Street Fighter Alpha 3

Synopsis: 2D fighters have always seemed to suffer on PlayStation because of the system's lack of a significant amount of video ram, but with the release of Street Fighter Alpha 3 in May of 1999, Capcom proved that it was the king of 2D as it made the system do what nobody thought possible -- an amazing port of its arcade fighting game. Street Fighter Alpha 3 features a long list of characters, excellent character animation, and classic 2D fighting gameplay. Pure gaming bliss (blue shadows or not). 

Doug Perry's Take: Believe it or not, it took a dead Saturn to make a great Street Fighter game on PlayStation. When Capcom finally put its nose to the PS grindstone, it found that it could beat the system into grinding out 30 frames per second, that it could handle dozens and dozens of characters, that it could put a handful of characters on screen without slowdown. And finally, finally, that it could make a great single-player fighting game. But perhaps what's even better than all of those things is that the two-player game is damn near invincible. It's chock full of combos, mid air techniques, reverses, great speed, you name it, SFA3 has it. Street Fighter Alpha 3, in my opinion, is the best 2D fighting game Capcom has ever made for the PlayStation, and it's damn near close the best 2D fighting game ever -- on any system.