I remember a time when pretty much any game by Capcom would be a guaranteed purchase for me. This was especially true towards the end of the 8-bit NES era and well into the 16-bit age. Such hits as the Street Fighter 2 series and Ghouls N Ghosts were absolute favorites of mine. Knowing full well the greatness that came from days gone by, Capcom recently released Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded with 19 games dating from the years 1984 to 1994. This is Capcom's second, and arguably better, such collection for the PSP.

Is that CCCR? Well turn it up, man!
CCCR (as it's known on the streets) includes some very impressive titles to choose from. Might as well get the Street Fighter 2 series out of the way. Included is SF2, SF2:Champion Edition, and SF2: Hyper Fighting. I'm pretty sure that these aren't the arcade roms, but rather a port of one of the Playstation re-releases (similar to the Xbox Live Arcade version.) Why does Capcom keep rehashing console ports of SF2 instead of just giving us the arcade ones? Most of the other games in CCCR are arcade versions (from the same arcade hardware, too.)  I dunno. Now that I have that gripe out of the way, all three SF2 games play pretty well, like you'd expect. Just wanted to play the arcade version. Nuff said.

On to more games! The entire Ghosts N Goblins series is here, except for the latest PSP release. All three titles (Ghosts N Goblins, Ghouls N Ghosts, and Super Ghouls N Ghosts) are still hard as heck, but now Capcom has included checkpoint saves! This thankful addition makes playing the GnG games on the go much more tolerable. I would have bought this collection just for these three games on their own.

A couple of gems that I'd never played before are Eco Fighters and Knights of the Round. Eco Fighters is a quirky little shoot 'em up title that reminds me of Konami's Parodius games. It sports some excellent graphics and cool weapon concepts (you have a mace shaped gun that rotates around your ship 360 degrees.) Knights of the Round is what I like to call the "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" beat 'em up. This game plays in the same vein as Capcom's classic Final Fight series and while it takes itself seriously you have to take on hordes of villans with strange names such as Bird Man, Fat Man, Tall Man, Sword Man, and Buster (?). How can ya not love a game like that?

Also included are 1942, 1943, 1943 KAI, Commando, Exed Exes, Gun.Smoke, King of Dragons, Mercs, Higemaru, Son Son, and Vulgus, which is supposedly the very first game that Capcom ever made. See? Ya learn something new everyday.

If it just didn't make my eyes burn
Another interesting concept is that you earn coins every time you play any of the games. You can then take the coins that you've earned and play them in a slot machine to try and win extras such as artwork, music, and even cheats for some of them games. If you know of someone with a PSP and CCCR you can play together over the ad-hoc Wi-fi. No online infrastructure mode, though, which is not that big of a surprise.

While there's a lot to love about CCCR, it has a couple of big issues. The first is the load times can be rather long and seem unnecessary. Classic games like Son Son shouldn't take more than a few seconds to load. Second is that many of the games look terrible when stretched to fit the entire PSP screen. CCCR does give you three video settings – Full (stretched), Modified (enlarged but with borders on the side to keep the original aspect ratio), and Original. Original is the best looking, but you end up wasting about 50% of the PSP's screen. I've seen emulators that do a better job at upscaling the games that were probably programmed in some guy's basement. Seems that Capcom was really lazy when doing these ports. Makes ya wonder if Capcom is planning on releasing some kind of magnifying glass add-on for the PSP?

Lazy emulation
Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded has a lot to love and is arguably one of the better collections of titles put together. The SF2 and GnG games alone make it outstanding. All the games play well, but it's just too bad that Capcom apparently rushed the compilation out the door. If they had spent just a little more time spent reworking the emulator, this set would been pristine. If ya don't mind doing a little squinting, you can have a lot of fun with CCCR. Any fan of classic Capcom games should own this.

- NakedBoB