Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium: The Definitive Review (Complete 34 Game Review + Ranking)

This is the complete Indie Gamer Chick review of Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium! For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Space Invaders’ success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

There’s 32 games in Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium, but really, there’s 34. Three Wonders contains three completely different games, and they were so different from each-other that I chose to review them as their own entities. Capcom Sports Club also has three different games, but they all had the same aim (being fast-paced arcade sports games) and play value, so I chose to count it as one game. Also, I didn’t factor in SonSon towards my ultimate verdict, since it’s free-to-download whether you buy the complete set or not. Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium costs $39.99 for the whole set, while the individual games cost $3.99. Therefore, the set needed to score ten YES! verdicts to win the Indie Gamer Chick seal of approval.

YES!: 20 + SonSon
NO!: 13

Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium doubled what it needed. Thus, it’s Chick-Approved! This is one of the best arcade compilations available on modern consoles. It’s also an excellent package with tons of options for button mapping, presentation, screen orientation, and picture filters. The only feature missing is the one I fell in love with from SNK 40th Anniversary where a full video play-through is included that allows you to pause the video and take over the gameplay. I LOVE that feature and wish more classic sets included it.

Final Rankings

How I determined the rankings is simple: I took the full list of games, then I said “I’m forced to play one game. Pick the one I could play the most and not get bored with.” That goes on top of the list. Then I repeat the question again with the remaining games over and over until the list is complete. Based on that simple criteria, here are the final rankings. Games above the Terminator Line received a YES! Games below it received a NO!

1. Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire
2. Street Fighter Alpha 2
3. Super Puzzle Fighter II: Turbo
4. Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix
5. Magic Sword
6. Midnight Wanderers (Three Wonders)
7. Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge
8. Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors
9. Eco Fighters
10. Chariot (Three Wonders)
11. Street Fighter Alpha 3
12. Saturday Night Slam Masters
13. Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition
14. Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams
15. Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters
16. Rally 2011: LED STORM
17. Don’t Pull (Three Wonders)
18. Hyper Dyne Side Arms
19. 1943 Kai
20. SonSon*
21. Capcom Sports Club
    **TERMINATOR LINE**
22. Black Tiger
23. Knights of the Round
24. Gun.Smoke
25. Mega Man: The Power Battle
26. The King of Dragons
27. Pnickies
28. Tiger Road
29. Last Duel
30. Savage Bees (aka Exed Exes)
31. The Speed Rumbler
32. Avenger
33. Block Block
34. Street Fighter

GAME REVIEWS

1943 Kai: Midway Kaisen (1987)
Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

Way back in January of 2019, I named 1943 Kai “Best in Set” for Capcom Arcade Cabinet on Xbox 360/PlayStation 3. Now that I’ve played through it a second time, wow, it really speaks to how weak Arcade Cabinet was done that this could walk away with any trophy. Being the best game in Capcom Arcade Cabinet is like being the most edible item on the menu at an Arby’s. Which is not to say 1943 Kai is bad or anything. It’s a perfectly fine bland shmup, just like 1943 was. The differences are this has six fewer stages and one of the weapons is slightly better. Fewer stages is actually a good thing, as it feels like this cuts a lot of 1943’s gristle out. There’s smarter enemy formations too, so even though this is technically harder, it kind of feels like a more fair type of harder. I prefer the later 194X games, but they were really starting to get everything down pat with Kai.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #19 of 34

Avengers (1987)
aka Avenger, aka Hissatsu Buaiken (Deadly Hooligan Fist)
Designed by Takashi Nishiyama
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

Takashi Nishiyama had two pretty sizable hits at Irem before he joined Capcom. One was Kung Fu Master, aka just plain Kung Fu, a pretty influential game. Even I like Kung Fu, and I hate basically everything according to many retro fans. I bring up Kung Fu Master (aka Spartan X) because Avengers is clearly trying to be exactly that, only from a different camera angle. In this case, Avengers is a top-down game. Otherwise, the same concept: punch and kick your way through a hoard of identical baddies, most of whom just want to hug it out with you, but meanly so. Actually the huggers do headbutt you in the hug, but still, it’s a hugging game, with levels culminating in a boss baddie with a gimmick, usually based around a weapon. And it’s absolutely abysmal. I’m genuinely not trying to be hyperbolic when I say Avengers is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. The actual combat features incredibly piss-poor collision detection. I lost count of how many times I punched right through enemies to no effect. It even happens to the stationary garbage cans you collect items from. Besides that, what punches and kicks you hit don’t feel OOMPHful at all. It does try to one-up Kung Fu by having a teeny bit more variety in enemies, but even this blows up in Avenger’s face. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, enemies who throw projectiles have too much of an advantage over you. The power-ups are weak and wear off too fast. Punching is basically worthless, and you can also spam a spinning kick for no cost that I found more effective than normal attacks. You’ve got to feel bad for Nishiyama, who tried to recreate the magic of Kung Fu Master twice in a row (Trojan was the other) and fail, but when I say “even Trojan didn’t suck this badly” that speaks volumes.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #32 of 34

Black Tiger (1987)
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

After suffering a mysterious series of delays, Black Tiger released in 1987 and feels like it’s playing catch-up with Konami’s Castlevania and Taito’s Rastan. An action platformer with a bit of RPG grinding and money collecting thrown in, you have to hop around levels and fight baddies with some of the strangest attacks in history. You have both a whip and a series of daggers, and when I say “both” I mean you throw a barrage of daggers every time you use your whip. It’s so weird. It’s like they wanted to give you the option for one or the other, but they inputted it wrong and wired the game to do both at the same time. The daggers aren’t a finite resource, either. You have unlimited amounts, so much so that they’re often a lot more effective than the whip, since three come out at once and they’re ranged. BUT, even with this, the combat lacks satisfactory OOMPH, and the level design is based around dickish enemy placements and GOTCHA! type booby traps. Capcom seems to have been obsessed with treasure chests that would actually screw the player over, just like in Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. There’s too many whammies in the chests, and even rewinding doesn’t take away the frustration of dealing with them. Grinding up enough money to buy the good items is a slow process. Finally, the jumping is stiff and rigid and leads to many instakill situations. There’s a good game buried in this mess somewhere, but Black Tiger just acts like a total prick too often to be fun.
Verdict: NO!
Second Stadium Ranking: #22 of 34. **TOP OF THE BOTTOM**

Block Block (1991)
Designed by Shinji Sakashita, H.K., and M. Miyao

Simply put, Block Block is one of the worst brick breakers ever made. It’s especially unfit for consoles that lack dial controllers, but that’s just the start of its problems. In my two play sessions with it during Capcom Arcade Stadium 2, I had at least two instances of the ball clipping right through the paddle. In a game where everything depends on the paddle.. you know.. working, that alone is enough to earn it a spot near the bottom of the NO! pile. And I say “at least two times” because I had other instances where the ball was moving so fast that I couldn’t be sure if I barely missed a volley or if the game just stopped working again. It seems to be tied to having bricks underneath the paddle. Blocks underneath the paddle would be a nice twist, but the level design is miserable. I had tons of instances where a ball would travel around unbreakable corridors and then just jam up in the geometry. A funny quirk about Block Block is, if you go too long without breaking any bricks, the game opens an automatic exit to the next level. Of course, the ball has to actually hit the exit. It goes away if the ball bounces too much. There’s neat ideas here, like the paddle breaking into a smaller paddle after so many volleys, but the physics are amateurish and, frankly, brick breakers had existed for fifteen years by time Block Block came out. This SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THIS BAD, and it’s awful. The final 8-bit Capcom arcade game is also one of their very worst coin-ops. Just a complete disaster in every way possible, and the only thing keeping it from finishing dead-last is the historic ineptness of Street Fighter 1.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #33 of 34

Capcom Sports Club (1997)
Designed by Yoshifumi Fukuda

Unlike Three Wonders, Capcom Sports Club’s three games don’t deserve their own reviews. They can be summed up by saying “fast-paced arcade sports games of middling entertainment value.” Two of the three are fine. The lone stinker is the basketball game. It’s like a 3-on-3 version of NBA Jam without the “on fire” stuff. Or real players, for that matter. Curiously, the game has no shot clock. Shot clocks exist for a reason, and a basketball video game based around a lightning-fast pace not having one is such an unforgivable omission that I can’t overlook it. Stick to the soccer and tennis games. Soccer features a short field and over-the-top animations, and it can be fun in small doses. I’ll note that the game tends to smarten-up the AI every time you win. If a game ends in a draw, it counts as a game over and you have to re-up on your virtual quarters, at which point the AI becomes more reasonable. I’m on to you, Capcom. Meanwhile, tennis game is just a cartoony game of tennis taken up-tempo. Literally nothing about it stands out. Well, actually sometimes it feels like you can’t cover the court fast enough, but that’s kind of the point of Tennis, right? Either way, there’s hundreds of soccer and tennis options out there, and neither of these will rise to the level of a fan favorite among them, but they’re fine.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #21 of 34 **BOTTOM OF THE TOP**

Chariot (1991)
Game #2 of 3 from Three Wonders
Designed by Shoei Okano

The second of Three Wonders’ offerings, this cute-em-up feels like it was probably meant to be the full-blown game that got a solo release, with Midnight Wanderers and especially Don’t Pull being games that barely rose above proof-of-concept and were shoehorned onto this board as an attempt to test a new business model that they straight-up stole from SNK. At least that’s our new working theory. Chariot feels like the most complete of the trio, though it’s still an all-to-brief experience. This time around, it’s a surreal shmup with a zodiac theme. Despite sharing multiple assets and story elements with Midnight Wanderers, Chariot isn’t remotely generic. Cuphead fans will recognize more than one boss encounter Chariot directly inspired, and shmup fans will appreciate the twists in the formula. You have a tail that causes damage if you can dangle it over enemies and bosses, and it also doubles as the indicator of when your charge shot is ready. It a later level, Chariot even does a camera trick that fools players into thinking they’re going to go one way before quickly moving up or down to another area of a map. I wish there was more variety in weapons and I wish the game was longer, but Chariot is among Capcom’s strongest shmups.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #10 of 34.

Darkstalkers Series (1994 – 1997)

Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (1994)
Designed by Junichi Ohno
Also included in Capcom Fighting Collection

Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge (1995)
Designed by Junichi Ohno
Also included in Capcom Fighting Collection

Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire (1997)
Designed by Shinichiro Obata, Hidetoshi Ishizawa, Malachie, Nohah, and Katsuyuki Kanetaka
Also included in Capcom Fighting Collection
Vampire Savior 2 and Night Warriors 2 are paired with this review but not included in Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium. Those games are only in Capcom Fighting Collection.

Darkstalkers is basically Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo crossed with a Halloween costume store. The story goes that Capcom asked Universal Studios for the license to their famous monsters. Universal, savvy businessmen as always, said no. I mean, why would they want to partner with the company who made the hottest fighting game in the world to make a fighting game with their stagnant lineup of old horror movie IPs? To really hammer home what a colossal failure their rejection of the proposal was, according to the legend, Capcom’s artists then turned out the basic concepts for the ten fighters in Darkstalkers in about an hour. It’s almost unbelievable, especially given how overflowing with personality and charm the roster is. There’s no stinkers in the bunch. I played with the full roster of characters, and they each had their own flare and uniqueness and at least one move or animation quirk that put a smile on my face. That’s rare for a fighter, and it continued for the entire run of sequels. Come on, how can you not love a Little Red Riding Hood lookalike who grabs an opponent from behind and slits their throat with a kitchen knife? It’s so dark! Oh wait.. I get the name now.

If you squint, you might not even realize you’re playing a separate franchise from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. It’s really close, with the major additions being things like being the first Capcom fighting game with airblocks and the ability to move while ducking. There’s also a chain combo system for those who want a more advance fighter and not a button masher, though you can honestly have fun both ways. I played rounds of Vampire Savior with both fighting game vets and a person playing their very first one-on-one fighter and everyone had fun. This is a series that got better as it went along, and by time I reached Vampire Savior, I actually liked Darkstalker as a series more than I liked Street Fighter 2. A more colorful roster, better themes, surreal backdrops, and some of the most pitch-perfect controls I’ve ever experienced in a 2D fighter. Really, this whole franchise deserves to be regarded higher than it is.

Where it gets weird is Vampire Savior is broken into three different games that switch only a couple fighters out for a couple returning combatants. This was done as an appeasement to series fans due to the limited space in the ROM, though the shady-as-all-hell numbering of these revamps as sequels felt skeezy. People who don’t know the score will see these listed as totally separate games in compilations like Capcom Fighting Collection and be hoodwinked into thinking they’re getting three separate games and not three versions of one game, only one of which is really necessary. Given that it’s 2022 now, you’d think Capcom could use the space age technology of the modern era to just ROM-hack in the missing fighters. Presumably this wasn’t done to appease “purists” but those same purists apparently detested both Night Warriors 2 and Vampire Savior 2 anyway. It’s such a no-brainer and it comes with the bonus of not being intellectually dishonest about how many separate games are included in a compilation. I hate the whole situation because it left a bad taste in my mouth about an otherwise outstanding fighting franchise.
2nd Stadium Rankings
Darkstalkers: #8 of 34
Night Warriors: #7 of 34
Vampire Savior: #1 of 34 **BEST GAME IN CAPCOM ARCADE 2ND STADIUM**

Don’t Pull (1991)
Game #3 of 3 from Three Wonders
Designed by Toshihiko Uda

The shortest and weakest of the Three Wonders trio, Don’t Pull is a 90s remake of Pirate Ship Higemaru, only with the difficulty upped to an extreme. Oh, and will everyone PLEASE stop comparing every single cutesy game that involves shoving boxes to Lolo? Even the Wikipedia page for Three Wonders mentions Lolo as the most similar game. It’s listed first, before Pengo or Pirate Ship Higemaru. This is NOTHING like a Lolo game. Not even a little bit, because Don’t Pull isn’t even a puzzle game. It’s 100% an action game where you run around and shove boxes into enemies. When you shove a box, it slides until it hits another box or leaves the playfield, killing any enemies it makes contact with along the way. If there’s two boxes next to each other and you shove one into the other, the one you shove breaks immediately. The only way this resembles a puzzler is having to strategically break some of the boxes to create a safe space for you that can double as a clear shot at the baddies. If anything, you’ll spend most of your time running away and trying to scratch out enough distance between you and enemies to get a clean shot off. This isn’t made easier by the controls being pretty stiff, and enemies who are tougher to shake than you’d think. Still, this not-puzzler that represents the puzzle genre for Three Wonders can be quite exciting, especially if you manage to shake three or four tails and set up the perfect trap to take them all out with a single box. At only sixteen levels that you can knock-out in barely twenty minutes, Don’t Pull feels like it’s a game that got cancelled halfway through, but it’s fun while it lasts.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #17 of 34

Eco Fighters (1994)
Designed by Keisuke Mori

Eco Fighters caused physical pain in me, and in more than one way. It’s not epilepsy compatible, and even with my seizures under control, I got legitimately nauseated playing it due to unexpected strobe effects after beating the second boss. That type of stuff I could push past or take precautions against, but the cramping of my hands? That part was probably unavoidable. Eco Fighters is a very unconventional shmup where you have a turret that rotates 360° around the ship but NOT like a twin stick shooter (or Capcom’s own Forgotten Worlds). I struggled to find a comfortable button mapping for it, and early on, I kind of hated Eco Fighters. I spent the first twenty minutes wishing it had just been a normal shooter. But, it ultimately grew on me. If you’re using a normal game controller, I recommend slowing the turret rotation speed down in the game’s options for maximum accuracy. Once you get used to the controls, Eco Fighters is a shmup overflowing with personality, excellent set-pieces, wonderful boss battles, and some of the most satisfying guns in the entire genre. I especially liked the arc-welder gun, which allows you to cut through enemies. It’s so cathartic to camp on top of a boss and just lobotomize it with a short laser. I’m not entirely convinced Eco Fighters had a consistent vision, as the later stages dip their toes in lazy bullet hell design. But, even with all these problems, this is probably Capcom’s most underrated 90s coin-op. I only wish it translated better to a standard controller, since dial controllers aren’t an option.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #9 of 34

Gun.Smoke (1985)
Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

Maybe it’s because I grew-up with a father who loved John Ford and John Wayne movies, but I love cowboy games. I wish there were more of them. Sadly, Gun.Smoke is too hard for its own good. This is a standard auto-scrolling shmup, only with a western theme instead of spaceships. I do like the novel control scheme: there’s three shooting buttons: left, straight, and right. You can slap any of these at the same time to shoot in both those directions. It makes for one of the most unique and intriguing shooters I’ve played. But, even on the lowest setting, the enemy placement is cheap as all hell. This includes enemies that quickly get behind you and thus out of your range, which becomes maddening. Worse yet is how the lives system works: if you die, you go backwards with your items downgraded by one tick, which is especially frustrating if you’re fighting a boss, since you have to cause all the damage in one life. I’d rather have a health meter or just instantly respawn. Weirdly, after I beat the main game with cheating, I became one of only eleven people (as of this writing) to clear Stadium 2’s special challenge for it: scoring 50,000 points on the highest difficulty setting. What’s truly insane is I did it on my very first try. Awesome moment for me, but Gun.Smoke’s difficulty makes the Fun.Broke.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #24 of 34

Hyper Dyne Side Arms (1986)
Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto & Noritaka Funamizu
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

Remember Capcom Arcade Cabinet? Of the 14 games in that set, I only gave two a YES! One was 1943 Kai. This was the other. Hyper Dyne Side Arms was probably the first good Capcom arcade game, and maybe their first really good game, period, depending on how you feel about their early NES output. Tellingly, it’s also one of their first coin-ops that isn’t stingy with the power-ups. In fact, Side Arms goes the opposite direction: the game is utterly spammed with upgrades, so much so that it’s entirely possible for you to become an unstoppable space tank. I’ve never cared for shmups that do the “shoot both in front of you and behind you” thing all that much, and I was worried that this would be little more than an upgraded version of Section Z. But, the way Side Arms does it works, especially with the wide variety of guns and the fact that you even have reasons to switch between them instead of sticking to just one the entire run. Even the Macross-like robot transformations are fun. There’s a little too much repetition, and the bosses can be obliterated if you choose the right weapons, but otherwise, this is a totally fun and solid shmup, even if it feels like it only exists to be Capcom’s slightly-soulless answer to Gradius.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #18 of 34

Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition (2003)
Directed by Ryota Suzuki
Also included in Capcom Fighting Collection

Hyper Street Fighter II was made to be the ultimate “settle the score” game for the absolute biggest fans and best players of Street Fighter II. It mixes the original five versions of Street Fighter II/Super Street Fighter II together, with players having to choose which version of the game they want from a menu, then selecting their character. So, you can have the Street Fighter II Championship Edition version of Ryu take on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo version of him, and each will play exactly as they did in those games. Like, right down to the amount of frames of animation. That’s apparently a very big deal for professional players, who measure that stuff like scientists. It’s a neat idea for a game. Whether you view this as the ultimate gift to fans or a soulless cash grab is in the eye of the beholder. I’m not so into Street Fighter II that I remotely care about the nuances of what moves can counter what moves based on what frames of animation you’re in, but I guess I’m happy this exists for fans that basically kept arcade afloat in the 90s.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #13 of 34

The King of Dragons (1991)
Directed by Tomoshi Sadamoto
Also included in Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle

The first in a series of four sword-and-sorcery brawlers from Capcom that would eventually carry the Dungeons & Dragons™ label, King of Dragons feels like a proof of concept for better things to come. There’s five fighters to choose from, but the ability to select them between rounds is nulified by the fact that they don’t level-up on par with the fighter you’re using. The characters you don’t select do gain XP, but not at the same rate. So, when my Cleric was a level 11, the other four fighters were levels 5 or 6. Why would I want to swap to them? By this point, the enemies, and especially the bosses, were spongy enough without selecting a character half-as-strong. The King of Dragons is only a three player game too, so some characters will just be stuck trailing the others even if you max-out the co-op potential. That dumb decision was probably the difference between a YES and a NO, because the ultra-repetitive combat could have used the ability to seamlessly swap between characters to take the edge off the monotony. You only get one standard move per character, plus a jump button and a crash attack that eats through your health. Top this off with mostly dull set pieces and underwhelming boss fights and you have the recipe for pure, unadulterated mediocrity. The King of Dragons isn’t a complete wash. There’s a couple decent levels that seem to have been inspired by the works of Ray Harryhausen, but the feathery combat that lacks OOMPH seals the deal. King of Dragons is a gigantic bore.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #26 of 34

Knights of the Round (1991)
Designed by Akira Nishitani
Also Included in Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle

I generally like Arthurian legend retellings, as long as they don’t star Richard Gere as Lancelot. But, Knights of the Round is a bit of a bore. I’ve previously given it a YES for #IGCvSNES, though it’s very close to the bottom of the YES pile and I could honestly go either way at any given time. The issue with Knights of the Round is the same as many Capcom brawlers: being married to two-button combat limits your options greatly. They did try to change it up by having a tilt-the-joystick mechanic where you can do an overhead slash if you attack and then immediately press forward. It makes for fighting normal baddies mostly fun. Then you get to the bosses, who are spongy, don’t play fair, and often just linger at the edge of the screen. Many require you to ping single hits off them with a bob-and-weave attack style, especially since they can cut your health all the way down with just a couple blows landed. They reskin the bosses quite a bit too, with some reappearing as normal baddies over the course of the forty-five minutes it takes to finish this with one player (it feels longer). There’s a horse, but I found actually trying to keep yourself mounted on it is more trouble than it’s worth, especially since I couldn’t line-up with the enemies most of the time while riding it. Like I said, I could see myself going YES or NO at any given time, and this time around, I was just bored the entire time. That tells me that Knights of the Round doesn’t hold up to replays very well. I can only review based on my experience this play through, so I have to go NO! Them’s the rules.
Verdict: NO!
**FLIP!** Previously received a YES! in Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle
2nd Stadium Ranking: #23 of #34

Last Duel (1988)
Designed by Takashi Nishiyama

I wasn’t expecting to run into controversy with Last Duel, a game I’d never heard of before I started this run. There’s apparently multiple different ROM sets, and the one included in Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium isn’t 100% the definitive version. Either way, I can only count the version of Last Duel that was officially re-released. It’s an interesting premise: a shmup where levels alternate between a futuristic car that you have to manually bring up to speed, and a slow-ass generic space shooter. I wish it had just stuck to the car sections, which manage to feel novel and fresh. Once you charge-up your weapons, you should be able to take out most of the baddies while moving at full speed and leaping over pits. In the space sections, Last Duel becomes a poor man’s Life Force (that’s Salamander anywhere but America). Neither style are particularly bad, but the car sections are too cramped and focused on near-misses (like a driving game) while the space sections are just soulless. The Last Duel got lost to obscurity for a reason.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #29 of 34

Magic Sword (1990)
Designed by Yoshimi Ohnishi, Tomoshi Sadamoto, and Yoshiki Okamoto

Magic Sword is like the black-out drunk version of an ambitious arcade RPG, and I swear to god I mean that in the nicest way. It’s so stupid that it’s endearing for it. Absolutely no finesse is required as you jump around and button mash your way through fifty floors of non-stop side-scrolling sword-and-sorcery action. There’s only one combat button (two if you count the seldom-used-outside-bosses magic attack) and almost all enemies can be killed by waving your sword at them without having to use any strategy. Maybe a couple have weak points that require all the complexity of jumping up to hit them instead of just spamming attacks on the ground. Unlike their early efforts, Capcom was very generous giving out power-ups and the various allies that you can free from jail cells who stand behind you and add boosts to your attack. They’re everywhere with no rhyme or reason in how they were spaced out. You often can free several different ones in a row and have your pick of the litter. But, it’s still a Capcom game, which means booby-trapped treasure chests and cell doors galore. Capcom is like that one asshole friend who keeps giving people the peanut can with spring-loaded snakes every Christmas and laughs until he’s purple in the face every time. That becomes problematic in the final third of the game, when the whammies seem to outnumber the actual items. Even worse is that for a game that’s all-combat, all the time, I kind of wish it felt more impactful. The OOMPH isn’t completely non-existent, but this hardly feels as satisfactorily violent as Capcom games were starting to get during this time period, resulting in attacks being a bit weightless. Still, dumb as Magic Sword is, I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun from start to finish and one of their most underrated arcaders ever. It just never gets slow or boring, which puts it in the upper-echelon of its breed.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #5 of 34

Mega Man: The Power Battle (1995)
Designed by Koji Ohkohara

What a weird idea for an arcade game. Granted, the idea of a Mega Man boss rush is an absolute no-brainer, but it’s the way they did it. Structured somewhere between traditional Mega Man mechanics and a fighting game, Mega Man: The Power Battle features some all-star Robot Masters from the first seven games of the franchise (and some bizarro choices. Who the hell thought fans would be like “OH MY GOD IT’S DUST MAN! TEE HEE!”) and frankly the best versions of the Yellow Devil ever. The issue is the “steal enemy weakness to use on next robot” mechanic feels flimsy and inconsistent, and some enemies (such as Turbo Man) take forever to show vulnerability. This was also one of the rare 90s Capcom arcade games that felt unresponsive, especially pressing the button that switches you to the acquired weapons. I had to press more than once quite often to get it to switch. I actually passed the controller off to my sister to verify I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t. Even despite all the problems, I was right on the edge of still enjoying it. But, the Mega Man 4 – 6 and Mega Man 7 levels were so brutally spongy that they crossed the line into boring. Power Battle feels like a prototype that should never have released, especially compared to the sequel that followed this. Hey, getting it wrong the first time seems like a tradition with Mega Man.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #25 of 34

Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (1996)
Designed by Koji Ohkohara

Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters is a massive improvement over the previous game, a status that bumps it up only to “just alright.” The Robot Master roster is vastly improved and the conventional Mega Man “use weapon acquired from boss X on boss Y” is implemented much better here. Well, sort of. This time, when you find the correct weapon to use, the enemy comically recoils with a little too much pomp, especially the first time you do it each battle. At least you know you got it, I suppose. Plus, it led to one of the most pathetic sequences I’ve ever had in my gaming life where it looked like I was just slapping Cutman down over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Anyway, this is exactly the Mega Man boss rush game I’ve always talked about wanting. It turns out, it already existed. So, what’s the problem? Well, it turns out it’s just not a very exciting format. For Power Fighters, my enjoyment level was a steady “okay” with no highs or lows (besides the still somewhat sketchy weapon switching). It’s a big, splashy Mega Man boss rush, and the best thing I can say about it is that it made me appreciate the actual levels in the original Mega Man games more. The fights with Robot Masters in Mega Man games can be really fun and exciting, but they only really work as the topping of an already delicious sundae. As their own thing, it’s like how every kid eats tries eating just sprinkles at least once. After a few bites you realize they only work along with the ice cream and hot fudge. So, thanks Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters for answering a question I always had the franchise. Oh and for not being crappy, of course.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #15 of 34

Midnight Wanderers (1991)
Game #1 of 3 from Three Wonders
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto

Three Wonders has three different games that, by complete coincidence, appear in the order of their quality. Midnight Wanderers is by far the strongest of the three. It’s sort of like SNK’s Metal Slug games, only swap the military theme for a fantasy one that leans a little harder on platforming tropes. You run and shoot your way through five levels of various themes, taking out Jabba the Hut lookalikes, jack in the boxes, and endless malicious elves. At first, it feels pretty generic, like one of those endless SNES/Genesis mascot platformers by a third-string publisher who so desperately wants to launch a tent-pole franchise. Think Bubsy or Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel. I braced myself for the soullessness to sweep over me. But, Midnight Wanderer’s exaggerated enemy animations, rock-solid controls, and outstanding boss fights won me over. I wish the game had done more with the hanging-mechanic, where close-call jumps that you short are saved by grabbing onto a ledge by your fingers. Hell, I wish the game had relied more heavily on timed-jump sections, since every instance of those featured here was pitch-perfect and make this a surprisingly intense experience. I get why this ended up in a three-for-one arcade board. Midnight Wanderers never feels like an arcade game, and it’s too short to be an early-era 16-bit home game. Thank god for the home release of Three Wonders, where it can finally find its niche. The forgettable player character lacks soul, but Midnight Wanderers is legit.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #6 of 34
Winner: Biggest Surprise of the Set

Pnickies (1994)
Designed by Masanobu Tsukamoto

In the long annals of well-based drop puzzlers, Pnickies is among the dullest. A slower, plodding answer to the Puyo Puyo franchise, here you link pairs of colored blobs, some of which contain a star in them. Once they settle, the blobs merge with all matching colors they’re touching. If the settled blob has two stars in it, no matter how far apart the stars are, the blob is broken and you score points. It’s a boring formula that might have worked with fewer colors. Maybe. Of course, after a little while it begins adding more colors and becomes next to impossible, especially when the speed quickly escelates to ludicrous speed. Plus, there’s no reason to really get too fancy with chains and combos. It doesn’t even really reward you for cascading chains, instead focusing on shattering larger blobs with more than two stars in them. I figured this might be more exciting as a multiplayer game, but this is one of those puzzlers where the first person to land enough garbage blocks is going to have a massive advantage. Capcom would eventually do better with Puzzle Fighter, but their first attempt at this type of puzzler is among their most boring coin-ops.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #27 of 34

Rally 2011 LED Storm (1988)
Designed by Tomoshi Sadamoto

Buzz has it this unreleased prototype was sent back to the shop for retooling because it went unloved during route testing (the practice of placing near-finished prototypes at a prominent location to gauge earnings potential). Assuming it’s true, the practice failed Rally 2011: LED Storm. Having played both the actual game that came out (known as Mad Gear in Japan) and this original build, they got it right the first time. A sort of F-Zero before that was a thing, racing barely factors in. This is more of a bumper cars experience that hugely emphasizes jumping up and crushing opposing cars. The combat is very satisfying, as there’s something viscerally pleasurable about jumping on a car. You can also transform into a motorcycle, which goes slightly faster but corners worse. It’s not a perfect game by any means. Via rewinding, I was able to determine that sometimes the game deliberately places items out-of-bounds, perhaps to tempt you into driving off the track. That’s a crappy way to add difficulty. Also, there was only one moment in the entire game, a huge jump, that I felt the motorcycle was actually necessary. The transformation gimmick is underwhelming. Stick to the car and enjoy a basic but genuinely exciting car combat game. Fun fact: this and the released LED Storm served as the inspiration for the Autopia for Capcom’s Adventures in the Magic Kingdom NES game.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #16 of 34

Savage Bees (1985)
aka Exed Exes
Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

Sigh. You know, the Capcom Arcade Stadium format can make some of the most basic games exciting, but it’s not a miracle worker. I did enjoy taking-on the challenge scoring 80,000 points, but, I think it was the challenge I enjoyed more than the game itself. Exed Exes was left out of the original Stadium’s lineup for a reason. It’s an ultra-bland shmup where the nicest thing I can say about it is it’s competent, but it’s so generic that there’s nothing to get excited about. Like many early Capcom shmups, Exed Exes is frugal with power-ups, and even the bomb is weak sauce. Instead of clearing the screen of enemies, this time, it only removes only their projectiles. It’s so underwhelming. There’s one idea I like: a scoring zone right before you reach the bosses with items that turn the stationary skulls on the playfield into fruits you can eat. Then again, you can just shoot the skulls a few times as well for the same amount of points they give you as a tomato. Still, that’s a nifty idea that complements Stadium’s score challenge mode perfectly, and that’s the only positive thing about this otherwise mundane shooter.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #30 of 34

Saturday Night Slam Masters (1993)
Designed by Tetsuo Hara
Directed by Takashi Sado

Over the course of my retro gaming adventures, I didn’t find a single 80s or 90s wrestling game that I found to “good” without requiring several “for its time” asterisks. Then I played Saturday Night Slam Masters, and it was fun. There’s no real wrestlers, but Mike Haggar from Final Fight finally got to be in a good game, so there’s that. It’s kind of hard to do a grapple since it’s mapped to the attack button, and pulling off special moves can be a pain in the butt. Oh and there’s no emphasis on finishing moves, which is sort of a hallmark of pro wrestling. Of course, I couldn’t even tell what wrestling moves were being done half the time because they zip by so fast, so having finishers wouldn’t have made all that big a difference. But, the action is fun and violent and feels exactly like what Street Fighter 2 would be if it had fewer buttons and you had to win by pinfall, submission, or even count-out. I didn’t think I’d enjoy any wrestling game that came out before WCW/nWo World Tour for the Nintendo 64, but Saturday Night Slam Masters proved me wrong.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #12 of 34

SonSon (1984)
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Free to Play without purchase of Capcom Arcade Stadium 2
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

For Capcom Arcade Cabinet, I didn’t enjoy SonSon at all. I’ve never been a fan of the auto-moving hop-between-platforms style of shooters. But, I’ve had a change of heart with Stadium 2. While I still wouldn’t want to play all the way through this, the format and extra features of this collection actually make SonSon a genuine thrill to play when you go for the challenge modes. Specifically, score challenge, which requires you to put up a minimum score of 100,000 points to get your score listed online. It made me appreciate the simple but elegant scoring system that incentivizes you to kill every enemy in every wave to score bonus points. It’s so fundamental, but it works wonderfully. I genuinely only meant to put about thirty minutes into every release, but right from the first game, I lost almost two hours to trying to hit that damn score. When scoring actually matters, SonSon suddenly becomes an intense, twitchy shooter that heavily weighs risk and reward, especially when chasing down the items, and it’s a lot of fun. I wish movement and controls were a little tighter. I really wish there were power-ups that improved the gun, and I really hate how you don’t blink when you come back to life after dying (SO cheap) but I’ll be damned: I really enjoyed my time with SonSon. Go figure.
Verdict: YES!
**FLIP!** Previously received a NO! in Capcom Arcade Cabinet
2nd Stadium Ranking: #20 of 34

The Speed Rumbler (1986)
Designed by Tokuro Fujiwara & Yoshiki Okamoto
Also included in Capcom Arcade Cabinet

Speed Rumbler is sort of like granddaddy of the original top-down Grand Theft Auto games, but not in a good way. This was my least favorite title when I ran through Capcom Arcade Cabinet, and I wouldn’t have been shocked if it finished dead last again. Even cheating, save states, and Capcom Arcade Stadium 2’s challenge formats can’t save this dumpster fire. Spongy enemies. Small enemies that are hard to line your bullets up with. Enemies a lot more mobile than you. All in a game that claims to be based around speed. The irony is, my best runs in Speed Rumbler involved me heel-toeing my way through levels, where I could start to ping enemies as they entered the screen. When I actually took the title to heart and tried to speed around the courses, I was basically just a bullet magnet. Even worse: I didn’t score any points, because enemies take too many shots to kill. The mechanic of being able to jump out of a car as it’s about to be destroyed sounds great, but I got killed soon after every time but once because you’re usually stuck in the middle of a screenful of enemies. They had a great idea with Speed Rumbler, but how they implemented that idea seemed like it was done specifically to remove everything fun from it. Advertise speed, then penalize you for going fast. Absolutely terrible. The scary thing is, there were three games worse than this in this set alone.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #31 of 34

Street Fighter (1987)
Designed by Hiroshi Matsumoto
Directed by Takashi Nishiyama
Also included in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

Wow. I had actually never played the original Street Fighter, at least for more than a second. I think I fired it up on MAME on a lark once, and then turned it off when I attempted to throw the first punch. Actually forcing myself to play this for a little over an hour made me realize that the tales of how putrid it is really don’t do it justice. You have to experience Street Fighter 1 to appreciate just how awful it is. Press any button on the controller and the game is like “thanks for the suggestion! It will be taken under advisement!” You only get one fighter in single player mode, Ryu, which is fine, since actually pulling off his special moves is like pulling teeth. In fact, I couldn’t deliberately throw a single fireball or dragon punch. I didn’t pull that off until I just started rotating the control stick and start mashing buttons, at which point I was throwing a dragon punch every other move. The enemy AI becomes next to impossible, even on the easiest setting. Worst of all, in my opinion, is the total lack of OOMPH to the violence. The fights have no weight or inertia to them, as if you’re fighting with paper dolls. It’s nothing sort of astonishing that the people who went on to make this trash fire went to make SNK’s beloved Fatal Fury games, while this particular title itself directly led to the single most important video game of the first half of the 1990s. Street Fighter could very well be the worst fighting game ever made, and no review can fully convey just how ghastly it is. Finally experiencing it reminded me of the difference between hearing about a tonsillectomy and actually receiving one. It’s something you can’t really fathom until you live through it. Fans of this (yes, it has fans, but then again there’s fans of everything. There’s fans serrated dildos) will argue that it’s better in arcades, where it had pressure-sensitive buttons. Okay, fine, but ports of Street Fighter 1 can’t do that, so why even bother?
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #34 of 34 **WORST GAME IN CAPCOM ARCADE 2ND STADIUM**

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams (1995)
Designed by Noritaka Funamizu, Haruo Murata, and Hideaki Itsuno
Also included in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

I had never played the original Street Fighter Alpha until this project. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew going into it the series is held in high esteem, but right before I began playing this game, I got warnings that the Alpha games get good after the first one. They weren’t just whistling dixie. It’s not that Street Fighter Alpha is bad or anything. It’s fine. It just feels like Capcom was spinning their wheels, completely directionless. The super combo system from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is here, along with a super counter-attack that uses your special meter. It’s all fine, but Alpha is nothing special. While I really like the art direction, it also feels a lot less impactful than previous games, and the new fighters are kind of boring. I’ll say this about the new roster: it makes me appreciate the lightning in a bottle they achieved with Street Fighter 2’s lineup. Probably the best thing I can say about Street Fighter Alpha 1 is that it makes an excellent teaser for Street Fighter Alpha 2, a vastly superior game.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #14 of 34

Street Fighter Alpha 2 (1996)
Designed by Noritaka Funamizu, Hidetoshi Ishizawa, Hidetoshi Ishizawa, and Katsuyuki Kanetaka
Also included in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

Street Fighter Alpha 2 feels like the complete game that Alpha 1 laid the foundation for. Smoother controls and significantly better OOMPH help make this one of the best games in the series. While it has that unshakable sensation of a retread, the strong roster of fighters, excellent character balance, and the new-to-the-franchise custom combos really make this a standout. The only weak links are some of the character designs are outright boring, but Alpha 2 had my favorite versions of fighters like M. Bison and Ryu, which matters more to me. Plus, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is one of the best entry points for the franchise. Let me put it this way: Alpha 2 is one of the last “pick-up-and-play” Street Fighter games. I got a tension headache trying to figure out what to make of Street Fighter Alpha 3’s multiple play-styles. Comparatively, Alpha 2 feels like the last game that isn’t made specifically for the hardcore fighting fan. All the Alpha games withstand the test of time, but Street Fighter Alpha 2 is the only of the trio that feels like it belongs to everyone.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #2 of 34

Street Fighter Alpha 3 (1998)
Directed by Naoto Ohta, Mamoru Ōhashi, Buruma, and Koji Okohara
Also included in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

After playing Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3, I felt weird because I really liked Street Fighter Alpha 2 more. It turns out, fighting fanatics are split on the duo as well. Alpha 3 gives players three different play styles, which sounds good on paper. In reality, you have to choose which type of special move you want to be able to pull off. Custom combos? You can only do them if you choose V-ISM. But, if you choose V-ISM, you can’t do super combos. Pick X-ISM for stronger attacks, but you can’t do mid-air blocking, custom combos, or alpha counters. A-ISM is the “average” one but the custom combos aren’t there either. While I’m sure professional gamers love all the variety, what if you just want to pick up and play a fighter? Maybe learn a move or two for a couple characters?  Street Fighter Alpha 3 is still pretty fun because the base Street Fighter formula is kind of perfect. But, Street Fighter Alpha 3 feels like a game that’s not made for me. It’s for the hardcore fans only. Games like that have a place, and if any fanbase is rabid enough to earn a game this nuanced, it’s Street Fighter fans. It just feels like something designed for tournament play by players of much higher skillsets than I could ever hope to have. The massive roster of twenty-five characters is actually a turn-off because the game is asking me to play three different ways (and that’s not even factoring in whether you’re using Turbo or Standard) to decide which characters to use. Did I enjoy it? Sure, because Street Fighter is awesome. But if I had to describe Alpha 3 in one word, that word would be “overwhelming.”
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #11 of 34

Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (1997)
Designed by Katsuhiro Eguchi, Naoto Ohta, and Mamoru Ōhashi
Also Included in Capcom Fighting Collection

With its simplified three-button layout and ultra-cute makeover of classic Capcom fighting game characters, you might mistake Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix as being a kiddie release. It’s not. Instead, it kind of feels like Capcom clapping back at hardcore fighting fans and saying “oh for God’s sake, just have fun!” If I’m right about that, they certainly nailed it. Gem Fighter is a wacky, button-mashing, over-the-top fighter based on building strength by collecting gems and hitting big moves. There’s only twelve fighters (plus two hidden ones) and some of the moves are absolutely bonkers. Like Zangief putting on a lucha libre mask and swinging a folding chair, or Chun Li winning by kissing someone with such passion that they faint. It was a different time. Anyway, landing big moves is so satisfying (though getting the timing down is maddening) and honestly I liked this a lot more than I’ve liked Street Fighter in recent times. By the way, while this feels like a fighter made for everyone (as opposed to where Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Street Fighter 3 were taking the genre, which felt like it was only for hardcore fighting fans), there’s still a sophisticated combo and counter system for those who want to put the time into it. Weirdly, this game that I think is a “fighter made for everyone” also has some of the funniest visual gags I’ve seen in any game, including many pitch-perfect subversions of the characters. If you’re not smiling while you play Gem Fighter, you have no soul.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #4 of 34

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996)
Designed by Naoto Ohta and Katsuhiro Eguchi
Also included in Capcom Fighting Collection because.. um.. it says “fighter” I guess?

One of the few games in this feature that I actually grew up with, I had Super Puzzle Fighter for the PS1 as a kid. This, and not Tetris, was my introduction to the well puzzler. My parents picked it out for me, and it turns out, they did a pretty good job. Puzzle Fighter is one of the greats of the genre. It’s a wonderful formula that heavily incentivizes combos and planning ahead. The way garbage blocks are implemented, with a countdown before they convert to standard blocks, allows you to set traps that will pay off. Well, assuming you can keep your head above water while waiting for them to detonate.The frequent nail biting finishes leads to this being one of the most overall exciting puzzle games ever made. Oh, and as a versus game? No puzzler ever has the potential for a match to turn on a dime like Puzzle Fighter. Success requires a game plan, cool nerves, and fourth-dimensional thinking. That I have to think really hard about whether I prefer this to Pokemon Puzzle League is saying a lot. Capcom isn’t a company known for this kind of game, which is weird because they made what might be the best of its breed. My only wish is that you could do a vertical screen mode that makes the well taller. That would make for a truly breathtaking experience.
Verdict: YES!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #3 of 34

Tiger Road (1987)
Designed by Tokuro Fujiwara

Tiger Road is a better version of whatever the hell they were aiming for with Trojan. The two games are close cousins, especially the emphasis on high-speed, stiff jumping. Notice I didn’t say it’s a good game, though. Tiger Road’s positive aspects are minimal. There’s some fun enemy and boss design and the combat can be satisfactory, at least when it feels like they’re trying to rip-off Kid Niki. It does that Capcom thing where some of the items screw you. In this case, both enemies and dispensers drop these bell things that cut your life in half. Then, you get to the moments where the game quits trying to be fun and just straight-up tries to kill you so that you have to insert more quarters. Enemies that literally spawn on the pixel you’re on, with no possible visual cue they’re going to. Forcing you to jump into the pathways where projectiles are coming from both sides. Instakill death traps with those “forced damage” jumps. The entire time I was playing the game, I had it drop exactly one free life and two health refills, though one did come after a section that left you no choice on the damage. Tiger Road was the final straw for any lingering respect I had left for Capcom’s 80s efforts. They had zero interest in making their games fun. They wanted you to game over quickly. The proof that they didn’t give a single shit if you had fun is how toothless the final boss is. I first-tried it without cheating in about 10 seconds. Why bother with effort at that point? They already shook you down for your quarters. Be gone with you, loser. That was their attitude with coin-ops. Of course, this is a company that barely carved out an existence during that era, before the NES saved it. That’s around the time they finally pulled their heads out of their ass and realized that fun games, not unfair ones, make money. That’s when they became.. well.. Capcom. Almost every game before that revelation was basically as ethical as a carnival scam.
Verdict: NO!
2nd Stadium Ranking: #28 of 34