Power Stone Collection (Pre-E3 2006)

Everyone loves to pickup a fighting game and beat the crud out of someone else. While the fighting genre was made most popular by the Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat franchises, the world of 3D fighters didn’t see more than a handful of great franchises. Capcom’s Power Stone became of these great new franchises and they chose the Sega Dreamcast to showcase the power and fun of the console. After a DC sequel to the game, Capcom has sat on the franchise… That is–until now–with the pending release of Power Stone Collection on the PlayStation Portable.

Power Stone Collection is, just as the name suggests, a collection of Power Stone games. This includes the original Power Stone, Power Stone 2, and “exclusive new PSP content.” Some of this new content includes a few different camera angles–for use when the action zooms a bit far out. In addition to this, a new minigame called Bomber Battle will be included in the final package as well. Expect several other exclusive features for this Power Stone Collection as well.

The current build of Power Stone Collection is limited on what is available. Despite the promise of all the extras for this version, none of it is really available right now to get our hands on. The arcade version of Power Stone 2 is available though and it looks and feels very similar to the original title. This version includes the classic four player mode and all the scaling camera angles that made the original so famous. As we mentioned above, one of the exclusive PSP features is to help with this bird’s eye view camera. This is needed mainly because the PSP screen size is so small that when Power Stone is zooming out, the characters can be little specks on the screen.

Although the title is still very early, there is some areas that concern me. The framerate is still needing work. The game is not smooth at all yet. Also, the textures and visuals aren’t very crisp and don’t seem very detailed. While you can insert a joke about that is why the Dreamcast failed, these could be issues that could ruin a great title. Hopefully Capcom can iron out all the small details before the release later this year.

Handheld fighters usually don’t look, play, or feel right when compared to a regular home console. If all goes according to plan at Capcom, that will all change with the release of Power Stone Collection. I am optimistic and will keep my fingers crossed until I see a more updated build. If the game warrants another look at E3, we will deliver an updated preview for you.