Capcom vs SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 is the collection’s headline attraction. In fact, it still sees plenty of action at tournaments like EVO. Aside from the massive roster of Capcom and SNK characters, CvS2 is known for its Groove system that alters how the characters play. The selectable Grooves determine meter management, special mechanics, and movement options. For example, P-Groove gives your character a parry, while S-Groove requires you to manually charge your meter for supers. These add much mechanical depth, making CvS2 a deep, intense fighting game.
The collection has many tools to help you master CvS2’s complexities, such as visible hitboxes in training mode (all 2D fighting games in this collection have this option) and the various settings for input displays and damage numbers. These tools won’t make you a fighting game prodigy overnight, but they offer much-needed insight.
(Credit: Capcom/PCMag)
Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro (CvS1) is an intriguing fighting game in its own right. As CvS2’s predecessor, its systems aren’t quite as fleshed out. The most notable difference? There are only two Grooves, unlike CvS2’s six. With the Capcom Groove, you fill the three-tier super meter by attacking. With the SNK Groove, you manually charge the single meter. When filled, it gives you a damage boost plus unlimited level 1 supers when you’re low in health.
CvS1 also has a curious ratio system for team-building. Characters are assigned a ratio value from 1 to 4 based on their strength, and you must create teams that fill all four ratio slots. This means you can have teams of up to four ratio-one fighters, or a team with a single ratio-four character. I’m not a big fan of this system, as it limits who you play with and demands a bit of forethought. Nonetheless, the game is balanced around this mechanic, and I enjoyed experimenting with the systems.
(Credit: Capcom/PCMag)
Capcom Fighting Evolution is the weakest 2D fighting game in the collection. Despite launching three years after Capcom vs SNK 2, Evolution’s mechanics feel regressive by comparison. The biggest issue is that characters have mechanics based on their origin franchise. For example, Street Fighter III characters can parry, while Street Fighter Alpha characters can alpha-counter. Unlike CvS2’s Groove system, these abilities are not universally accessible or interchangeable. This makes some characters and their respective mechanics inherently more powerful than others.
To top it off, most backgrounds are surprisingly bland and blurry. You battle opponents on a pixelated background with very limited, rudimentary moving elements, which give the game an especially cheap feel. Three-dimensional backgrounds don’t look any better, often looking like a mishmash of arbitrary polygons shoddily pasted into a scene. It just looks lazy. I admit I enjoyed experimenting with Capcom Fighting Evolution, but only from a scholarly perspective: like dissecting a frog in biology class. This version of Evolution doesn’t do much to improve the original game, aside from adding a setting to make it easier to play as the secret boss characters Shin Akuma and Pyron.
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper is this collection’s third 2D fighting game. Upper is considered controversial due to several changes, the largest being the removal of the crouch-canceling glitch. Like roll canceling in CvS2, this move offered great combo potential. The good news is that the version in this collection lets you enable crouch-canceling as a menu option, making it the game’s definitive version. Crouch-canceling is unavailable in ranked online matches, but you can toggle it in unranked online lobbies.
