IMPORT - Capcom has been releasing its Dreamcast fighting games in Japan with a feature that never makes it over to the US releases - online play. Not content to deal with the latency involved with the Internet, Capcom's fighters play over a custom online matching service, and players must pay additional fees to use the service. The result is an online experience that is far more playable than it would be if played directly on the Internet, but there's still a bit of latency involved with online play - usually just enough to totally ruin the game. Aside from its big-ticket fighting releases, Capcom has released a couple of other games that feature support for its online matching service, but they're only available in limited quantities via mail order. The first was an enhanced version of Vampire Savior. Now, Capcom has released Super Street Fighter II X for Matching Service for the Dreamcast. The game, which is an online-compatible version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, is definitely close to arcade-perfect, but when you consider the game's age and its place in the Street Fighter universe, the resulting product isn't terribly impressive.

Super Street Fighter II, and its eventual update, Super Street Fighter II X, were some of the first games designed using Capcom's CPS2 arcade hardware, a hardware set that would later power the entire Darkstalkers line, all of the Street Fighter Alpha games, the company's Marvel-licensed fighting games, and a smattering of shooters. At the time, moving to the new hardware was meant to breathe new life into the Street Fighter series without forcing Capcom to design an entirely new Street Fighter game on the new hardware. Essentially, Super added four characters to the game, beefed up the graphics, added an extremely annoying announcer, and brought in a couple of new moves. SSFIIX (released as SSFII Turbo in the US) came shortly afterward and added adjustable speed settings and super combos. It would be the last of the long-running Street Fighter II line, though not the best, as many of the series' purists still cling to the CPS1-driven Street Fighter II Turbo as the best game in the series.

Super Street Fighter II X for Matching Service provides some of the standard modes we've come to expect from a console fighting game - a dedicated versus mode and a small training mode add to the game's main draw, online play. Other than that, the game is pretty stripped down. Since you can't play the online mode from anywhere other than Japan, the result is a game that really doesn't offer much to anyone other than the most die-hard Street Fighter fan. Sure, the game looks great, but chances are anyone with a serious love of Street Fighter already picked up this game when it was released as part of the Street Fighter Collection that Capcom released for the PlayStation. That said, the Dreamcast rendition of SSFIIX is a good one. There aren't any real loading times, and the game looks and sounds just as good as its arcade counterpart.

In the end, your love for Capcom's last Street Fighter II game will directly affect whether or not this game is worth importing. If you're not nostalgic for the old stuff, you'll probably get bored with this game fairly quickly. But if you're tired of all the flashy gameplay of Capcom's newer stuff, an imported copy of Super Street Fighter II X for Matching Service might be just what you're looking for.

The King of Fighters '99 Evolution for the Dreamcast successfully reproduces just about every aspect of SNK's original NeoGeo fighting game, The King of Fighters '99, and actually improves on several of them. It features all-new, fully 3D backgrounds, hidden striker characters, and new play modes. In fact, it's an excellent port - but it's a port of a disappointing game, especially if you've played Dream Match, the previous King of Fighters game.

KoF Evolution looks about as good as it possibly can on the Dreamcast - it has all The King of Fighters '99's characters, and each character has every single frame of animation intact. What's more, the game features crisply rendered, fully 3D versions of each of the original game's backgrounds, as well as a number of attractive all-new backgrounds, the latter of which are probably the best of the bunch. That's because the rest of KoF Evolution's stages are as subdued and as plain as the stages in the NeoGeo version of The King of Fighters '99; all the fancy 3D graphics in the world can't make an open sewer filled with brown water seem exciting or appealing. In addition, unlike Dream Match, which features a full-length anime introduction, KoF Evolution features an only slightly modified version of the original King of Fighters '99's disappointingly brief introduction sequence.

KoF Evolution also faithfully reproduces all the sounds from the original NeoGeo game and features the arranged soundtrack music. All the game's voice samples and sound effects are clear, as is the music, and, unlike Dream Match, the music doesn't cut out between fighting rounds, which makes the KoF Evolution's already reasonable load times seem even shorter. Unfortunately, the original NeoGeo version featured some of the most boring and forgettable tunes ever to appear in a King of Fighters game, and not even the most high-fidelity recording can make a bad song sound good. As with the original NeoGeo game, most of KoF Evolution's soundtrack consists of half-hearted techno music - with the exception of Terry Bogard's jazzy but entirely too-laid-back theme, which is, as in the original NeoGeo version, lifted directly from the Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition soundtrack.

Of course, sound and graphics aren't as important to a game as gameplay. And KoF Evolution reproduces the gameplay and control scheme of the original King of Fighters '99 for the NeoGeo more or less perfectly. SNK's original King of Fighters '99 is itself a solid fighting game that borrowed much from its predecessor but is a disappointment when compared with it. Dream Match features two very different modes of play and lets you choose four different character colors and four different win poses. KoF Evolution only features one play mode (which most closely resembles advanced mode from Dream Match) and only lets you choose two colors and three win poses per character. In addition, Dream Match features 38 playable characters plus 13 alternate versions of existing characters, for a total of 51 choices, so you are bound to find at least a few characters you'll want to play. In contrast, KoF Evolution features 33 playable characters, but three of these are variations of Kyo, and one is the game's boss character and official fashion disaster, Krizalid. Krizalid happens to be one of the worst boss characters ever to appear in a fighting game; he's stiffly animated, freakishly ugly, and absurdly overpowered. All these drawbacks grant him the most dreaded ability a fighting-game boss character can possess - the power to completely drain all the fun out of the game the moment you face him.