Well, as long-time readers (of which I may well be the only one) know, I'm a big fan of Japanese 2-D fighting games. I can't really explain the fascination; I'm not otherwise overly fascinated with Japanese culture and I'm not really a fan of anime either. For some reason, though, I've always been a huge fan of 2-D fighting games, particularly the Street Fighter series, and I've been following them for a long time. I have quite a collection of games, on various systems, including Street Fighter, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.
And that's just the Street Fighter series; I won't bore you with my listing of King of Fighers titles, or any of the other series, but trust me when I say that they're nearly as extensive. One problem with this genre in the past has been the fact the games, while somewhat older themselves, tended to be released when home systems were not capable of porting them well, especially for the later titles. This is particularly true for the Neo*Geo or SNK titles, which ported well to their own proprietary home systems, but not to others. However, in recent years, the company's have realized that there's quite a bit of "free" revenue available on the compilation market. Capcom's Capcom Classics Collection and Capcom Classics Collection 2 gave me my first really modern updates of the early Street Fighter titles. SNK has finally done the same for the Playstation 2, and have finally even started the ball rolling on US releases.
So, I don't have a Playstation 2, but they've come down to a relatively cheap price. And, with several of the US releases out now, and the last one that I really, really want scheduled for sometime in 2008, I can actually have almost all of the titles I really want in arcade perfect, or even better than arcade ports on a modern console, for the US market.
The PS2 titles that I'll want to buy when I get the chance, then, include King of Fighters XI, King of Fighters 2000/2001, Fatal Fury Battle Archive, and Fatal Fury Battle Archive 2. Those titles will give me pretty much all of the Fatal Fury titles, many of which I don't have, or only have on inferior outdated systems, and rounds out my King of Fighters selection. King of Fighters XI is almost worth it just on it's own. I'll also need to hurry and pick up the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology from Capcom while I'm at it.
Between that, my Xbox, my Dreamcast and a small handful of pretty good PS1 ports, I'll be set for life on the genre.
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