In the real world, Street Fighter 6 has just been released. But on this blog, I'm taking some time this week to go back and revisit an absolute classic in the series. Street Fighter III is an oddity in that somehow it's both beloved and overlooked at the same time. While the fighting game community has by and large always adored Street Fighter III, most gamers tend to gravitate towards Street Fighter II for pure nostalgia, or maybe Street Fighter IV for recency bias. And I mean, I get that. But I also think that Street Fighter III is one of the finest fighting games ever released and would wind up in the upper part of any list I'd ever compile of the greatest fighting games of all time.
You have to remember that it was a long road to Street Fighter III. Let's recap. First of all, the original Street Fighter (1987) was generally greeted with an indifferent shrug upon release. But Street Fighter II (1991) set the arcades on fire. We then got various updates to Street Fighter II from 1992 to 1994, until Capcom rolled out Street Fighter Alpha in 1995. Alpha was meant to be a sort of reboot or prequel. I guess the story takes place between the first two games, but in my mind it was more of a mulligan, like a ret-conned take on the original game. Or at least a "hey, the first Street Fighter is kind of meh, so just play this one instead." Oh, and they were two more updates to Alpha as well. After that, there was also a mess of forgettable games. There was Street Fighter: The Movie (1995) which sort of attempted to go the Mortal Kombat digitized actors route. Then there was Street Fighter EX (1996) which kind of tried to go the Tekken 3D polygon route. That same year that was also X-Men Vs Street Fighter, which was actually damn good, but my point is that Capcom did a whole lot of stuff after Street Fighter II instead of just making Street Fighter III. In fact it would be a full six years until we finally got a new numbered installment when Street Fighter III hit arcades in 1997. Within a year the game made it to homes with a port to the Dreamcast. But I didn't play it that way. And there were also two more updates of Street Fighter III with 2nd Impact later in 1997 and 3rd Strike in 1999. That last version was also ported to Dreamcast in 2000 and to PS2 and Xbox in 2004. But I didn't play those either. Nope, I didn't actually play Street Fighter III until the Online Edition was released to Playstation 3 in 2011. This was after I had played (and loved) Street Fighter IV. When I finally got to play Street Fighter III it immediately grabbed me hard. Where Street Fighter IV had felt like an HD throwback to Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III felt like one of the weirdest fighting games I'd ever played. Certainly it's the weirdest in the series. For one thing, it sticks to a very small roster. And secondly, outside of a handful of familiar faces, this game is full of brand new characters who are absolutely strange. I mean, Blanka was strange but an outlier. This game is like mostly Blankas, if that makes sense. I guess what I'm saying is I appreciate Street Fighter III because it feels like the most experimental the series has ever really gotten. Characters like Necro, Oro, Urien, Q and Twelve are just pretty off the wall when you consider the other games in the series. And I love that. Street Fighter III also just beams with a unique vibe. It's got great music. It's got incredibly stunning sprite work. The controls are fluid. It takes everything Capcom had learned and perfected with so many variations of Street Fighter II and Alpha and just went all in on making the perfect 2D fighting game. And back in 2011, I played the hell out of this game. For a while there, I thought I was pretty good. Today I'm pretty bad. Quick side-story, a buddy of mine Brendan discovered Street Fighter III on Dreamcast years ago. And at some point, it became his life. To my knowledge, he bought a PS4 just to play the game online. He bought a fight stick. And a couple of times a year, he tends to text me some crazy video of him playing Street Fighter III. My point is, there's a lot of Street Fighter out there, but this game is so unique that if it gets its grips into you, you're liable to get stuck for a long time. For me, I've accepted the fact that I'll never be very good. But that doesn't stop me from having a good time. As a surprise to nobody, Chun-Li is my main in this one. Though I do like Ibuki a lot. And I mean, Ken can be pretty fun in here too. But it's that crazy oddball cast that makes it really fun. Just pick someone random and see what happens. I've had a blast back in the day playing with my friend Mike and each of us picking who the other person had to use. I'm garbage with Hugo for the most part, but it's never not fun even when you feel garbage.
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