Thrills and chills for 2D fighting fans everywhere as Capcom USA has announced the development of Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for PlayStation 2.
According to a very brief press release, the five game collection, to be released this summer, will contain direct arcade ports of Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, and Street Fighter Alpha 3, as well as Pocket Fighter.
Before you rush out to cancel your pre-order for the PSP version of Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, we'd like to point out that Capcom's release made it a point to use the phrase "arcade conversions" when referring to the PS2 set. If they hold true to that, the games on the PS2 disc won't include the extra characters, backgrounds, modes, and tweaks that have been incorporated into the home versions.
For example, Alpha 3 on PSP contains 10 characters, a dozen extra backgrounds, and a couple extra modes not found in the arcade game.
Then again, some purists prefer the arcade originals, even though they're riddled with exploits and infinite-combos, because certain characters (Dhalsim, DeeJay, etc.) are stronger.
Hopefully, Capcom will respond to our email inquiries and the concerns of potential consumers and specify concretely which revisions of each game will be included in the set. Judging from the phrase "arcade conversions," though, we're assuming they're going to include the un-enhanced arcade versions until told otherwise. Judging from the company's track record with Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and Capcom Classics Collection, that assumption is a safe bet.
Either way, this is great news, as few arcades have these games anymore and the PlayStation and Saturn versions of Alpha, Alpha 2, and Pocket Fighter are impossible to find nowadays.
