Fighting Masters Archive Card Pandora Game Console

The card we suggest first

If you only buy one card, we usually point people to the Fighting Masters Archive Card. It gathers the 2D and 3D fighters that ate the most quarters in the 90s, along with a few deep cuts you may have forgotten, like Martial Champions and Fighters History.

It leans hard on Capcom and SNK, which is where a fighting game card should lean. Capcom brings Street Fighter II in its arcade editions, the Alpha games, 3rd Strike and the Marvel versus series. SNK brings King of Fighters 98 through 2003, Samurai Shodown, Garou and Fatal Fury. The two companies finally meet in Capcom vs SNK 2.

A few names from the list

• Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
• Street Fighter Alpha 3
• Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike (arcade)
• Marvel vs Capcom 2 (arcade)
• X-Men vs Street Fighter
• Capcom vs SNK 2
• King of Fighters 98 and King of Fighters 2002
• Garou Mark of the Wolves
• Darkstalkers 3
• Tekken 3 and Dead or Alive 2

That is a sample, not the full card. There are more Street Fighter II revisions, the earlier Darkstalkers games, some Dreamcast and PS1 versions and an arcade oddity or two. Click for Game List in the console builder shows every title before you choose.

Six buttons and a lever

Most of these games were designed for six buttons and a joystick. You can get through them on a gamepad, but quarter-circle motions and charge moves come out cleaner on a stick, and the Capcom games in particular expect three punches and three kicks laid out in two rows. If you take fighters seriously, pair this card with the Sanwa upgrade on your console.

When a game puts its buttons somewhere your hands do not expect, the Pro board lets you remap them per game and save the setup. You fix it once and it stays fixed.

How the card works

Add Fighting Masters to any of the three archive card slots when you build a Pandora Game Console. The card plugs into the back of the console and the games show up in the menu. Cards swap in and out, and you can own as many as you like. If this one gets heavy use, Fighting Masters Vol. 2 and the 3D Fighting Game Archive Card are the usual next picks.

Fighting Masters runs on Pandora Platinum Pro consoles only. Older Pandora Platinum models cannot use it, and neither can a console built on a non Pandora Platinum mainboard.

Per the note on the game list, archived games can be taken off at any time if we deem it necessary, and no guarantee of expected performance of your backup is offered. Archive cards fall outside the console warranty.

**Pandora Game Console consoles do not come with any pre-installed licensed or unlicensed software. Any Added Archive service is provided as-is with no implied warranties or licenses. Performance of archive has been tested and will work with your Pandora Platinum Pro version console. Adding an archive card constitutes your acknowledgement of ownership of original licensed hardware/software and your request of the service permits us to perform archiving for you on your behalf as a service.