Street Fighter Alpha 3


The fight dreams are made of!


First off, let me enlighten you as to the perspective of this reviewer. Back when all you bastards were linking mid-air combos, Mastering Yoga teleport, Super Moves and Death Moves... I was still getting the hang of Yoga Flame and other basics. I was a little behind because the brief education I had in fighting games was thanks to torture sessions where my cousin treated me to hours upon hours of Whup-ass in mirror matches. Eventually I rented Street Fighter 2 myself and beat it with at least half the characters. Then I tried taking it off easy and was horribly violated. >_<
Once Mortal Kombat kame out, I had progressively gotten better, but my skills STILL weren't up to par with about half the people in the arcade. So I worked with what I knew which eventually became mostly creative and cheap methods fighting. That and I'm a stubborn SOB. This paid off eventually as I learned more moves and things vaguely resembling combos, but I can only assume that to this day I'm missing out on all the wild 50-60 hit combos, the juggling, the awesome one hit kill moves that require being double jointed and keeping some sort of padding on my thumb. But that to this day has not stopped me from enjoying a good fighting game, hell even a bad fighting game.
My favorite 2D fighter is one still hailed to this day as the greatest Street Fighter ever made, SF Alpha 3. Part of the bizarre Street Fighter Alpha series which supposedly acts as a prequel to Capcom's now useless excuse for a plot, and retains many of the classic characters (over 30!!!) plus some new characters, new environments, and moves. Is it worth it though in today's world of Street Fighter 3, Marvel VS Capcom, DOA2/3, Capcom VS SNK, etc? Can an old 2D fighter realy be worth playing? Read on!

Why it sucks: Personally, Cammy is my favorite character. Despite her goofy background she rules. Now Capcom saw fit to RUIN that by putting her into a stewardess outfit and making her a zombie loyal to that moron Bison! >_< Then there's her clones, Jumi & Juli, who are just depressing! Not only are they visually clones from the neck down and in terms of clothing, their moves are damn near identical. And again there's another loser in a Gi who's basically another Ryu clone. Say hello to Dan! Blanka's long lost buddy and otherwise crazy, mean bastard at large. Tallied against Ryu, Ken, Sakura... and I think that's all in THIS game at least. Oh and M.Bison is even cheaper than before! I didn't really think it was possible to do that, but here Capcom went and made his Psycho-crusher COVER THE ENTIRE GODDAMN SCREEN!!!!!! Lesseee...... There's a lot of filler fights, for instance, before you actually fight that lamer, Bison, you have to fight numerous copies of Jumi & Juli. I mean... what the hell? By now you'd think they could've just kept Bison's generals and tossed that crimson loser out, but nooooooo. And besides, this is a frickin' prequel! Dammit. Like the... third... prequel. Wait, third prequel?!? What do they think this is?!? Star Wars?!? There's Capcom's skill at counting again! Cookie cutter sequels do better than originality, woo.
Besides the totally obvious issues, like How many fucking Street Fighter 2s are you going to make before you get the balls to make a sequel?!

EVENTUALLY they got around to making SF3, but the lackluster title didn't do much to enhance the credability of Capcom as it pretty much just kept being re-done in arcades before it hit the Dreamcast. I mean, they eventually added a program that rates your fighting ability and grades you! It's not like you need a computer telling you the obvious, you've either WON or you've lost. If you're on the ground bleeding profusely then MAYBE, JUST MAYBE you need a little practice. If not, then have a burger to celebrate, because you're a winner! And Winners eat burgers.
While all this is neither here nor there, it shows the kind of madness behind this game and its sister, cousin and first cousins once removed, etc. Street Fighter became Capcom's ideal franchise as it and games like Megaman became less original and more lame with each sequel showing minor variations to gameplay.
Back to SFA3, the whole game boasts this irritating announcer and music, while no where NEAR as bad as Marvel VS Capcom 2, the music is far from great but at least it is different with each level. Other than the things mentioned above, just about everything else is nitpicking. Such as the lame endings, bad redesigning of most characters and the small amount of moves given to newer characters like Karin compared to older characters.

Why it rules: This is the definative Street Fighter. Period. Fast and furious arcade passion explodes with beatifully animated characters who hail from Final Fight (Guy, Birdie and friends), Street Fighter 2 (Ryu, Guile, Ken, Chun-li, Blanka, Zangief, Dhalsim & E. Honda), SF2 Champion/Turbo (Bison, Sagat, Vega & Balrog), SSF2 (Cammy, Fei-long, Dee-jay, T.hawk), SSF2's Akuma, the cast of the prior Alphas and some new ones. This makes for a stupidly huge choice of characters! And while they slowly pad their roster with guys in Dogis, they actually made a game that didn't cheapen in the least with its huge amount of characters. Then there's the massive amount of arenas ranging from Charlie's Air Force base, to Bison's freaky forest. Not to mention the awesome amount of various side games, particularly the World Tour mode where you groom a fighter to victory and gain enhanced add-on items as you go. Hell that alone could be a game in itself! There's also hidden characters! Well, Just Guile... But he's hidden! WOO!

Overall: This stands as the best 2D fighter ever, While the Capcom VS series are pretty cool... they're nothing like this. This was what the entire SF Franchise was built up for. A huge roster, a massive collection of fighting moves, tons of classic and fresh locations, one amazing package. Incredible sums it up quite nicely, particularly for those of you who spent money you should have saved pumping it into arcades to beat other people down back in the day. This is an instant classic that is a MUST own for any Playstation 2/One or Dreamcast owner. If you ever liked Street Fighter, THIS is a game you must own.