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Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is a complete collection of every single Street Fighter and spin-off released since the 1987 arcade original right up to 1999's Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. That's a whopping 12 games included on just a single disc – a veritable bounty for fans of Street Fighter or fighting games in general. The collection serves to celebrate the recent 30 year anniversary of the original Street Fighter.

You can play every single game offline against friends or the CPU, and most games online in a variety of different modes. Offline includes the traditional arcade mode, a versus mode for playing against friends in couch co-op, and training. Head online and there's a lot more options, like ranked and casual matches, or you can create or join a lobby to set up custom games. There are leaderboards, skill level options, and you can even tweak your input lag to refine how it feels to play.

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Online Arcade is a particularly nice option, in that it allows you to play the traditional arcade experience but one in which real life challengers can occasionally pop in between matches. That way it's a little less predictable.

Going back to a previous point, though, we should note that not every single game is available online. In fact, only four of them make the cut: Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter II: Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Considering you'll likely spend a lot more time playing online than offline, this is worth bearing in mind before you grab this collection.

And it all plays, for better or worse, exactly how you remember it. There are games that you'll probably play once and forget (we're looking at you, original Street Fighter) in favour of the best versions, but it's still nice that they're all here in one collection. Play through each in sequence and you can really see, and feel, all of the refinements made over the years.

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The emulations are bang on, and run as smooth as butter. You can even tweak the appearance by applying filters to emulate a CRTV or arcade screen, or changing the screen size. Using the full or widescreen modes does stretch the image, though, so if you're a stickler for authenticity, you'll probably want to avoid doing that. You can fill the rest of the screen with a border if you want to, and that's a nice touch.

As you can expect, you can also tweak the controls to your heart's content. Every single button is configurable, and player two can even run with their own setup while playing couch co-op.

Reinforcing the fact that this is, first and foremost, a chunk of fan service is the museum, which takes you on a digital journey throughout all 30 years of the franchise's history. This is a treasure trove of information, including design pitches, character art, a timeline of releases, making ofs, and music. You won't spend an awful lot of time here, but if it's a nice walk down memory lane all the same.

Conclusion

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a lovely compendium of every single Street Fighter from the arcade original right up to Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Fans of the franchise will really appreciate having so many entries in a single place, and the wealth of customisation options, online modes, and extra content in the museum will go down a real storm.