(review wip)

This game saved my childhood.
When i was younger i used to play lots and lots of my favourite Capcom arcade games in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the PlayStation 2 which uncovered for me Capcom's past in videogames before actually knowing Mega Man, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry and all those successful franchises that shaped up milions of fans around the world, but years ago i sold the PlayStation 2 alongside all of my games, at inferior price. I don't remember why i did that, but back then i had lost interest playing consoles when i was a bunch of years younger before i wrote this review.
When i basically thought there weren't chances for Capcom to re-release their arcade games in these days, Capcom restarted re-releasing their old arcade yet again starting with the Beat Em Up Bundle, then getting into the core of it by releasing Capcom Arcade Stadium, which however lacked the gallery features in favor of including multiplayer features such as Online High Scores, challenges, etc.
Capcom Arcade Stadium relies on building up a collection of essential arcade games that shaped up their history, starting from the early 1980s till the early 2000s.

It's nice to be able to legitimately purchase Arcade games and Capcom Arcade Stadium comes with some extra stuff that you either won't find or is hard to setup on other emulators (although it's way less efficient than something like MAME).
However, the pricing model is pretty bad, not because the games are expensive, but because you might have to buy 10 games to get the one you want. It's the cable television of classic game collections! The packs are grouped by year of release too instead of something more intuitive like genre or franchise.
Eventually, the store was updated so ROMs can be purchased individually for $2 each which is a lot better, but as I'm writing this the release of Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 is coming soon so I'm skeptical that this is a good way to preserve Arcade games.
I don't want to encourage piracy, but if this is the alternative then it's not hard to see why people prefer MAME.

Regardless of everything else, at £30 for 30 games, CAS is the sort of deal where all it really needs to do is be in the same ballpark of quality as MAME to be worth it on the convinience factor alone. And it kind of is, and kind of isn't.

Frankly, it's just weird. A bizzare RE Engine frontend which lets you play blatantly modified ROMs with emulation quality that varies from legitimately great to almost unplayable. And an emphasis on a GAAS-style limited time model for challenge modes.

For instance, Pack 3, which is by far the best pack of games available in the selection, includes almost exclusively CPS2 hardware games. Super Turbo expectedly runs about perfectly and features a lot of nice stuff like move lists, etc. Progear, a game that has never been ported before, works fine and even has a small guide for it's unusual scoring system in the manual. Giga Wing? 10 frames of input lag, frameskipping, and if you choose the wrong scaline filter I hope you're ready for Glaucoma.

The game selection is also odd. Not only is it very rear-heavy with pack 3 having most of the best games, but there's some odd exclusions - The street fighter Alpha series is the most blatant, but the lack of darkstalkers, puzzle fighter, Alien Vs Predator and any CPS3 games in this set feels like a missed oppurtunity, or at least an indication that they're intended for a future pack.

Seriously, half the games in this set are Shmups/STGs. I'm very happy about that, and having an official port of Progear and 19XX at long last is really cool. But there only being 4 fighting games, 3 of which are Street Fighter 2, in the whole set, from a capcom arcade collection, feels like it's going to leave a lot of people dissapointed.

Overall, it's good. Pack 3 in particular is fantastic and contains some of Capcom's absolute best games, and I think it's very likely most of the issues will be patched considering the GAAS model they're going for. But at the same time, some oppurtunities have definetly been missed here.