This Is The Real Street Fighter Collection

Umm...This is embarrassing, anyone know how many games are in the SF line now? Ah, well, it's irrelavent. What Capcom has here is the Street Fighter game to end all Street Fighter games.

Roll Call

Calling SFA 3 the best Street Fighter conversion is an understatement. With all of the the games in the series, Alpha 3 stands out as a "summary" of the series. The game takes most of the characters from Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter Alpha. The consoles (note the use of the "console") take that a step further and takes the New Challengers of Super SF and throws them in. Now the consoles have ALL the characters of SF 2 and SF Alpha. To pit the likes of Fei-Long against Guy is worth the price of admission alone. However, purists will definitely be getting confused in terms of story. Does Alpha 3 take place before SF 2, does Super SF 2 stories exist now? Well, I don't know. But stories do intermingle. Fact is Alpha 3 does a great job telling the stories of Street Fighter, thanks to great mid-boss encounters, and epic final battles.

Taking the World Tour

What Alpha 3 does well is convey the single player experience. When you begin, there are the Arcade and World Tour Modes (along with the requisite Versus and Options mode). The World Tour Mode is what you can call an SF Adventure mode. Here, you go to various locals on the World map and battle in a number of conditions (reduced life meters, short times, only combos damage, and 2,3,4 and even 5 on one matches). Also the character you've chosen gains EXPs (which finally gives scoring in the game a greater purpose than just bragging rights). As you fight, your ISMs gain experience, as does you total character, at certain levels you gain ISM pluses. These allow your character to gain abilities they otherwise wouldn't have. Auto recovering of super bars, auto blocking and even the new Super Cancels (which are EX Cancels we've been doing on our Playstations for years) are yours for the taking. That is if you got the skills to open them up. See, unlike a RPG, you have a certain amount of stages to fight through. Any completed levels can be played through to your hearts' content, watch the score, though and it won't increase. The better you play, the more levels are opened, the longer you get to play. Play really well and you can unlock new characters, but watch out, it's not easy. But in a stroke of genius, you can import you characters into other modes, so you can play a World Tour character in Arcade Mode. You can even customize characters you store in the game's Edit Mode. Playing through the Arcade mode unlocks more game modes. including a three on three mode, a survival mode, a Final Battle mode (you get a one chance fight to take Bison down), and the ultimate, a two on one mode (you and a pal gets to double team the computer, but you have to the same character or Ryu and Ken). Good for fluff, but I spend most of my time in the Versus mode, giving the computer the ultimate punishment. However, the modes are a nice icing on the cake, well thought out and good tasting icing.

2D Perfection...Pretty Darn Close

Alpha 3 shows evidence that Capcom has gained a great mastery of the PSX's 2D capabilities. Sure there a few missing frames here and there, but it's almost spot on, especially when going same character vs. character. The backgrounds animate beautifully too. Not only that but it all goes on with no slowdown, not too bad, considering this is the Playstation we're talking about. Even more impressive is the host of new character intros before the fight. Sometimes, certain matchups see unique intros (such as Ken giving Ryu a nice nugie, or Sagat and Adon lighting the screen up with rapid fire kicks.)

Sonic Impressions

Alpha 3 sounds are as good as the graphics. However, in making the game gloss like a new title, the game features totally new, rockin' techno tracks. There's nary a remix found here, these tunes are never before heard cuts. If you've got a good sound system, don't be afraid to turn that badboy up, your neighbors need to here this. The voices, however, come from previous Alpha games (with the strange exception of Cammy), or are new recorded vocals, mostly for the better (Sakura sounds more like a real fighter this time around). The announcer has taken a cue from some of SNKs games, spouting out high energy things like, "You can't give it up! Triumph or die!" instead of a mundane "Round 1! Fight!"

Street Fighter Controls

Alpha 3 does some new things in terms of gameplay. The newest thing is the Ism system, which dictates the "style" of fighting you want. X-Ism plays like Super Street Fighter (maximum damage, long guard meter, one super damaging super combo), V-Ism which give you variable combos, which allows you to string together moves (similar to Custom Combos, but nowhere near as flexible) and A-Ism, which is "standard" Alpha gameplay, (two or more super combos and Alpha counters are the order of the day here.) However, even though I thought I came from old school SF, the truth is Alpha play is the most fun. Controls have been streamline too. Most recovery moves are pulled off by pressing three punch or kick buttons as opposed to doing a quarter motion then pressing a button. Alpha counters are now done pressing towards and two punch and kick buttons after blocking. This scheme make the fighting more instantaneous than before. Also supported are juggles, although more limited than SF 3 and the Vs. series, they feel just right here and take mad skills to pull of a good juggle.

Judgement Day

SF Alpha 3 does a more than excellent job of conveying the home arcade experience to the Playstation. It not only brings home the sights and sounds of the coin op, but sees Capcom bending over to deliver a extremely worthwhile port of their classic game. It's nice to see all the right characters here. Forget SF collection, this my friends is the real deal. The only thing missing is the tournament options from the Super SF 2 series. It that was here, I might give the game a ten. If you're a SF nut, you already own this game. I should know, I have it.