Guys, I think Capcom is doing the work that most of the industry seems to be allergic to. Companies like Digital Eclipse are historic moments in gaming culture with releases like The origins of karatekabut Capcom seems to be one of the few AAA developers and publishers actively preserving their own legacy for the future. After all, the 2005 Resident Evil 4 has been ported to every system imaginable since its release, and the company recently Capcom Battle Collectiona compilation of all the classic fighting games of the last few years. The latest of these with the subtitle Arcade classicfocuses on some of the my favorite titles like Marvel vs Capcom Gamesbut there are also older gems that I am grateful to have access to at all, which feels like the greater sense of conservation efforts like this.
The Arcade classic Compilation – which is included X-Men vs Street Fighter, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, MvC2And The Punisher— offers everything you’d expect from such packages. Each game feels pretty similar to its arcade equivalents, though they obviously come across a little better on modern, higher-fidelity screens.
Modern classics
There are various small settings that can be adjusted/optimized in the Arcade classic compilation, such as the difficulty of your AI opponents, the base speed of the game, and sometimes even the startup phase. In addition, Training Mode can be accessed from the match selection screen or when waiting for an online lobby and displays all the frame data one might need as well as an input log.
In action, the controls are fairly simplified and every fighting game has a single button, often on the left trigger, that allows you to easily trigger hyper combos, similar to modern controls in Street Fighter 6. This setting can be toggled in offline and casual play and cannot be used in ranked play, making the game less intimidating for beginners to master and avoiding stepping on the toes of competitive players. Speaking of which, the fighting games also feature casual and ranked online matchmaking, although I had trouble finding someone to play online with during my preview period due to the low player count. To complement the preservation and continued distribution of these legendary titles, Capcom has even built in some very neat behind-the-scenes features.
For example, you can almost always view each title’s marquee scrolling text in the menu, which displays the instructions that would have been printed on the actual arcade cabinet, complete with the original diagrams of the joystick and face buttons included. It’s a handy tooltip to have available right in the menu, but for the most part it feels like a piece of history you can carry with you, which extends to a ton of other features here too. You can freely delve into a museum mode that features concept art and hundreds of music tracks from the seven games, such as MvC2s iconic character select song, individual character themes, and opening and closing songs, and you can even browse through it all while you wait to connect to an online game. The most exciting thing is the scanned design documents that show some of the developer’s processes in creating the games – considering how much is done digitally these days and how secretive the games industry is, it’s amazing to see handwritten and drawn notes and diagrams laying out the mechanics and layout of the levels of some of these games, such as a sequence on a moving vehicle in the port of The Punisher which was essentially preserved from the associated design document.
An oldie in the spotlight
In this sense, The Punisher is the big outlier of the collection, as it isn’t a traditional fighting game like the other titles included. Instead, it’s a 2D beat-em-up and its presence here is a pretty big deal: The Punisher is a beloved classic game that never made the jump to consoles. There is a Sega Genesis port that is widely believed to be inferior to the original arcade version, which has now finally been faithfully ported for the first time in this collection. It is also the first game collaboration between Capcom and Marvel Comics, which eventually gave us the rest of the games in this collection (namely the acclaimed Marvel vs Capcom series), so it’s also an important piece of gaming history. And it’s awesome.
I don’t often play beat-em-ups (which are deceptively difficult), but after completing them The Punisher, I can understand the hype behind it. The aesthetics of these arcade games have always felt much more in line with the original visions and interpretations of the comic book characters they are based on, and The Punisher certainly has that going for it. If you are looking for something that looks and feels like a Punisher Comic, you will hardly find a better adaptation. Frank Castle Look like the version of him seen in early comics, and he and the game are as gratuitously violent as ever, entirely in keeping with their vision. When you’re swinging axes and knives to mow down enemies, it’s refreshing to see them actually bleed, something that is otherwise missing from most other beat-em-ups I played as a kid, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Series, but the sound feels perfect here.
As far as controls are concerned, The Punisher is fairly straightforward, but also has some features that were advanced for their time. Frank and Nick Fury (the second playable character in co-op), for example, can’t really sprint, but they do have a directional dodge roll that works along the X and Y axes. When you grab an enemy, you can use one of about three different techniques depending on your inputs, and each of them can pick up screen-clearing grenades that saved my life more than once. When I felt cornered, I could perform a spinning leg sweep that worked as an effective parry and doubled as armor for a few seconds. The most stylistic addition is The Punisherwhich are only drawn when armed enemies appear on the scene. In these moments The Punisher automatically targets enemies in your field of view and allows you to shoot at them, while the game turns into a shooting gallery and the action is largely accompanied by cartoonish onomatopoeia.
I am impressed by this collection, the historicity of it all and the great job Capcom has done in preserving these seven titles. And I think that is the ultimate goal of a project like the Capcom Battle Collectionright? Yes, I will of course benefit from beating people up and getting beaten up for it when I take my fights online through the fighting game catalog presented here, but I took something new and special with me and now I can keep it forever. And now there are games like The Punisher can live on, aside from the faint memories someone has of playing it in an arcade over 30 years ago. Now someone who grew up playing and loved this and similar games can share it with someone they love. That should be true for more games, and hopefully efforts like this will Arcade classic The collection helps to ensure that this ultimately happens.
