Full Review

26 July 2006 - Some people are always eager to try and convince you that the old days were better. You know, when black and white TV was all new and exciting and you could leave your back door unlocked and return to find your home in one piece.

These people are wrong of course. Given the choice between a brand new 42-inch HD plasma TV and a wood cased 12-inch black and white monstrosity, we’ll take the former every time. You can stick your tin bath too.

But the gaming world has had a bit of a retro re-emergence in recent years and here’s yet anther collection of titles from years gone by, this time on the PSP.

You can make a decent guess of how retro collections are going to fare just by looking at the line up. Capcom Classics Collections Remixed is no different.

There’s a couple of real gems here but all the rest is filler. The platfomer Strider remains a classic, as does the still astonishingly addictive Final Fight. Then there’s the top down vertical scrolling shoot ‘em up 1941 which you can now run in TATE mode – just turn the PSP vertically to view far off into the distance.

Unfortunately, that’s about it. The rest are low quality Capcom releases that had previously been confined to the dark, dank sections of our memories. They were better off staying there. The first Street Fighter title in particular proves to be just as we all remember, an absolute travesty of a game.

It’s equally as unfortunate to discover that the version of Bionic Commando –another 2D platformer starring a chap with a huge extendable bionic arm – is the poorer arcade iteration, not the great game that appeared on consoles.

VERDICT
The overall quality here just isn’t worth rushing out to buy at full price. Although the likes of Striker and Final Fight are stunning titles, the rest is drek that you’ll play once or twice before confining to history where it belongs. If only Ghouls and Ghosts was on this UMD…