Street Fighter Alpha 3

• 1. Introduction

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  Thirty-nine fighters. That is how large the playable cast of Street Fighter Alpha 3 grew on its biggest portable edition. The game itself began in 1998 as a Capcom arcade title. It was the third and final installment of the Street Fighter Alpha series. It ran on the same CP System II hardware as the Alpha games before it. So how did the same cabinet board support a game with new ways to fight? Who earned a place on that crowded roster, and who had to be earned as a secret? And how did one arcade game survive the journey to so many other machines, each with its own limits?

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• 2. Isms

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  Three letters decide how a match feels in Street Fighter Alpha 3: A, X and V. The game drops the Manual and Auto modes of earlier Alpha titles. In their place, players choose one of three fighting styles called isms. The standard style is A-ism, known as Z-ism in Japan. It follows the earlier Alpha games, with a three-level Super Combo gauge and several Super Combo moves to choose from.

  X-ism borrows its name from Super Street Fighter II X, the Japanese title of Super Street Fighter II Turbo. It is the simple style. The gauge has one level, and the player gets a single Super Combo move, usable only at its powerful Level 3 strength. X-ism fighters cannot air-block or perform Alpha Counters. In return they have the highest attack power and the least defense of the three.

  V-ism, the variable style, goes in a different direction. It allows custom combos like those in Street Fighter Alpha 2, but it forbids Super Combos entirely. To start one, the player presses a punch and a kick of the same strength together. A-ism hits harder than V-ism and has a similar level of defense.

  Each style gives every character a different set of moves, which adds considerable depth. Hidden modes add handicaps alongside benefits. Classic mode, for example, bars Super Combos but makes the fighter immune to being knocked into the air and juggled. A fourth style, I-ism, is a customizable one. It exists only in the Dreamcast version's World Tour and Saikyo Dojo modes and in the PSP version's World Tour mode.

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• 3. Guard and Controls

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  Every block in Street Fighter Alpha 3 costs something, because a new Guard Power Gauge drains each time a player defends. If the gauge empties completely, the fighter is left open to an attack. A broken bar then shrinks and refills to its new, smaller maximum. This can happen several times in a match.

  X-ism has the least defense but the largest guard bar. V-ism is the reverse, and A-ism sits in the middle. Size also varies from character to character. Zangief, for example, has a very large guard bar.

  In A-ism, the button an attack uses now sets a Super Combo's level. Medium Punch or Kick produces a Level 2 Super Combo, instead of the game counting how many buttons were pressed. Throws now require pressing two punch or kick buttons at once. Dramatic Battle matches have no guard bar at all, so guard crushing is impossible in them.

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• 4. A Crowded Roster

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  Eighteen fighters from Street Fighter Alpha 2 all return in Alpha 3. As in previous Alpha games, several older faces join them. Cammy arrives from the console-only Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold. E. Honda, Blanka and Vega are added too, along with Balrog, who must be earned as a secret character.

  R. Mika is the first true newcomer, a Japanese female wrestler who idolizes Zangief. Karin Kanzuki is Sakura's rival, first introduced in the Street Fighter manga Sakura Ganbaru! by Masahiko Nakahira. Cody comes over from Final Fight, and his story has taken a turn, since he is now an escaped convict.

  Juli, whose full name is Julia, and Juni are two of Shadaloo's Dolls. They serve as M. Bison's brainwashed assassins and guards, and both are secret characters. The game reveals that Juli is T. Hawk's long-lost lover.

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• 5. The PlayStation Port

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  Street Fighter Alpha 3 reached the PlayStation in 1998 and sold a million copies, a total still quoted as of June 2016. To give character animation more memory, the port replaced the hit sprites with hit polygons. Juli, Juni and Balrog became playable from the start, with new portraits and storylines of their own. Dee Jay, Fei Long and T. Hawk, the remaining New Challengers from Super Street Fighter II, joined the roster as well.

  Guile, Evil Ryu and Shin Akuma were hidden, earned through the new World Tour mode. Shin Akuma shares a slot with his regular counterpart. World Tour lets a player strengthen and customize a fighter's style while traveling around the world. The Japanese release also supported the PocketStation peripheral, which let players build up a character's strength. Shin Akuma serves as the final boss for Evil Ryu and as a secret boss in Final Battle.

  Only Ryu and Ken, and Juli and Juni, can play a complete Dramatic Battle campaign. Memory limits left that mark. Other pairings are restricted to one-match battles. The computer opponent in Dramatic Battle and Survival modes is exceptionally poor, failing to defend against sweep attacks, possibly for the same reason. The lower frame count also allows combos, often infinite ones, that the arcade version cannot do, particularly in V-ism. A downloadable re-release followed on the North American PlayStation Network on the 18th of October 2011.

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• 6. Sega Versions

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  The 1999 Dreamcast release, Street Fighter Alpha 3: Saikyo Dojo, carried over every PlayStation addition but rebuilt the World Tour mode. Known in Japan as Street Fighter Zero 3: Saikyō-ryū Dōjō, it makes Guile, Evil Ryu and Shin Akuma selectable from the start. Shin Akuma still shares a slot with his regular counterpart and appears through a special button combination. An online mode lets players display their high score. The Saikyo Dojo mode sends a character built in World Tour against a very strong opponent downloaded from the Internet, replaced every week. In 2000 a Japanese mail-order edition through Dreamcast Direct, Street Fighter Zero 3: Saikyō-ryū Dōjō for Matching Service, added an Online Versus mode.

  The Sega Saturn version of Street Fighter Zero 3 followed in 1999, in Japan only, shortly after the first Dreamcast release. It relies on Sega's 4-MB RAM cartridge. With that memory it keeps more frames and sprites, which makes it near arcade-perfect. It carries the PlayStation features except the polygons and the PocketStation mode. Dramatic Battle improves, gaining a two-player mode and Reverse Dramatic Battle, where one player faces two computer-controlled characters at once. The Saturn and PlayStation Portable versions alone offer Dramatic Battle against the full roster, while other versions limit it to boss characters. The computer opponent is far stronger than on the PlayStation.

  Final M. Bison, the more powerful form who is the game's true final boss, has the special Shadaloo-ism meter. He becomes playable on the Sega versions by entering a code. Scoring also changed on the Saturn. Many grab moves that earned 3000 points per hit pay out less there, which matters in World Tour, where score serves as experience points.

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• 7. Upper Editions

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  Japanese arcades saw Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper in 2001, released by Sega for their Dreamcast-based NAOMI hardware. It includes the six characters from the home console versions and some balance changes. The most notable change removed the crouch canceling glitch, which had enabled V-ism infinite combos. A player could also upload customized characters from the Dreamcast version by inserting a VMU into a memory card slot on the cabinet.

  Crawfish Interactive developed the 2002 Game Boy Advance version, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, called Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper in Japan. The version is compressed and lacks several stages and music tracks, though every character is present. Three additions came from Capcom vs. SNK 2, released in 2001: Yun from Street Fighter III, Maki from Final Fight 2, and Eagle from the original Street Fighter. Storage allowed only a small number of character voices. The developers had characters share samples, altered with real-time pitch shifting. Sakura's attack calls, for instance, use a higher-pitched version of Ken's voice. By 2003 this version had sold over 30,000 copies.

  The 2006 PlayStation Portable edition, Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, is known in Japan as Street Fighter Zero 3 Double Upper. It adds the Game Boy Advance newcomers plus Ingrid from Capcom Fighting Evolution. It is a near-faithful conversion of the arcade game, with reduced loading times and every frame and sprite intact. Each added character gets a storyline and ending. Dramatic Battle lets the player and partner be chosen individually, allowing any pairing. The edition also brings back Reverse Dramatic Battle. It adds an exclusive tag mode called Variable Battle, where the player swaps partners in and out. A 100-fight series named 100 Kumite rounds out the extras. Hardware limits remove vibration, local two-player mode and extra buttons, since the handheld has six buttons rather than eight.

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• 8. Collections and Reception

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  Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, called Street Fighter Zero: Fighters' Generation in Japan, reached the PlayStation 2 in 2006. It offers the arcade version of Alpha 3 right away and a revised Zero 3 Upper, named Alpha 3 Upper, as a secret game. Both include Dramatic Battle and Survival alongside Arcade, Versus and Training modes. World Tour and the portable versions' extra characters are absent. In Upper, all six characters added in the home console versions are available from the start.

  In Japan, Game Machine's issue of the 1st of September 1998 listed the game as the second most successful arcade game of the month. Its issue of the 15th of April 2001 named Zero 3 Upper the best-selling arcade game of the month. Famitsu gave the Saturn version 32 out of 40 on release and later 30 out of 40. The PlayStation version also scored 32 on release, and the Dreamcast version earned 33.

  Official UK PlayStation Magazine said the game would outlast Tekken 3. It added: "the only thing to tarnish this is the graphics. So if you think gameplay is more important than texture-mapped polygons, consider the score to be a ten." Next Generation gave the PlayStation version four stars out of five. It wrote that "Capcom may have outdone itself with the most playable and innovative fighting game since the original Street Fighter II." Game Informer scored the PlayStation Portable version 7.75 out of 10, calling it "a perfect arcade conversion that will please Street Fighter fans." In 2019, Game Informer ranked Alpha 3 the 18th best fighting game of all time.

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