Street Fighter Anniversary Collection Review

Street Fighter Anniversary Collection is a celebration of one of the most influential series in gaming history. It features Hyper Street Fighter II (basically all versions of Street Fightter II crammed into one game) and Street Fighter III: Third Strike all for under $30. The best part is that you can play these games online via Xbox Live. If you are a fighting game fan, you need this game in your collection.

Despite the name, this isn’t really a collection of everything that Street Fighter has to offer. You won’t find the Alpha series (which is arguably better than either of the games included in this set) or any of the other Street Fighter series. It is also a little bit disappointing that you can’t play the various versions of Street Fighter II separately since the changes make Hyper Street Fighter II play a little differently than you might remember.

There is a lot of good here, though. Hyper Street Fighter II is interesting and still fun even though it isn’t a pure as most Street Fighter fans would have liked. The real selling point of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection is Street Fighter III: Third Strike and it is a perfect port that is worth the price of admission by itself. You’ll also find some bonus materials such as the intro movies from all of the versions of Street Fighter II and a choice of soundtracks. The animated Street Fighter II movie is also included in all of its glory, and even though it is censored it is still a heck of a lot better than the live action SF movie.

The real selling point of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection is that you can play Hyper SFII and SFIII: Third Strike online via Xbox Live. This feature was not included in the PS2 version of the game so, obviously, the Xbox version is the one to buy. Online matches are relatively lag free and it is very easy to find opponents that match your skill level. There is a good sized community of players (including lots of Japanese players) out there so you can find a match at any time of day, which is nice.

Hyper Street Fighter II is, at its heart, an updated version of 1994’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo that also allows you to play as different versions of the characters. You get to choose from the Street Fighter II, SFII Champion Edition, SFII Turbo, Super SFII, and Super SFII Turbo. Depending on which version you choose the available characters will change (since some of them weren’t around back in the day) and the look of the characters will adjust as well as their move lists. To make the different versions of all of the characters balanced with each other, quite a few changes had to be made and some memorable glitches were removed. This isn’t exactly the Street Fighter II that you remember, which will upset hardcore fans, but the changes are for the better and the final result is pretty darned fun. Street Fighter II still stands as one of the most accessible and flat out fun 2D fighters ever and Hyper Street Fighter II is just as good as ever.

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