Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

"Has potential, but impossible to overlook its flaws."

Street Fighter 2 is without a doubt the longest running joke in arcade game history. First there was Street Fighter 2, which beget Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, which beget Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition, which beget Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, which beget Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo. But just when it seemed Capcom was about to reach the much anticipated "3," they pulled a fast one on us and produced Street Fighter Alpha, a prequel to Street Fighter 2. Finally, in 1997, Capcom finally unveiled Street Fighter 3: New Generation, for its new 2D powerhouse, the CPS-3 arcade board. They followed up with Street Fighter 3: 2nd Impact, and finally, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike.

But neither Street Fighter 3 nor the CPS-3 board ever enjoyed much success. In the late 90s, few game companies were willing to invest in a machine that could only do 2D, and arcade operators disliked the CPS-3 for its fragility. Fighting games fans, on the other hand, were simply not interested in the new Street Fighter. Some were more content to fritter away the hours at Marvel Vs Capcom, others were simply tired of the whole franchise, and other fans were put off by Capcom's decision to throw the vast majority of classic Street Fighter 2 characters away.

But enough with the history lesson. How does the Dreamcast port of Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike stack up the vast amount of competing fighting games on the system?

The graphics, for the most, are preserved from the arcade version; however, several discrepancies do exist. The CPS-3 ran at the unusual screen resolution of 512x512, and since the Dreamcast runs at 640x480, this means the final image has to be "squished" to fit. This results in the whole screen being one or two pixels off from the arcade version as well as two noticeable black bars on either side of the screen. The resizing gives the game a somewhat jagged appearance, and making matters worse is that Capcom decided to implement a full-screen anti-aliasing filter, which makes everything much blurrier. Thankfully, this can be disabled by holding L and Start while the game loads.

Thankfully, the spectacular animation from the arcade has made its way to the Dreamcast, without a single frame missing. Street Fighter 3 has, hands down, the smoothest, most fluid 2D animation you will find in a fighting game. Even Guilty Gear, with its higher resolution sprites, doesn't even match it. As one who has always found 2D fighting games unbearably choppy, SF3 is a breath of fresh air. Watch Ken/Ryu/Akuma do their fireballs, and you can see the recoil rippling through the cloth of their karate gis. KO an opponent with a weak punch or kick and they'll groan and slowly fall to the ground. Even things as simple as walking back and forth are given a huge amount of frames, and the ridiculous amount of effort put into the animation as a whole pays off. Fights look like actual fights instead of two nearly static images twitching about. There's even a Neo Geo-esque "zoom" effect used when characters perform certain super moves. The only negative thing I can say about the graphics is the backgrounds; most are static and feature little of interest to the eye; a problem compounded by the fact that certain characters share backgrounds. It's not a major gripe, but it is an example of Capcom's infamous laziness. Don't let this deter you, though. Street Fighter 3's graphics must be seen to be appreciated.

In terms of sound, the first thing I noticed is that Capcom actually hired English voice actors, oddly enough. That's right, there's no Terry Bogard-like Engrish to speak of. Hit sounds and other effects are well done, though perhaps not as "solid" as 2nd Impact. Music, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. Some tracks are excellent, such as Ryu's or Remy's stage, others will simply grate, like Elena's. Worse still, Capcom decided that hip-hop was the "in" thing and actually had a rap artist perform several songs on the soundtrack as well as doing all the announcements. Perhaps it's just my "white guy bias," but I absolutely loathe rap on all levels, and hearing it in a Street Fighter felt irritating and out of place, and made me long for the din of an arcade to drown it out with.

Let me tell you now, that attempting to play 2D fighters with the Dreamcast controller is a nightmare. Assuming you've got yourself a decent arcade stick, 3rd Strike's controls are spot on and I never once did I have any trouble pulling off moves. There's also an astonishingly precise hit detection at work, such that you can actually see moves missing by nothing more than a few pixels. Technically, 3rd Strike is flawless, and you'll never be able to blame your losses on poor control or shoddy hit detection.

Now the big question, what about the gameplay? Believe that if you're used to the VS series of games, then Street Fighter 3 might actually seem downright boring by comparison. The game moves at a slower pace, due the large amount of animation frames; there are no ridiculously over the top combos, and no leaping twenty stories into the air. Rather, it plays like an upgraded version of Street Fighter 2. You must work for your combos, know your moves speed, range, and priority. The game is utterly unresponsive to button mashing; trying to do such things will likely result in you getting pasted with alarming frequency. Part of it has to do with the AI, which is a vast improvement upon previous Street Fighter incarnations. Instead of relying on blatant methods of cheating, such as giving the CPU access to your button inputs so it can counter anything you do, 3rd Strike's AI wins by actual skill. Whiff a Dragon Punch, and the CPU will, for example, punish you with a low med. kick, hadouken, cancel into Shin Shoryuken, just like a real player would. You might not be playing against the AI much, but I personally found the improvements to be greatly refreshing.

But 3rd Strike is not without its flaws. First of all, you can only choose one of three super moves (or Super Arts, as it calls them) to use during a match. Granted, the game does compensate somewhat by allowing you to use "EX Moves," basically charged versions of regular moves, which require a portion of your super meter to perform. However, the lack of Super Arts feels quite limiting and doesn't really contribute much to strategy as Capcom might have hoped. Plus, Akuma gets whatever Super Art you choose, as well as two level 3 Super Arts that he ALWAYS has, which seems kind of unfair. (but since when did Akuma ever play fair?)

The most controversial issue in SF3, though, has to be the parries. By tapping forward on the joystick (or down, for low attacks) the moment an opponent attacks, you can break out of block-stun and counter attack while your opponent is still going through the animation for his attack. The nice thing about them is that they allow you to punish opponents who are repeatedly using the same attack, as well as letting you get out of corner traps. It also pretty much kills the old fireball trap dead, as your opponent can simply parry away your fireballs with ease. However, the positives of parries end there. The problem is that parries pervade nearly every facet of gameplay. You can parry fireballs (which makes them almost useless in SF3), multi-hitting specials, moves in the air, anti-air moves, and even Super Arts can fall before the might of the parry. It used to be that if you were jumping in carelessly on Ryu, he could easily Dragon Punch you for your mistake. In SF3, however, all the jumping opponent has to do is parry the Dragon Punch, and punish Ryu even though he just held the advantage moments before. Players should not be able to just jump in at their opponents any time they wish without some fear of reprisal, but a skilled parrier can simply jump around like Mario on steroids.

As if totally inverting certain gameplay aspects was not bad enough, parries also suck all the fun out of the game at high levels of play. Fighting becomes who can jab and poke their opponent fast enough, as a single parry will most likely result in the hapless opponent eating a super. The whole system seems designed to keep the gap between experienced players and newer players as wide as possible. If you're going against a good player and you can't parry, you are, quite frankly, doomed. Far too often the most effective strategy involves sitting in the corner like a stone, waiting for something to parry, and not even having to worry about throws because their range is so short in SF3. Overheads? Even those can be simply parried away by the turtler. The game, essentially becomes about poking, jabbing, turtling, and jumping for no reason. Character balance goes out the window, because who has the fastest jab in SF3? Could it be Ryu/Ken/Akuma? Those who answer that question get a cookie. No you don't.

In regards to characters, this is quite possibly the sorest point for long time SF fans. It's my belief that one of the essentials required by a fighting game is a large and diverse cast of characters, each with their own separate style of fighting. When making SF3, Capcom had a tough choice to make. Do they keep the majority of "classic" characters everyone knows and loves and potentially open themselves to criticism that the game is just "same old, same old?" Or do they bring a whole new cast around this time, and possibly alienate the fans? Capcom chose the latter; in fact, Ryu and Ken wouldn't even have made it in had fans not complained. SF fans should be grateful for the small favor, for SF3 boasts one of the dull and unappealing characters rosters I've ever seen. There's Oro, a 140-year old who picks his nose during the fight, Ibuki, the tired cliche of "schoolgirl by day, warrior by night," there's Twelve, a white-skinned, T-1000 like creature, and Q, a man with a metal mask who wears a trenchcoat. Some of the characters try to emulate classic SF chars; Necro plays somewhat like Dhalsim, and Remy, in addition to being a blatant rip-off of SNK's Iori Yagami, play exactly like Guile, right down to the double foot sweeps. But none match to sheer ridiculousness of the boss, Gill, a man wearing only a codpiece and whose body is painted half blue and half red, to represent his powers of ice and fire. Hey, Street Fighter 3 might be the first fighting game to have a McDLT as the boss! As a testament to their laziness, Capcom did not even bother to write bios for the SF3's cast, meaning their backgrounds, motivations, or any other critical information is totally absent. The only familiar faces are good ol' Ryu/Ken/Akuma, as well as Chun Li who decided to show up after missing the first two SF3 games. The utter dearth of appealing or interesting characters is a real blow to Street Fighter 3, and perhaps one of the reasons for its failure in arcades.

But for the Dreamcast version at least, there is one feature that ameliorates some of the problems, and that is the System Direction. This allows you to customize the game engines to your heart's content. Don't like parries? Turn em' off! Want to keep parries, but disable the ability to parry anti-airs? You can do that. You can choose to allow access to all three Super Arts for characters, or even adjust major things such as the ability to guard or jump. It's a great feature, but sadly totally meaningless if you play SF3 at the arcade.

Street Fighter is my video game equivalent of bipolar disorder. On one hand, I love it for its impeccable animation, tight control, and seemingly refined gameplay. On the other, the game has a dark side, one filled with cheap parry tactics, mindless jumping, and endless turtling and poking. Indeed, an SF player might find themselves going "if only...if only..." If only the throw range were greater. If only parries had been toned down...if only the character design had not been so terrible...SF3 COULD have been a classic. As it is though, it stands as the franchise's failed shot at regaining past glory.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/05