JAMMA 2002: Capcom Fighting All-Stars - IGN

All-Stars returns to the Metro City of the Final Fight series, where various denizens of Capcom classics new and old are fighting over some kind of 12-hour bomb threat. Now, why one would hold a fighting tournament at that time we're not quite sure, but it's their game, not ours. Metro City mayor Mike Haggar is thus in attendance, along with the following (with their various series of antecedence):

Poison, in case you don't recall, was one of the series of generic palette-swapped hookers in the Final Fight beat-'em-ups. No, we don't know what gender Capcom has settled on for this appearance. In addition to the familiar faces, there are also three new arrivals. D.D. is the new lead character, a straightforward tough guy with a moveset similar to Kyo Kusanagi in King of Fighters. Rook is a lanky, laid-back fellow with lots of speedy kick attacks, who for some reason leaves clouds of feathers in the wake of his strikes. Finally, the young Ingrid looks completely out of place -- she fights somewhat like another impractically- dressed combatant, Street Fighter Alpha's Rose.

All-Stars' move commands are in the traditional Street Fighter style, with complex special attacks rather than the simple motions used in Rival Schools. The counter system seems to owe a little to those games, though, with "Dramatic Counters" that briefly cut away to a different camera angle with a motion blur effect, and more important, the button layout strays well from the Street Fighter standard. All-Stars has five buttons: two punches, two kicks, and an evade button similar to the one used in Virtua Fighter 3 for quick sidestep maneuvers.

The trouble with All-Stars so far, however, is that it shares some of the Street Fighter EX series' key weak points. Move animations, especially for slower characters like Haggar, are not exceptionally responsive, and combinations seem to be based more on remembering key strings than adapting attacks to complex situations. Some combo links obviously need to have timing issues ironed out -- for example, one of the early hits in Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken, or a very common lead into that move, somehow launches the opponent out of the way of the fireball.

Similar graphical inconsistencies are present in the current version. The backgrounds are excellent, showing off surprisingly sharp textures for what looks like a System 246 game and superior architecture. City skyline stages have an excellent sense of depth, with several layers of background built on top of each other. Shift the focus to the characters, however, and the result is less impressive. The modeling and lighting look weak in comparison to Soul Calibur 2 or the Naomi 2 Virtua Fighter 4, and more important, the character animation does not measure up, with very stiff transition animations between different moves and idle states. Some of the characters with the most potential didn't appear in the demo version, however -- Poison, Akira, and Adol were not playable -- so we'll wait and see what Capcom can do in the later stages of development.

Check out the accompanying movies and shots from the show floor to see what you think of the new setting and character designs. We expect to see a fair bit more of All-Stars after today -- it's due out in Japanese arcades this winter, and a PlayStation 2 release probably isn't that far behind.

-- David Smith