The golden age of arcade fighters might be long gone, but Capcom isn’t letting fans forget it anytime soon. With the success of Street Fighter 6 and Marvel vs Capcom remasters, the Monster Hunter maker is doubling down on nostalgia. Capcom is bringing back another wave of arcade classics with Capcom Fighting Collection 2, and it’s all about giving players more ways to relive the past.
Speaking with Japanese media Famitsu, series producer Shuhei Matsumoto opened up about the team’s mission to keep the arcade spirit alive.
“It really started with the idea that we want to port the [Darkstalker] series to modern consoles,” Matsumoto explained the first bundle’s situation. From there, the team added other fan-favorites like Pocket Fighter and Super Puzzle Fighter II. Even Red Earth, an obscure arcade-exclusive fighting-RPG, made the cut thanks to the team’s suggestions.
Nevertheless, bundling hard-to-get arcade ports in just one convenient pack is not enough. “There are a lot of games I want to port… so I thought, ‘Well, now I have to do [Capcom Fighting Collection] 2, too!'” admitted Matsumoto.
For the second entry, Capcom focused on porting arcade games that were ‘easy to get into’ and still highly requested to this day. Those include Capcom vs. SNK, Power Stone, Plasma Sword, and Project Justice. Somewhat coincidentally, they all ran on Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, an early 2000s system known for housing many Capcom hits.
Getting fellow old-school fighting game developer SNK on board with this project wasn’t difficult either. “Just as Terry and Mai are able to appear in Street Fighter 6, we were able to have smooth communication about Capcom vs SNK,” said Matsumoto relieved.
Matsumoto noted that online play should be a major focus when making modern ports of old games and especially considering the convenience of online tournaments and the popularity of streamers.
“Nowadays, playing against each other online has become the norm. Our top priority was to create an online environment so that people can continue to play for many years to come,” he explained.
Looking ahead, Matsumoto believes that he and his team will not be stopping their method of preserving arcade and retro games at Capcom Fighting Collection 2.
“Capcom has many more fighting games, and there are still some games that are not available on current consoles,” he said. “We would like to provide an environment where players can play arcade and old games as much as possible, while listening to the voices of the fanbase.”
In our preview, Julio La Pine called Capcom Fighting Collection 2 ‘retro done right‘ as it did a terrific job blending the old and new. If you’ve got just one favorite, grabbing this just to relive that old flame should be worth the price of admission.
