Details Title:
Platform:
Release Date:
Genre:
Pros:
Cons:Street Fighter Alpha 3
Sony Playstation
December 23, 1998 (JP)
April 30, 1999 (US)
2000, (EU)
Fighting
Plenty of characters, plenty of options, well suited background music for each stage, three different fighting styles
Some Super techniques are weaker than normal attacks, character plots inconsistent from previous Alpha games
Review The third game of the Alpha series, Capcom continues to cover the back stories of most characters. Unfortunately, Capcom has been rather inconsistent over the three Alpha games in terms of plot. That aside, we get several additional characters to fight with, making it the largest character roster out of the three alpha games.
Characters don't look too bad in their alpha spirte forms, though some look blurry and are difficult to distinguish, like Juli and Juni (though this maybe because I'm playing this on a PS2 and not a PS1). Oddly, T.Hawk looks exactly the same as in Super Street Fighter II, and DJ just looks out of place. However, you do get a chance to see some better images of your character, including at the end of the match, and even at the beginning where a brief profile of your character is given.
There's plenty of backgrounds aswell, some look cool, while others could've been improved a little bit.Music sounds great. There's a variety of music to each stage, and I liked Rose's and Vega's music, and not to mention Bison's aswell (it sounds much better than his SF II music), although admittedly, some background music sounds similar to each other.
There's various speech in the game from all characters, most in their Japanese glory for you fans who dislike dub. Though a bit hard to distinguish compared to other Street Fighter games, the speech is alright, though Karin's laugh reminds me of Naga from Slayers...For the gameplay, it took a little while for me to adjust to this game's way of fighting, with recoveries, alpha counters and such. There are also three different fighting styles. Aside from the standard Alpha super meter (3 levels of super), you can choose another type of super meter, or a combo meter that allows you to make a custom combo for a certain period of time.This means that you need to have some experience in 2D fighting to get the best out of this. But even if you're a beginner, I'm not stopping you from getting a hold of this game.
The characters' specials... some are good and effective, while others have been severely weakened down. This is what annoyed me: Supers that could've turned the tide of battle now do pathetic damage. Yes I'm referring to Ryu's Shin Shoryuken as an example. It looks pathetic (a sliding elbow then a regular dragon punch?) and the damage even more so. Though I guess this is to try and provide balance in the game.Like previous Alpha games, each character takes a different storyline. While your final enemy is Bison, each character has a specific 'mid-boss' and 'final-boss', which is used as part of the characters' storyline. For example, Akuma's mid boss is Adon, and his final boss is Guy. Aside from them, your other opponents will always change, meaning there's a good variety here, especially with 31 characters (plus a few secret characters).
There are plenty of options available, including your usual arcade mode, versus mode and training mode, but there's also a mini-RPG style where your go around gaining experience points and learning new tricks (i.e. air block, faster super meter recovery). But what I like also, is there's a 2 player co-op mode, where you and your friend can fight simeltaneously against a tough opponent, which is especially useful if your friend doesn't like going against you, or has little experience in fighting. However, it's a bit limited, as you can only choose from Ryu+Ken or Juli+Juni, though I didn't consider this a big problem, considering you're teaming up with a friend to beat up one opponent.There are already several different versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3 available these days for the PS2, Gameboy Advance, and the PSP, though most are ports of the arcade version. The PS1 copy of Alpha 3 looks to be incredibly rare these days, so if you do see a copy for sale (whether at stores or online), I suggest you grab it.