No one has been as good to older gamers as Capcom. The games of decades past keep finding their way to new systems in all their glorious varieties, and the trend continues with the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology.

The Alpha series served as a prequel of sorts to the original Street Fighter games. They featured most of the classic characters from the original games and a few new play mechanics. This collection includes five games, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Super Gem Fighter MiniMix, all from the mid to late nineties. The one that will stand out as being a little less familiar to most fans is MiniMix, featuring smaller, cuter versions of the real thing. It was originally released as Pocket Fighter for the Playstation and Saturn in 1998.

All the titles are presented as the creators intended, with the right dimensions, sounds and game options. Arcade mode pits players against a series of computer opponents, Versus mode allows for two player fights and training mode allows for practice. The Alpha games also offer survival mode and a battle mode for tag team matches.

Playing fighting games offline was the way of the world a few years ago, but now it's disappointing that this collection is offered only on the Playstation 2 with its minimal online tendencies.

But the good news for those who have inflated memories of their skills is the tournament being held at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. There are actually two tournaments scheduled, one for Hyper Fighting and one for Alpha 3, both during the Comic-Con in late July. Full details are online at: http://evo2k.com/comiccon/ or www.capcom.com

The latest collection of Capcom classics holds true to the company's habits of faithful recreations of popular games. The Alpha series is now available on one handy disk, and it's all as you'll remember.