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Good: Manic fighting, variety of items, interesting stages

Bad: Load times, sometimes annoying difficulty

Cult hits amongst the Dreamcast audience, the Power Stone games were a rare breed of fighting games. Rather than focusing on special attacks and combos, players used a variety of items, weapons, and (most of all) the environment to put away their enemy. Now, both titles in the series have made their way to the PSP with Power Stone Collection.

As a fan of the underrated originals, it's great to have them in portable form. Each has made its way to the PSP without sacrificing any gameplay quality. While many ports suffer on their way to the system due to it having less buttons, Power Stone Collection works just fine. Face buttons control your basic combat and jumping, and the shoulder buttons come into play when you obtain three Power Stones.

Upon gathering the required three stones, your character morphs into an extremely hulked-up version of him/herself, complete with new attacks and superpowers. Whereas your character may punch and kick while in standard form, the Power Stones will allow you to shoot massive projectiles and zip around the screen.

Basic battles consist of running around the stage, madly collecting stones and weapons. There is no shortage of the latter, as you'll find rocket launchers, ray guns, axes, flamethrowers, and countless other items. It plays well as a long-range fighter, as you can run around the map and throw or shoot things at your opponent until they're defeated.

The original Power Stone is only one-on-one, and features more basic stages than the sequel. It also seems too easy to win fights by continuously jump-kicking your enemy. There is really no big focus on combos, as the stones and environment will help you far more. In fact, things can get a bit too difficult from time to time. If a late opponent gets all three Power Stones, you might as well restart the match, because it's almost impossible to adequately defend against their supermoves.

Power Stone 2 takes everything that was great about the original and improves upon it. You can go through the Story Mode in the standard 1-on-1 format, or you can up the ante by adding three CPU opponents. Stages are highly interactive and change as you fight on them. For instance, one fight starts on top of an airship, transitions to a free-fall brawl, and then ends up on the ground once again. There's even a fight that takes place during a Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque boulder run.

While not a graphical powerhouse, it stays true to the Dreamcast originals and looks bright and vivid on the PSP screen. Some supermoves fill the entire screen with projectiles and particle effects, and the portable handles it without many slowdown problems. Unfortunately, the load times are pretty bad and somehow longer than the Dreamcast version.

Power Stone Collection would be a great purchase for fighting fans that own a PSP. If you happen to have a friend (or three) with the title, you can greatly extend the replay value through ad hoc multiplayer. It may not offer much in the way of new content, but they're faithful ports that will satisfy fans of the originals.

Graphics: 7.5

Sound: 7.5

First Play: 8.5

Replay Value: 8.0

Gameplay: 8.0

Overall: 8.1