A good while ago now, I played Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting, which was a mouthful and an education in how severely lacking I am in the skills department when it comes to 2D fighters. But, piss-poor as I was, I found it as fun as I thought I would, and could see why it became the juggernaut that it is today.
Fast forward however many years and the next title of the series to make the 1001 list is Street Fighter Alpha 3, which is a sequel of a spin-off, if I'm not mistaken, and I probably am because I haven't looked that up. I think I'm mistaken. Assume I'm mistaken.
Mistaken or not, this game is apparently glossed over by those who take Street Fighter tournaments very seriously, but I wouldn't know that either. I am absolutely clueless here, really. There's only one thing that I can do - fight.
Fun Times
Alpha 3 begins with a frantic introduction video that shows off the cartoony art style and sets some kind of mood, though which one I'm not too sure. I'm ready for it, I'm excited, but lord knows what any of it said. It's flashy to attract the arcade players, that's for sure.
I'm not able to play the arcade original, but Alpha 3 has, like seemingly every other Street Fighter game ever, been ported and upgraded and rereleased in so many different versions that finding one to play should be a piece of cake, and the one I landed on was the PlayStation Portable release, Alpha 3 MAX, because it comes with more characters and the console needs some love. Which is why I'm emulating it.
I hopped into the arcade mode with Cammy, who for some reason is no longer a British soldier. Was she ever a soldier? She bloody looked like one. Anyway, I hopped in and this is the result.
Dreadful. What a button mashing monstrosity. Let's break it down.
Alpha 3 sees characters choose from one of three 'isms' that dictate their fighting style, to a degree. The default A-ism is geared towards players of previous Alpha games, the simpler X-ism is tailored towards the Street Fighter II crowd, and the variable V-ism is a bit of both, but not exactly.
Truth be told, I don't have a clue. But they are distinct styles with their own pros and cons. Damage is more heavily dealt in one style than another, but special attacks are weaker, for example. Certain moves or abilities don't happen in one ism, but do in another.
I suppose for the purist, you're not just learning one character's style, but one character's style coming at you in one of three different modes, and given that there are around 30 characters, that's an awful lot of learning to do. For me... well, I don't even know what I'm doing, let alone what my opponent is doing.
Every character has their usual light, medium and heavy punches and kicks, as well as some throws, some fancy combos and even some taunting (which is an example of a move that doesn't happen when you're playing in one of the isms, so choose wisely if gloating is your thing). You also start with a full and glowing special meter just waiting to be drained on a move that'll knock your opponents' socks off.
Frustrations
Here's me, now playing as Chun-Li, on the easiest difficulty possible, playing in what I hope is the easiest ism to get to grips with, utterly failing to look good at Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Alpha 3 looks awesome. The art style is damn near perfect, the animations are fluid, the feel of the strikes are meaty and chunky (not quite like Tekken, but similar vibes here and there). What better way to show off the visuals than by launching a super duper combo that has your character streak across the screen before the stage background disappears into the 'nobody cares because that combo was sick' realm? I mean, your meter starts full! Alpha 3 wants you to be cool!
Never happened for me. I could never pull off any combo. Any character. Any ism. I've not tried them all, clearly, and I've not tried for very long, but if you're giving me these awesome abilities, I want to be able to use them somewhat easily, else make me earn them over the course of a round.
Was it because of the input method, an Xbox controller? I do like to bring it up as a possible cause whenever the opportunity arises, and neither the analogue stick nor D-pad was doing it for me. I can only imagine the trouble players had with the PlayStation Portable nub, though that D-pad was pretty good, so maybe that was the preferred style. Still, should be slapping an arcade stick around the place, shouldn't I?
I went through the character screen to see who I'd try playing next.
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| Clearly a first choice, but too obvious. |
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| Another fan favourite, but not my style. |
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| I don't know who you are. |
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| Nor do I know who you are. |
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| I'm pretty sure I know who you want to be. |
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| Tempted, but I think the randomiser needs to come out. |
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| Who the f...? |
So, Sodom it is. We could be rather derogatory about his character, but I chose to see him as a misguided professional wrestler. I don't know how he got to Japan to compete, but I know he won't be successful. All I want out of him is a super move of some kind.
Medium difficulty once again, arcade mode ready to go, let's see where this story goes.
If there's only one thing to be proud of with my time in Alpha 3, it's that I haven't yet been knocked out by the first opponent. That's not an achievement I want, however. I want a super, and I'm going to need it within the next two opponents because there's no way I'm getting through any more. Out of 10 opponents, even on medium difficulty, I always fail at the third hurdle. I don't know how difficulty scales, clearly, but failing on the fifth would be nice, no?
Anyway, the next bout was against another unknown to me - some of these characters are just not doing it for me. The art style is great, but that can't bring always win a character over. It does help, but some of these guys - Sodom included - just don't strike me as Street Fighter characters. They're like filler material. This is where I find out they've been in the series for years by this point...
Sodom vs Adon, round one, trading blows but no super. Here you can see that the isms can compete against each other with no problem at all. I don't know which one is better. I don't think there is a Rock, Paper, Scissor approach to them at all, they just have strengths and weaknesses. My strength is... uhm. My weakness is button mashing.
Most of the combos appear to involve stick rolling and circles and whatnot, so I'll just have to do more of that - I thought to myself, seconds before it happened.
I did it. I don't know what I did, but I did it.
Lost to one in the next fight, but whatever. Goal accomplished.
Final Word
I've been rather moany up until this point, but I want to stress that I really like the look of this game, and it's already bringing up other games from more recent release dates that have gone for the cartoony aesthetic as well. It can go too far, too cartoony, too unreal, but in Alpha 3's case, I think it's more or less there. It's bright and colourful and it makes me want to play it more.
The stages look great too, and the whole presentation is so in your face unique that it's going to stick with me for a bit. I can barely read it half the time, but it's swish.
But then I'll always remember how abysmally poor I am at it. How incapable I am at doing what I want to do. How reliant I am on button mashing and difficulty drops. It's not cool. Playing as Chun-Li on the easiest mode didn't satisfy me, and not because I ultimately lost on that as well, but because I knew this was not the way you play Street Fighter.
You play Street Fighter because you want to be the best fighter. You want to kick arse. You want to devastate your opponent. You want to hit them so hard and so often that they don't know what happened, and when you see that being pulled off, Alpha 3 makes it look incredible.
But it takes a while to get there. Time, effort, practice. Can you pick it up and play for a round or two? Sure. Various console and mobile releases come with new modes to mix the formula up and keep you entertained, to the point where there is something for everyone to at least try. But to stick with? That's for the dedicated.
It's been recently repackaged with a whole bunch of other titles for the 30th Anniversary Collection, and that's available on the PlayStation 4, which is a controller that I may have more luck with. Would I want to purchase it to find out though? It makes a lot of sense to be able to have an awful lot of icebergs to explore in one place, but I think I'd only be scratching at their surfaces rather than diving into their depths.
Fun Facts
In order to maximise the memory usage on the PlayStation, the visual indicators for successful hits were no longer sprites, but polygons. Good luck telling them apart - I barely see moves hitting at the best of times.
Street Fighter Alpha 3, developed by Capcom, first released in 1998.
Version played: Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, PlayStation Portable, 2006, via emulation.
Version watched: Street Fighter Alpha 3, Arcade, 1998 (World of Longplays)
Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, PlayStation 2, 2006 (TheSw1tcher)
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, 2018 (RajmanGaming HD)