Game Feature: Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper

I'd like to start a regular feature on this colum where I "feature" a specific title, and talk about why I like (or don't, if I don't particularly) that title. Because I've got a lot of titles, this is something that could go on for months. Should be fun.

Let me start with a game that's very near and dear to my heart; a strong contender for my favorite game in the entire genre, and certainly my favorite game in the entire Street Fighter series, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper. The best version of this is on the Playstation 2 compilation Street Fighter Alpha Anthology; what you have to do first is beat the "regular" Street Fighter Alpha 3 and then this is unlocked. It's basically a home port of an arcade game which in turn was an arcade port of a console version of the original Street Fighter Alpha 3 title... which was ported from the arcade. A bit confusing, I know. The biggest difference is that, unlike the regular SFA3 game, this one has all the characters that were added back in, including everyone who was ever in any version of SF2, plus all of the revised Street Fighter 1 and Final Fight and Alpha sub-series original characters. This makes a total of 34 characters, although granted, two of them are variants of existing characters. Either way, the roster is certainly respectable. A big roster is no substitute for a good one, though... the nice thing about SFA3 is that so many of the characters are actually going to be very fun to play.

Four characters, notably, are not included, even though they were in the portable version of the game: Ingrid, Eagle, Maki and Yun. Eagle and Maki would have been great additions, because as SF1 and Final Fight characters respectively, they would have fit in nicely with the other Alpha characters. Be that as it may, I've got them nicely done for already in Capcom vs. SNK 2, so I don't feel like I'm missing out too much. Ingrid and Yun's addition is a bit more questionable, but hey, the more the merrier, for the most part.

Aside from the character selection, this game also is helped by superior presentation. Each character has a unique stage, and a unique (and new! and pretty cool, for the most part, although some of them start to run together after a while) BGM track. In fact, the soundtrack was good enough that I tracked down an import CD from Japan so I could listen to it while I tinker with Street Fighter related thoughts, or read my Street Fighter comic books by UDON. Actually, I'm nerdy enough about this genre, that I've done that for a lot of related titles, but this one was literally the first that I ran down.

Each time you play against the computer, you fight ten (or occasionally 11) matches. The final match is the boss, and in almost all cases, the boss is called FINAL BISON; he's a roided up version of Bison that you can't play because he's too cheap for actual players to get their hands on. Fine boss, though. Difficult, but not too cheesy. He certainly does the job, plus he's iconic for the Street Fighter series. Before you fight Final Bison, you have a sub-boss, which will be one of the other characters in the game, and which will vary depending on who you are. And the fifth match, halfway through, will also be a "mid-boss", a character with a unique rivalry, or other reason to want to face off against you.

Despite the fact that all of these elements are excellent, it's really in the gameplay that Street Fighter Alpha 3 shines the most. It brought some variety back to the game by introducing "isms" that control the game engine that your character will respond to. A-ism is a tweaked (and in my opinion, very nearly perfected) version of the Alpha gameplay engine, X-ism does the same thing to the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo gameplay engine, and V-ism is the odd Custom Combo system that debuted in Street Fighter Alpha 2. Each of these modes has been pretty heftily tweaked from their earlier incarnations, and work really well. SFA3 is a relatively fast-paced and superheroic game compared to some others in the series, although compared to, say, the Marvel vs. games maybe not quite so much.

There are also some other options you can layer onto the game; you can pick Saikyo, Maki or Classic filters, which change damage output, defense ability and super combos ability. Saikyo is basically a major handicap mode, Maki is "don't get hit, but your own hits will be scary powerful in return" and classic is Street Fighter 2 with no super combos at all. I clearly prefer A-ism with the "normal" filter, which gives me the ultimate in Alpha gaming experience. I also turn the number of victories needed to advance up to three, to give me longer to savor the experience. I really like the A-ism gameplay engine. Not only do I almost exclusively use A-ism in this game, but I also almost exclusively use the C-groove in Capcom vs. SNK 2... which is A-ism all over again, pretty much. That said, it's still nice to have these other options available. The game is fun.

The only minor quibbles I'd have about the game are 1) that some of the BGM tracks start to sound too much alike after a while (although others are among my favorite BGM tracks in a fighting game ever), and 2) the World Tour mode isn't present in the PS2 compilation. Then again, I haven't played my PS1 World Tour mode much at all after winning through it the first time, so maybe that's not such a handicap after all.

Anyway, I've also attached a few screenshots, snagged off of Moby Games, which is a great source for Capcom and SNK screenshots, by the way. Just to complete my own post and make it prettier.