During a major annual tournament for the fighting game Street Fighter V, the series' creators at Capcom announced the biggest anthology ever for the series—if not for Capcom as a game maker. On Sunday, the developers interrupted their Capcom Cup event to unveil the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, which will combine a giant set of games, a bunch of features, and an ambitious every-system-simultaneous launch in May 2018 for $39.99.

The primary selling point of this set is that it will finally combine every mainline, sprite-based Street Fighter game in one anthology. Capcom counts that as 12 games. The timeline starts with Street Fighter (no number—this is the 1987 original with only Ken and Ryu selectable), and it continues with every version of Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, and Street Fighter III. (Sorry, Pocket Fighter and Street Fighter: The Movie game fans.)



























What's more, Capcom will deliver full online support for four entries in the anthology: Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II: Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Street Fighter III: Third Strike. All four of those titles will support casual and ranked matches, along with four-person lobbies. They will also support a vaguely described "rewind" feature to let players fine-tune input timing to contend with any latency issues. (We'll have to see whether this actually lets players rewind matches to test, or if it's just like other fighting games' latency-adjustment meters.)

The full package, which also includes a meaty concept-art gallery, a comprehensive series timeline, a music player, and the ability to save and freeze your game at any time via "save states," will launch in May 2018 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC via Steam.

In recent years, many, but not all, of this anthology's games have launched on various systems as self-contained purchases. Street Fighter Alpha's trilogy is the biggest exception, as its three entries have languished since launching on the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast around the turn of the century, while all five SFII arcade entries have yet to launch in an easy, play-and-compare anthology.

Nintendo Switch owners who bought this year's Ultra Street Fighter II may feel miffed, seeing as that game also cost $39.99 and was, you know, only one title. But its remastered elements are not coming to this 2018 anthology, and it will continue to exclusively host Evil Ken as a playable SFII character. So, take that as you will, Street Fighter completists.