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Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded Review
Written by Justin Davis on Thursday, November 2, 2006
19 (!!) Arcade classics faithfully reproduced, many in genres that are all but dead.
The incredibly useless & frustrating "slot machine" unlockable system. Crazy-long load times.
Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded is an interesting game to review and score in a traditional manner. It includes an impressive 19 titles from Capcom's back library, but what if it had included say, five more, bringing the total to 24? Then would it be worthy of a higher score? Likewise, the Final Fight franchise is nowhere to be seen, so do you dock a compilation like this, for not including obvious choices?
The point is that while all reviews are subjective in a sense, and should serve as only a base guideline for your buying decisions, this rule applies even moreso to retro compilations. The amount of fun a gamer gets out of a retro compilation, assuming there are no issues with emulation, slowdown, etc., is generally directly proportional to how fond his or her memories of that game are.
Reloaded is getting such high marks from me because I spotted no emulation or slowdown issues, and the temptation to pop on the PSP for "just one more game" has been nearly overwhelming, even when I had lots of other work to do. What sealed the deal was the depth and breadth of the titles included. Numerous genres are well-represented, and a handful of included games fall outside of traditional genre boundaries altogether.
You have your side-scrolling beat 'em ups (The King of Dragons, Knights of the Round), 2D shooters ( Eco Fighters, 1942, 1943), and top-down action titles (Commando, Gun.Smoke, Mercs). Not to mention the Street Fighter and Ghouls and Ghosts franchises, which are both represented with three games each. Whenever I got sick of playing one style of game there were so many others to choose from that there was seemingly always something on the UMD worth loading up.
Each of the 19 games includes a options menu, and many of them allow you to customize the experience to suit your own skill level - how many starting lives you receive, how many points needed to earn an extra life, etc. It's also possible to play most (all?) of the titles with remixed sound, although my memories of most of the classics weren't strong enough to notice a huge aural difference.
The game's neatest feature is probably its post-game points system. After every game session, with any of the games, you're shown some fairly comprehensive statistics, including how long you played, how many button presses you made, how many times you continued, and them some cumulative stats including how many of the 19 games you've cleared, how many different days you've booted up the game, etc. These numbers are then translated into coin, which would have been a fantastic and original way to reward exploration of the compilation's 19 games. Instead, the coins can only be spent in the game's awful and somewhat-inexplicable slot machine.
The slot machine is poorly thought out in a number of different ways. There are seven total slot combinations that allow you to win a prize, with prizes consisting of music, art, and cheats for the 19 included games. The first problem is that the prizes don't correlate with their rarity in any manner. Triple 7s (very rare) unlocks Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts Art - is this any more desirable than other, easier to win prizes, like Exed Exes Music, or Eco Fighters cheats? Even worse, ALL the prizes have to be won to receive a new set of goodies to win. So you'll inevitably win everything but the triple 7s prize and end up playing the slot hundreds of times to get that prize you most likely don't even care about, just to make new prizes available to win. The slot machine "hits" less than a real one would, to boot. I once counted 22 pulls where nothing was won. Why the heck couldn't the coins have just been used to buy the items from a shop?
The unlockable items themselves actually serve as a really nice repository of Capcom memories, despite the method they're unlocked. There's a total of 895 items, including seemingly complete soundtracks for all 19 games, lots of high-res artwork that displays nicely on the PSPs screen, and plenty of cheats.
Outside of the three Street Fighter titles, which are rendered nearly unplayable by the PSP's D-pad and four face buttons, I didn't run into any control or emulation issues in any of the titles. I'm not giving Capcom a pass for these Street Fighter ports not being any fun, but Reloaded still gets four stars from be because it would still be a great collection even if the three Street Fighters were excluded entirely.
The only other complaint is the long loads that are encountered when you first select a game to play. This, coupled with the rediculous slot machine method of unlocking bonuses, does hinder the overall package slightly, but it doesn't make the classics themselves any less fun. When you boil it right down, Reloaded is just a great compilation, plain and simple.
