Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

• 1. Introduction

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  Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike arrived in arcades in May 1999, and almost nobody cared. The game sold modestly, drew mixed reviews, and landed during a moment when the fighting game world was chasing 3D graphics and home consoles were starting to crowd out the arcades. By most commercial measures, it was a near-miss. Then, in 2004, at the EVO tournament, something happened that would eventually be called the most iconic moment in competitive gaming history. A player named Daigo Umehara pulled off a feat so precise and so unlikely that the crowd erupted in a way that captured something essential about what games can be. That single moment sent thousands of people back to a game they had ignored or forgotten. How did a modestly received arcade game from 1999 become something that a major outlet would call the greatest fighting game ever made over two decades later? The answers live in its parry system, its roster of strange new characters, its jazz-and-drum-and-bass soundtrack, and a competitive community that refused to let it go.

• 2. A New Roster

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  Chun-Li's return to the Street Fighter III series was the headline addition in 3rd Strike. She had been absent from New Generation and 2nd Impact, and her comeback came with a new storyline: she re-enters the fighting world after a young orphan in her care is kidnapped under mysterious circumstances. Four other characters joined her. Makoto is a young Japanese karate practitioner whose father has died, leaving her family's dojo, the Rindoukan, in decline; she travels the world seeking fights to restore its reputation. Remy, a long-haired French fighter in a leather jacket bearing an omega symbol, carries a grudge against all fighters. His father had abandoned him and his late sister to pursue fighting, and Remy's own move set draws on the Savate style. Q is the most opaque of the group: a masked figure in an overcoat, tracked by the CIA because of unexplained appearances near accidents around the world. Twelve is a shapeshifting soldier built by Gill's organization, sent on his first mission to hunt down the prototype that preceded him, a character named Necro. Akuma, previously a hidden and overpowered character, became a regular selectable fighter in 3rd Strike. The total playable roster reached nineteen characters, and the game's timeline placed its events nearly one year after the previous two Street Fighter III installments, a dating confirmed by Elena's official character profile.

• 3. The Parry System

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  The parry mechanic is what separates 3rd Strike from every other fighting game in the Street Fighter lineage. Where most fighting games reward players for blocking damage, a parry rewards perfect timing. A player who presses forward at the exact moment an attack lands neutralizes the hit entirely and gains a window to counter. 3rd Strike refined the version from its predecessors in specific ways: air parries, throws, and leap attacks all received adjusted commands from 2nd Impact, and the game introduced the Guard Parry, also called the Red Parry, in which a character turns visibly red while executing a parry out of a guard stun state. The Judgement System added another layer. After each match, the winning player receives a grade based on offense, defense, techniques, and bonus points tied to specific in-game requirements. The CPU version of Q can only appear as a hidden challenger in single-player mode, never as a regular opponent, which gave the already enigmatic character an added layer of rarity. The single-player structure runs ten opponents deep, with a character-specific rival appearing as the second-to-last fight and Gill serving as the final boss for every character except Gill himself, whose final opponent is Alex.

• 4. Ports and Versions

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  The Dreamcast port in 2000 was the first time home players could own 3rd Strike, and it introduced one lasting complication: significant lag. The problem was serious enough that players at EVO 2004 chose to compete on the original arcade hardware rather than the Dreamcast version. The Dreamcast release was based on the third revision of the arcade board, which had removed the "unblockables" for characters Urien and Oro. It also added exclusive content, including one remix of each character's musical theme that played during the third round of each match. The PlayStation 2 version arrived in 2004. It restored the earlier arcade revisions with the unblockables intact, and offered players a choice between the arcade and Dreamcast soundtracks. In Japan it was released as a standalone title with a limited edition package containing an All About Street Fighter history book, a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle, and a strategy DVD. In North America, the PS2 version appeared inside the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, bundled with Hyper Street Fighter II. The Xbox version of the Anniversary Collection added an online Versus mode and was available in all three regions. The PS2 version was not released in the PAL region. On the 18th of September 2008, Japan received a re-release bundling 3rd Strike with Capcom vs. SNK 2.

• 5. Online Edition

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  At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, Capcom announced an online edition of 3rd Strike. The version was built by Iron Galaxy Studios and used GGPO-based online play, a netcode technology valued for minimizing perceived lag in fighting games. It included visual filters, a remixed soundtrack by Simon Viklund, and bonus content unlocked through in-game achievements. Tournament and Spectator modes were added, along with Trial modes designed to teach new players the game's fundamentals. Players could also share replays directly to YouTube. Online Edition launched on PlayStation Network on the 23rd of August 2011 and on Xbox Live Arcade one day later, on the 24th. Despite being marketed as arcade perfect, its underlying code derived from the PS2 version rather than the original arcade board. It reached number eight on the PSN download sales chart. A final patch addressing remaining issues was released on the 12th of February 2014. When the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection arrived in 2018, it brought the actual arcade version of 3rd Strike to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One, with online functionality powered by a proprietary netcode solution developed by Digital Eclipse, distinct from the GGPO approach used in Online Edition.

• 6. Sound of the Game

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  Hideki Okugawa composed the music for all three Street Fighter III games, while Yuki Iwai had worked on the soundtracks for New Generation and 2nd Impact. The sonic direction for 3rd Strike leans into house, jungle, and drum and bass, with threads of jazz, hip-hop, and techno running through the mix. The 3rd Strike original soundtrack was released by Mars Colony Music in 2000, followed by an arranged version. Canadian rapper Infinite contributed three songs and the game's announcer tracks. The first Street Fighter III game's soundtrack had been released on CD by First Smile Entertainment back in 1997.

• 7. Slow Rise to Legend

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  Home console unit sales were modest: the Dreamcast version sold 56,741 units in Japan, the PS2 version sold 49,088 in Japan, and the Dreamcast version sold 60,246 in the United States. In Japan, Game Machine's the 1st of July 1999 issue named it the most successful arcade game of that month; it finished the year as the country's ninth highest-grossing arcade software kit. Critics at the time were cool. Game Revolution called it not a very exciting addition, comparing it to other Street Fighters while criticizing its graphics. Next Generation's Chet Barber gave the Dreamcast version three stars out of five, writing that it was deep and fun but likely to leave longtime series players feeling burned out. CNET found its graphics weaker than the predecessor. The conventional explanation for the game's slow start points to its timing: 3D fighters were in vogue, and home consoles were drawing audiences away from arcades. Years later the assessments shifted. Complex ranked it the eleventh best arcade game of the 1990s. In 2013, Complex also placed it tenth on their list of best 2D fighting games of all time, writing that it is a lot better than many people ever gave it credit for. A 2022 IGN article named it the greatest fighting game ever made. The pivot point between obscurity and reverence can be traced to a single tournament match at EVO 2004, where Daigo Umehara's near-impossible sequence of parries against Justin Wong inspired waves of new players to discover a game that had been sitting quietly at the margins of the fighting game world, waiting to be found.