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Good: Arcade-perfect ports of some truly classic games

Bad: Arcade-perfect ports of some truly terrible ones, too

The Original Street Fighter: Not as good as the sequel

Remember the first time you stayed up all night playing Street Fighter II or the first time you dumped 10 dollars worth of quarters into an arcade machine just to beat Strider or Bionic Commando? Well now you can relive all those memories (minus the curfew, acne, braces and homework) with the Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed for the PSP.

There are some truly great games on this collection. Bionic Commando, Final Fight, Captain Commando, 1941: Counter Attack and Strider were some of the best games of their time and are responsible for a lot of gameplay we take for granted today. They prove that classic gameplay really is timeless. Fighting goons in Metro City as Wrestler/Mayor Mike Hagger or fighting scores of ninja as Strider Hiryuu still feels as good as it did in kindergarten. 1941: Counter Attack is still frantic and Bionic Commando is just as impossibly hard as it was in the arcade (good thing you get unlimited continues-you'll need them). The problem is that those classic games only account for 5 of the collection's 20 games and the rest are less than memorable.

Ever hear of The Speed Rumbler? How about Mega Twins or Avengers? Me neither so what are they doing in this collection? Especially when they're taking up valuable space that could be filled by actual classics like the Ghouls and Ghosts series. That's three great games right there. Any additional incarnations of 1941 would have also been welcome. The biggest omission of all, however: Street Fighter II. Here's a game that set the bar for fighting games, influenced multiple generations of gamers and single-handedly swung the SNES and Genesis console war in Nintendo's favor. You would think it's inclusion would be a given, but its not. Instead we get the vastly inferior original Street Fighter, which allows you to only choose from two characters and lacks any of the finesse or polish of its sequel.

These games range from obscure, but fun (Forgotten Worlds and Magic Sword) to just obscure (The Speed Rumbler). The worst game in the collection, however is Quiz and Dragons, a trivia game where you choose a warrior and move to different spaces on a game board, answering questions about popular movies, music and television-from 1992. The game plays like Trivial Pursuit-meets-Dungeons and Dragons with the expected disastrous results.

Many of them are either generic shooters or generic brawlers. Avengers plays like a vertical scrolling version of double dragon-minus the additional fighting moves like hurricane kicks. Side Arms: Hyper Dyne, Section Z and Forgotten Worlds are all side-scrolling shooter that play virtually the same. While Magic Sword, Black Tiger and Mega Twins are all platforming/brawler hybrids. The result of this is gameplay that begins to feel stale, since you're virtually playing the same game over and over again.

Mulitplayer is accomplished via the PSP's wireless capability. Many of these games were designed to be played with more than one person and it definitely helps stave off the mindlessness of button mashing. The only problem is that multiplayer is only capable through network or LAN play, you can't play on the actual Internet. Since finding people for a LAN game is hard enough, the odds of finding one to three other people with PSPs and Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed are pretty slim. If you're lucky enough to be in that category the games all play seamlessly and setting up and joining games are both quite easy to do.

So with only five incredible games on here I'm sure that a few of you are wondering, "Why not just download these game for an emulator?" Well aside from the fact that it's illegal, Remixed features bonus content for each game in the form of concept sketches, tips and music. More importantly, these are the arcade-perfect versions of each game. Not the inferior NES or Super Nintendo ports many have played and keeping with that the size of the gaming screen can be changed to reflect the games' original aspect ratio by pressing the Select button. Even if there are a lot of obscure and in some cases bad games in this collection it's still 20 games for 20 dollars and they all lend themselves well to portable gaming, especially with the PSP's standby feature.

If none of this matters to you then you're probably better off saving your money, but if the idea of looking at original concept art or joining up with another player and punching your way through Captain Commando and Final Fight or fighting terrorists with a bionic arm sounds appealing then this game is for you. The true classics are still timeless, while the rest provide at least a moderate distraction.

Graphics: B

Sound: B

Gameplay: C+

First Play: B+

Last Play: B-

Overall: 79% C+