Capcom have just made a lot of SEGA Dreamcast fans very happy. After previously announcing back in June that both Marvel Vs. Capcom and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 would return this September as part of their Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, they've just gone and revealed that we're also going to be receiving Capcom Fighting Collection 2 on modern consoles in 2025, which includes some very significant Dreamcast fighters. And when I say significant… get this, Dreamcast lovers - Power Stone is on it! POWER STONE. And Power Stone 2 (the connoisseurs choice). And both Capcom VS. SNK games. And Project Justice. And Plasma Sword. Okay, no one cares about Plasma Sword.
Check out the announcement trailer below:
I felt giddy with joy just watching that. Why this upcoming release is so exciting is that the Dreamcast’s most beloved brawler Power Stone and its sequel were thought to have been left behind for good in 2006, when a collection of the two released for Sony’s PSP. But now here we are a little under two decades later in 2024 with a contemporary release of Power Stone coming our way! Another big deal in this upcoming collection is Project Justice - the sequel to Rival Schools (not to be confused with the band who did "Used for Glue") - as that game has never been released on any other console besides the Dreamcast, which is probably mostly why preowned copies of the game have been climbing in price in the last so many years.
The games by themselves would’ve been enough, but the glacier cherry on top of this awesome sundae is... all the included games will feature online play! Finally my long-suffering friends will no longer have to trek over to my house just to play endless rounds of their favourite game Power Stone 2 and nothing else for an entire day (they love it, really). They can instead now join the action from the comfort of their own homes, with the option to fake connectivity issues or simply just turn their console off as a means of escape.
Here's all of the games included on this release:
- Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro
- Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001
- Capcom Fighting Evolution
- Street Fighter Alpha 3 UPPER
- Project Justice
- Power Stone
- Power Stone 2
- Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein
The collection is currently confirmed for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and Steam.
Are you looking forward to the collection? Excited to finally play some Power Stone online with your friends? Disappointed Tech Romancer wasn't included? Let us know in the comments below or via one of our social media channels.
Just like in Sega GT, you can only enter certain championships with certain vehicle classes so this means you need to juggle which trucks you buy and upgrade. The actual gameplay is also about as far removed from 4 Wheel Thunder as you could possibly get - there are no nitro boosts or time limits here, instead the majority of the races are of the point-to-point variety and set on large open plan circuits where you have to follow an arrow to the next checkpoint. Because of this open-plan nature, it isn't always essential that you stick to the beaten track, indeed the AI vehicles usually don't and this leads to some great races through wooded areas and through rivers etc.
Graphically, Evo's vehicle models are pretty sweet although the environments can feel a little sparse at times and the game engine shudders occasionally. This minor niggle aside, 4x4 Evo is a solid racer and the fact that it never got an official PAL release remains something of a mystery to me.
Yep, the game features characters who are all pupils at different schools and throws them all together for one almightly playground scrap, although these fights are nothing like the ones we had at my school - there are no endless headlocks or rolling around on the football pitch here, people. No, instead the kids from Justice High are all masters of kung-fu and have the ability to throw balls of fire with their eyes - a skill that would undoubtedly have resulted in multiple detentions when I were a lad. The fights are similar to those in Marvel Versus Capcom 2 in that they allow multiple characters to be called upon to lend a hand should you find your ass being handed to you, and so you choose a team of 3 fighters to wade into battle with and can use them to gang up on an adversary depending on whether or not you have the required power in your little whup-ass meter.
Nicely, the characters all represent various (Jap & US) student-themed stereotypes such as sporty jocks and science geeks etc (if it were based on UK themes, they'd all be drunk chavs and pregnant 14-year-old slags, no doubt), whilst the battle stages are all similarly school related in some way e.g. classrooms, gyms, playgrounds etc. Project Justice is very easy to pick up and play, so if your beat 'em skillz consist simply of mashing all the buttons with sausage fingers (like mine) you can get just as much enjoyment out of it as an expert. Aesthetically, it's not as good as Dead or Alive 2 (what is?!), but the variety and creativity of the stages and characters, coupled with the outlandishness of the special moves on offer more than make up for it.
When you eventually find someone willing to chuck their copy of the highway code out of the window, you drive up behind them and flick the high beams at them. This initiates the actual race, where two power bars appear at the top of the screen and whoever gets the furthest ahead has the least damage done to their bar. If your opponent gets too far ahead of you - you lose, and likewise if you leave the slow old twat in your dust you get the spoils of victory. As with most racers, the career or 'Quest' mode in Extreme Racer rewards your wins with credits with which you can upgrade your vehicle with body parts or engine/handling improvements. I suppose this game is pretty unique in the way that it pits racers against each other in a way that most other racers don't, but the repetitive nature of the tracks and the virtually non-existent music slightly let it down. Where it definitely shines though, is in the graphics department. The car models are some of the best on the DC - and while the cars aren't officially licensed you can generally tell what it is you're driving simply because the models are so authentic-looking.
Sadly, there are no damage models, but for a game with this degree of arcade slant, realistic damage would probably been more of a detraction than a bonus. In a nutshell, Extreme Racer 2 is an original and awesome looking game that is let down slightly by sub-par sound and some simplistic gameplay aspects - but overall, a decent little racer.