there are always going to be games players wish were here instead of some of the other titles, Capcom Fighting Collection delivers when it comes to a fun, varied collection of fighting games.

What games are featured in Capcom Fighting Collection?

When it comes to these games, I played several of them in arcades when they were popular. One of my favorite Capcom games, in particular, is here, and that’s Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.

One of the great things about the collection is that while there are five Darkstalkers games, the collection is still varied in Capcom Fighting Collection.

Games featured in the Capcom collection:

Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors
Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge
Vampire Savior
Vampire Hunter 2 - Previously unavailable outside of Japan!
Vampire Savior 2- Previously unavailable outside of Japan!
Red Earth - Releasing for the first time outside of arcades!
Cyberbots
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Hyper Street Fighter II
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix

If someone wants a silly fighting game, there’s Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, and if they want awesome robot fights, there’s Cyberbots. There’s only one Street Fighter title in Hyper Street Fighter II. Red Earth is getting its first release outside of arcades too, where players pick one of the four heroes to battle giant monsters and each other.

Whether players tackle the intense mecha combat of Cybots or the various versions of the horror-themed Darkstalkers games, there's really no going wrong.

While, of course, I’d love to see Street Fighter Alpha 3 in this collection, I like these picks. Darkstalkers as a franchise need to see some love, and I hope that if this collection is successful, fans will get a new Darkstalkers.

The games feel exactly like they did in the arcade, difficulty and all. However, one of the great things about the games is that there are quality-of-life changes to adjust gameplay.

The Capcom Fighting Collection features incredible quality-of-life changes

While the Capcom Fighting Collection features arcade-perfect action, there are some adjustments players can make to the game. The game defaults to CRT scanlines, and that’s going to be controversial to some. Not everyone likes them - personally, I do. After selecting a game, though, you can enter the settings and change the filters.

The main menu of the game also lets players select which game they want to get into, and even more settings can be changed here. For example, in Hyper Street Fighter II, they can make Akuma easily selectable or make it the normal command to pick him.

In Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire, Oboro Bishamon can be toggled on and off as well. There are some characters that were simply too powerful in the arcades, and these can be adjusted.

Players can adjust the game’s difficulty, the number of matches, and much more. That’s one of the great things about this game. Not everyone wants to play the default arcade settings, and many of these can be adjusted.

Another great feature is that you can turn on the ability to activate one-button super attacks. This will make using special attacks in new games much easier and is great for beginning players.

There are quite a few settings that can be adjusted in Capcom Fighting Collection in each game (Image via Capcom)

The games default to Free Play, but this can be changed to have a limited number of quarters/continues to add further to the challenge. But the best change of all is that there’s a training mode!

With arcade fighting games, there are no “modes.” You pick a character and begin fighting opponents. There’s a training mode for each game as well, so players can take their time and learn the characters and figure out who they want to use online.

Because each game also has online Ranked and Normal lobbies. Players can even select multiple games to try and queue for online or create a lobby and invite friends to do battle with. This more than makes the games worth the price of admission.

How do the games actually play, though?

I played all ten games in the Capcom Fighting Collection, though I didn’t get many online matches. Not half as many as I’d like, anyway. The gameplay of the various games felt exactly like I remembered in the arcades.

The online gameplay was terrific, though. While I didn’t get many online matches, the rollback netcode is exactly what I was hoping to see. Being able to queue for several games and enter a training lab to practice was nice as well. Whether I played on a controller or my fight stick, the games were responsive and fun.

However, one thing did bother me. In the various offline lobbies, you can change the settings, as I mentioned earlier, such as disabling certain characters. It doesn’t appear like you can do that in the online lobbies. That’s not a huge dealbreaker, but it would be a nice change.

I appreciated the variety of the games as well in the Capcom Fighting Collection. Red Earth and Cyberbots were both new to me, but they certainly were fun to play.

Cyberbots, having several pilots and mechas to use, was a style of fighting game I had never played before. Red Earth felt like a mix of an RPG and a fighting game. It only has four characters, but there’s a lot of depth in how players approach it.

Graphics and audio are arcade-perfect, but there’s more!

While the game audio is how I remember it from my youth, and it sounds amazing, there’s more to enjoy. There are over 400 music tracks in the game’s museum to relish, for example.

There are exclusive, gorgeous art pieces to admire in the art gallery for each game as well. The main menu’s jazzy theme is also very catchy, and I’ve caught myself whistling it while doing stuff around the house.

There's plenty of great music to enjoy in the museum as well (Image via Capcom)

One of the best things about the games is that, for better and worse, they’re arcade ports. I appreciate that players can change the North American or Japanese versions of the game as well. There’s plenty of awesome music to listen to for people into browsing remixes and collections of media.

In Conclusion

The real question that has to be asked is this: Who is Capcom Fighting Collection for, and is it worth it?

As a fan of classic 90s/2000s era fighting games, the collection is for people like me. It’s for gamers who love these particular franchises and want to share that love with other people online. It has a rollback netcode, so the gameplay online is great. Newcomers will get a lot out of this, too, with ten fun, competitive fighting games to play.

It’s a nice collection of niche and classic games that will surely delight fans of Capcom’s Golden Age of fighting games. While I’m a fan of Darkstalkers - let it never be said that I don’t love the grisly horror-themed fighting games, there are five Darkstalkers games in this collection.

I wouldn’t mind seeing one or two of those replaced with something else. Perhaps Street Fighter Zero/Alpha or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future.

That said, the Capcom Fighting Collection features amazing arcade ports, and I love playing them. I can’t wait to hop online and absolutely batter my friends in Super Puzzle Fighter II. It has something for a nice variety of fans, and I really love playing it.

I don’t play as many fighting games as I used to, but this trip back in time has been excellent. Capcom certainly delivered on this one. Is this collection worth it? It absolutely is.