HyperComboChat! (Fighting Game Thread)

I don't know what's wrong with me this week. I've had a pronounced disdain for Street Fighter Alpha 3 since I was like eighteen, but it's fourteen years later and I've been playing it a bunch all week? The most important (and confusing) thing is that I've mostly been having fun doing so, though I'm not backpedaling much here: I still find the game disappointing in many ways. But, I'm at least ready to admit to and enjoy some of its redeeming qualities.

It's hard not to compare SFA3 to its predecessor, Street Fighter Alpha 2. That game encapsulates almost everything that I've ever enjoyed about older Street Fighter games in general: it has a smaller but varied cast, and each character is accompanied by a lavish stage that is replete with animate background elements, and an expressive music theme to marry the character and stage together while expanding on both elements simultaneously. Imo, it succeeded in creating the same iconism as Super Street Fighter II X, but with entirely new systems and cast. And then Alpha 3 came out and, to me, completely missed on all those points.

For myself, the most egregious offenses are found in the art and the soundtrack. ST kind of had a manga style to its concept art, whereas Alpha & Alpha 2 leaned more into a comic/anime style, but it was still stylized and detailed. But here, all the women in A3 have the same face, same expression; and half of the men look outrageous (even gross, in the case of Zangief). And across the board, it's bland. They do have a few different poses that are drawn for the select screen, their win pose, and the interlude between stages but... it's all a miss for me. I dislike looking at it as much now as I did when I was younger, and the art alone is a hurdle I thought I'd never clear. In some ways I still can't.

The music largely falls into the same trappings as the art - a lot of it is bland, uninspired riffs that don't make a statement about the character or the location - it's just an uninformed groove. Some of the tracks are likable enough. I enjoy Cammy's stage well enough because it actually has, like, a fun melody to carry me through the fight. But pretty much none of it is something I would queue up in a playlist if I was in a mood to listen to favorite FTG tracks. The stages themselves sometimes have an animated element, but if they do it's usually just a single one. A few of the backdrops have some pretty nice color palettes going besides - Sakura and Karin share a stage, I think, but the encounter takes place at a different time of day so the colors change! - but others are rather stale.

So pretty much, I find the game aesthetically underwhelming from most angles - besides the unforgettable announcer, that is. Third Strike, SFA3, and CvS2 all have such memorable announcers, and while it's a small thing here, at least it serves to make A3 stand out on its own. Silly, but fun. The interface is alright too, it really gave the game a sleek look that stands out from the previous entries.

It bears mentioning that the cast of SFA3, especially on the various home ports, is exceptionally large, All of the characters from SFA2 are here. And in the home ports, all of the characters from ST are present as well! In addition, there are some neat extras that add flavor and context to pre-established fighters: the Shadoloo dolls, Juri & Juni, hunting down the rogue agent Cammy! Sakura's rival Karin, desperate for a rematch! Good stuff. But it's hard for me not to assume a relationship between the quantity of characters present against the caliber of content designed to present them. Interestingly, this game actually came out between SFIII: Second Impact and the renowned Third Strike, and as it turns out Third Strike was a similar renovation of its series: all the old backgrounds and many of the character themes, and all of the art - all of which were pretty damn good - were tossed out entirely in order to present something else. But in this case, that something else was equally incredible and, as demonstrated by legacy, perhaps even moreso. After all, when more SFIII characters found their way into Super Street Figher IV, it was their 3S themes which were chosen to be remixed. (I really do like 2I's art/music too tho!) As for the Alpha characters, well, they used their Alpha 1/2 themes because they were compositions specifically designed to express their character. There was no well to draw on from Alpha 3.

But, the decision to eschew previous assets, strong as they were, does serve to make Alpha 3 stand out., Neither it nor its predecessor can eclipse one another because they're not even in the same orbit, really. And when I was ready to admit that, I could at least accept Alpha 3 on its own terms. I understand now how one could have a preference for Alpha 3, and I'm finally enjoying it a bit for myself, so that's a win!

It's the end of the post here but I just realized I glossed over how good console ports are for this game. World Tour mode has you create save data for your chosen character, and you gain experience points to level up various strengths as you choose various encounters across the globe. Dramatic battle stages a 1v2 or 2v1 battle that somehow-I-don't-know-how works really well, and even allows co-op?? And there's Survival mode too??? On top of consoles already getting some bonus exclusive characters, I totally get how this would have been anybody's favorite release.