Genre: 2d Fighter
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Capcom

They may not be as flashy as SNK's genre entries, but the Street Fighter series-- particularly "Super", "Alpha 2", and "III"-- have phenomenal artwork, and it's all represented here in unadulterated arcade glory. Not one but two different CRT filters can be applied, but as is always the case it's a poor substitute for the real thing. The Flash-like menus have the kind of low budget feel common to games these days-- but all they do is bootstrap the emulated arcade ROMs anyway; the games look great, and that's what matters.

Capcom's 80s and 90s "CPS" arcade boards used combinations of FM synthesis and sampled playback, giving them an unfortunate DSP-like sound, similar to something like the Super Nintendo's sound chip. Whereas, in the various home versions, the music was almost always an improvement, especially when it involved Red Book CD-capable platforms. No "Super Turbo" 3DO music or "Alpha 2" Saturn soundtrack in this collection: it's straight, mediocre CPS tunes all the way. At least the sound effects are pristine.

The "Street Fighter" games are one of the world's best examples of frame perfect precision-- any amount of input lag or missed motion inputs essentially destroys the experience. Thankfully, old video game systems and televisions had no problem with that. New ones though? Not even close: between modern processing-heavy HDTVs, the Switch's insane levels of input latency generally, and the lack of-- between the "joy-cons" and "pro controller"-- any remote semblance of a usable d-pad, make this collection's playability a lesson in abject futility-- a bit reminiscent of when "Alpha 3" originally hit the PSP and its dumpster fire of a d-pad.

Collections like this lay bare how far backwards technology has gone: modern systems quite literally can not run games like "Street Fighter" in a playable manner-- a feat even NEC's "PC Engine", with its 7.16 MHz 8-bit CPU and 8 kb of RAM, could achieve. Trying to competently play something like "Super Turbo" in this collection, on any speed, is a demonstration of absolute hilarity! Regarding this collection specifically, merely wrapping emulated arcade ROMs in a Flash menu, without delivering any of the added-value content and modes from the various home renditions-- and without even providing a way to map "x3 punch" and "x3 kick" to buttons, for Pete's sake-- is about as lazy as can be.