Capcom seems to be keenly aware of the interest in having even more of its legacy fighting games available on modern platforms.
As reported by Nintendo Life, Shuhei Matsumoto, producer for the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, spoke to IGN at the recent EVO 2024 fighting game tournament in Las Vegas. During the interview, Matsumoto spoke on the possibility of more of Capcom's best fighting games showing up on modern hardware.
"We have a lot of other legacy fighting games that we know fans out there really want them to be re-released again on modern platforms and the feeling is mutual on the development side," Matsumoto explained, "we want people to get to know all these other classic games. What we can do right now is try to re-release them and so people who may have never had the chance to play those games get familarized with them and from there hopefully we can go on to bigger and better things."
This year's EVO event was notable for featuring legendary fighting game Street Fighter 3: Third Strike on the main stage. Impressively, the 1999 title - widely considered to be the crown jewel of classic Capcom fighters - registered over 1,100 competitors at EVO. According to EVO's 'by the numbers' breakdown, Third Strike was the fifth-most popular title at the event, with more entrants than Under Night In-Birth 2 Sys:Celes (785), Mortal Kombat 1 (645) and The King of Fighters 15 (375).
On the topic of Third Strike, Matsumoto - who is also the producer on Street Fighter 6 - had the following to say: "We want all our classic [fighting] games to be available for modern consoles because we just want to be able to reach as many people who may have never had the opportunity to play these games back in the day, so we constantly think forward, and we want to make sure that it's as accessible as possible for all audiences."
While Third Strike is playable (online, no less) via the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection on Nintendo Switch and PS4, a dedicated version like the beloved Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition for PS3 and Xbox 360 would be great to see. Furthermore, with the recent re-release of SNK vs. Capcom: SvC Chaos, a full Capcom vs. SNK collection doesn't seem all that farfetched. Only time will tell.
