Street Fighter Alpha 3 features various modes of fighting action.
The Arcade mode is a direct translation of the arcade version,
though the home version now includes added special effects during
combat sequences. The Versus mode allows you to select all
playable characters for hand-to-hand battle. New to the Alpha
series is the World Tour mode, which allows you to fight
nents throughout the world. The popular Street Fighter series
continues with a multitude of new moves, specials, and super
combos.
Review
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Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the PlayStation was a great
translation, and the extra modes really brought a lot to the
game. The Dreamcast version of Alpha 3 keeps all the great modes
and additions from the PlayStation version but also uses the more
powerful hardware to its benefit, delivering larger character
sizes, sharper and more colorful graphics, and extremely minimal
load times.
With Street Fighter 3 shooting off into an entirely new world
with lots of new characters and Capcom's versus series of
fighters pitting the Street Fighters against various comic book
characters, the Alpha series is really the only "classic" Street
Fighter line left. That's not to say that it's grown stagnant.
Even though it's chock-full of characters that we've been
extremely familiar with for close to a decade, the little touches
here and there and the addition of new fighters keep the game
fresh enough to maintain its relevancy.
Moving on from Street Fighter Alpha 2, Alpha 3 maintains the same
gameplay, though a few new options bring a lot of variety to the
game. After you select your character, you're given a choice of
three different fighting styles, termed "isms," which govern the
way your super combos work. A-ism gives you multiple super combos
that can be executed at three different levels, much like the
standard alpha combos in Alpha 1 and 2. V-ism gives you variable
combos, which behave much like the custom combo feature
introduced in Alpha 2. X-ism returns to Super Street Fighter II
Turbo-style combos, where you only have one combo, but it's much
more powerful than your average A-ism combo. There are also a few
other subtle differences in the isms, such as the ability to air
block.
World Tour mode brings a ton of single-player value to Alpha 3.
The mode is basically set up a lot like Soul Blade's edge master
mode. You travel from stage to stage, fighting in matches that
have various requirements, such as time attacks, survival
matches, and fights where only combos do damage. As you progress,
you'll earn experience points and add-ons called ism-pluses,
which grant you things like air blocking, charging super meters,
and increased block meter damage. You can then import these
world-tour fighters into the game's other modes, but they won't
gain any experience in other portions of the game. Add to this
little quick modes like survival and dramatic battle (which lets
you play a three-player, two-on-one game), and you've got enough
modes to keep you busy whether you're playing alone or with
friends.
Graphically, Street Fighter Alpha 3 has an outstanding look. The
characters are large, colorful, and well animated. The
backgrounds also look quite nice. The audio is about what you'd
expect from a Street Fighter game, making good use of stereo
separation as the action travels from one side of the screen to
the other. The music is also quite good.
The Dreamcast controller again proves that it isn't cut out for
Street Fighter-style fighting games. Though not as bad an
offender as Marvel vs. Capcom was, the controller's top buttons
simply aren't as responsive as they need to be for this type of
game. It may work well if you're driving a car, but trying to
pull off Dragon Punches with them is a different story. Again, as
with Marvel vs. Capcom, you're going to want to spend a little
extra money and get Sega's arcade-style joystick, which solves
every single problem posed by the DC's standard controller.
If you've already purchased Alpha 3 on the PlayStation, that may
very well be enough. But the Dreamcast version is a flawless
conversion of the arcade game, with more options than its
PlayStation counterpart. It'd be worth an import if the domestic
version wasn't scheduled to ship so soon. Wait for the US
release, which is currently scheduled for October. --Jeff
Gerstmann
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