Growing up, I spent a lot of time at indoor cricket and ten-pin bowling centres, as I went where my parents went and I would often bother them for money for the arcade games. Capcom and Konami were a big part of my childhood for that reason, with The Punisher game being one of the big games I remember trying to beat. So with the reveal of Marvel Vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, I was ecstatic to play through some of the ones I remembered and a few I never played; so was it worth the trip down memory lane?

As far as line ups go, this is one of the smaller Capcom collections as there are only 7 games included, but many of these games are actually so beloved, it won’t matter. Of course, the first game I had to play through here was The Punisher, complete with original Nick Fury. For those that don’t know, back in 2001 a new design for the character was brought into the comics, designed to look like Samuel L. Jackson, but the original was a generic man. I remember fondly standing at the arcade machine with my coins and trying my best to get past Bushwacker and I am happy to report that some 30 years later I finally beat him. Jumping into the game here, I honestly had such a fun time, as not only does it play exactly like I remember, but there were enough continues on offer to overcome my lack of skill in the game. Which is honestly one of the best things about these collections, that you can take a game, tweak it ever so slightly and get an experience that is far more forgiving than the originals ever were. A great addition here is that you can now set combo’s to be done with a single button press, while I am sure fighting game purists will dislike it, for everyone else, it is a welcome option to the game.

While The Punisher was the game I wanted to play the most, I also remember playing X-Men Children of the Atom and Marvel Vs Capcom, so I of course had to give them a go here. Long story short, I still suck at them, but again, all the games let you tweak the settings to give you an advantage. They can be as simple as lowering the difficulty of the opponent AI, or giving yourself more lives. These changes were what gave me a chance to win in the fighting games, but even then I think I still lost more than I won, but I still enjoyed the matches. While the games are great fun, given most of them offer the same number of characters, it does feel slightly cheap in that you see Wolverine in Children of the Atom and he looks very similar in the remaining games. Sure, the character design was the same for a while and it makes sense to have the same here, but when you see Spider-Man still in that weird crouched pose, it can feel less like you are playing a different game, rather that you are playing a slightly tweaked version of them. There are of course differences between the games, character roster aside, like how in Marvel Super Heroes, you can deal with the Infinity Stones, in order to give your character more power, just remember the opponent can do the same.

While the games and their options are a big part of these collections, the gallery is the other half and here it contains a plethora of great art and music, but not a great layout. Ok, let me start with the music, as it contains a fun selection of tracks from the various games. As you select a game, the list of tracks appears, just like it would in a modern music player and that is ok. Where it fails to do something good, at least comparing to the recent Castlevania Dominus Collection, is that there is no playlist option. So that means if you like a track from each game and want to listen to them, you have to go into a single game, listen and then go find the next. Of course, that is not a massive problem, but given some games have nearly 50 tracks, trying to locate one or two will take time. Sadly those issues are minor as heck compared to the galleries issue and it’s a big one. The gallery does not display anything in any sort of order, Marvel Vs Capcom 2 has 192 pieces of art to enjoy and some are fantastic, but if you only wanted to look at sketches for Storm, you have to manually go through all 192 pieces to find them. Even worse it is a slow process, the collection has no way of actually jumping in blocks, which sure when the collection has 42 pieces, it may not seem like an issue, but any more than that and it is. You can’t look up specific characters to see the art from all the games they are in, nor can you look up background art vs character art, there is no search or grouping and the result is that it feels half baked. The other visual options, like on screen filters, border art and such are all wonderful and easy to make use of or turn off, so this collection method falls even shorter in comparison.

Much like any other games collection, your value from Marvel Vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is going to vary depending on your history with the games included. While the fighting games all hold up today, as evident by my losing a lot, they are however limited in their range of characters and moves compared to some more modern fighters. The Punisher is still a game I love and finally being able to get past Bushwacker made my time with the game incredible, but it does feel slightly out of place among the fighters, the Beat 'Em Up Bundle would have been a better place for it. While the game is launching digitally first, by the time the retail release comes in November, I can only hope someone at Capcom gives the go ahead to fix up the gallery, because it’s very hard to use at it stands. If you have strong memories of these games, then it is a release you should add to your collection, but if you were not a child of the 90s, then maybe hold off on inserting a coin for now.