Capcom is currently in an amazing spot when it comes to the landscape of their fighting games. After several rough years, it feels like the company is headed right back to the legendary “CapGod” status they once held — if they’re not there already.
Street Fighter 6 has already been a solid success for the company, both with sales and with fans, and the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics being announced looks to be the start of what we hope is a trend of rereleasing more long awaited older titles on modern platforms. From the sounds of it, Capcom also wants this to be a trend as producer of Street Fighter 6 and the upcoming Versus series collection, Shuhei Matsumoto, recently indicated in an interview with IGN.
During the interview, IGN noted to Matsumoto that Street Fighter 3: Third Strike had an amazing showing at Evo 2024 with its top 6. Matsumoto was asked about Third Strike specifically as this is a game that has already seen rereleases several times in the past, so it’s a wonder if Capcom might be interested in doing so again in a “definitive” form.
Matsumoto responded with an excited, “Definitely!” He then went on to say this about rereleasing classic fighters on modern hardware.
“We want all our classic [fighting] games to be available for modern consoles because we just want to be able to reach as many people who may have never had the opportunity to play these games back in the day,” Matsumoto began. “So, we constantly think forward, and we want to make sure that it’s as accessible as possible for all audiences.”
With the reveal of Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, Capcom’s fighting game developers have been putting out a lot of messaging about how they really want to expose fans to these older, iconic titles that people may not have had the chance to experience yet.
Matsumoto and Director Takayuki Nakayama said similar things about Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui joining the Street Fighter 6 DLC cast as the mainline series’ first ever guest characters. They explained that part of the reason these two guests in particular were chosen was so that fans on a wider scale can become more familiar with fighting games as a whole and not just Street Fighter.
They have also said that fan interest in rereleases like the Marvel vs. Capcom collection will be a major factor in deciding whether or not Capcom will be able to make new installments of some of the most popular and highly request crossover games in their library. With Capcom very clearly being on good terms with both SNK and Marvel and showing a large willingness to work with both companies, we are currently in one of the best spots we’ve ever seen for not only a potential new Marvel vs. Capcom and/or Capcom vs. SNK game, but also to see more retro fighters come back in a real way.
While Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is the latest compilation from Capcom and was the most unlikely we’d ever see come to fruition, it isn’t the first assortment of fighting game rereleases we’ve seen from the longtime developer.
Though there are still all kinds of older series that can still be brought back, Capcom has already done a pretty fantastic job of bringing their old fighting games back for new audiences.
The Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection together have already reintroduced fans to over 20 classic fighting games on modern platforms. From Darkstalkers and Red Earth to Third Strike and even Cyberbots, a solid handful of the company’s fighters from back in the day are available right now on current hardware — and several of them even feature online play with rollback netcode.
Now that we have Marvel vs. Capcom 2 returning with the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, the next most highly requested Capcom retro fighter that still hasn’t been brought back has to be Capcom vs. SNK 2.
SNK just rereleased their version of the crossover fighter with Capcom, SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos, and with Terry and Mai coming to Street Fighter 6 Season 2 it feels like the chances of seeing CvS2 return is also higher than ever.
Based on what Matsumoto said in this recent interview, we can only hope that Capcom vs. SNK and several other classic Capcom fighting games do actually get the rereleases they deserve.