Hulk vs Superman, Balboa vs Ali, Hawking vs Davros... While the outcome of such mouth-watering match-ups will, alas, almost certainly never be known, Capcom has spent years generously allowing us to find out what would happen if so-and-so from this game got into a tangle with what's-her-face from that game - Capcom versus Marvel, Capcom versus SNK and now, with this, Capcom versus, well Capcom. That screeching you hear? Ah, that'll be the sound of a barrel being scraped...

This is another of the recent crop of beat-'em-ups with incredibly limited appeal. 21 characters from five Capcom scrappers - Street Fighters II, III and Alpha, Darkstalkers and Red Earth - duke it out on archetypal Capcom backrops in standard bouts of three or five rounds. Bestial hellspawn of Red Earth against lithe SFII warriors; Alpha fighters against the malformed Darkstalkers... and so on. Characters from the two lesser-known titles are equipped differently than the SF guys, and it's vaguely interesting to pit them against the likes of Ryu and Chun-Li, with whom most of us are familiar.

But vaguely interesting is as good as it ever gets. While total hardcore mentalists may salivate at the prospect of Hauzer vs Jedah, the dated look and general sense of deja vu should ensure that the rest stay far away.

In other regions this is released under the name Fighting Evolution, but at least they didn't try to convince us Blighty types that something has moved on.

Graphics 60%
Dated, but with occasional top touches.

Sound 50%
Unremarkable 'ooyas' and the like.

Gameplay 70%
Precisely what you'd expect.

Lifespan 50%
A real shortie in single-player.

Overall 50%
There's franchise exploitation and there's scraping the barrel. This paper-thin title comes perilously close to the latter.