Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PlayStation Portable)
Let’s get this out the way quickly: Alpha 3 Max is the best portable version of Alpha 3 available. It’s even one of the best ports of Alpha 3 among the numerous ports of the game. It has everything that its big brother consoles have and then some, with the massive final updated roster that each successive entry has introduced, and improvements made to the different established modes.
The graphics are nice and large, and the music is still as top notch as ever. But there is a catch because there always is: This is only available for the PlayStation Portable. So, if you can track down that defunct system, get this to have it on the go and have a blast as only one can with Alpha 3 in its final form glory. It’s worth a look just for the complete roster alone.
Score: 4 out of 5
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Street Fighter Alpha Anthology (PlayStation 2)
This collection of Street Fighter Alpha games is sublime, especially if you have a PlayStation 2 laying around. It features all the Alpha games, remixes and arranged versions, the Alpha 2 Gold revision and a nice port of Super Gem Fighter Mini-Mix. The best part of the collection is that it plays nicely in every game. It plays like a dream and handles well with a good PS2 controller or joystick.
Even better is the included Hyper Street Fighter Alpha, which allows pitting different Alpha characters against each other using that specific game’s mechanics and rulesets. Think Alpha 2’s Rose versus Alpha 3 V‑ISM Rose. That’s the hidden draw of the game, one that’s not advertised and that you won’t discover without time invested. However, with smooth play and convenience much like 30th Anniversary collection, this is a must buy for the PS2 collection.
Good but not great. That’s what Street Fighter Alpha 2 represents for me. I don’t hate the game these days. After a mature return to the game after many years spent adoring Street Fighter Alpha 3, I can honestly say the game is a good setup for the king of the hill that is Alpha 3.
Because Capcom has advised that Street Fighter Alpha 2’s story supersedes Alpha’s story, we’re not rehashing anything here. Just know that everyone is after M. Bison at this point because he’s up to no good as he always is and will be, and Akuma enters the chat because he supposedly killed Ryu and Ken’s master Gouken. Everything that happens in Alpha 2 sets Alpha 3 up in a way that explains why M. Bison is so powerful by the end of the series and why he’s significantly weaker during Street Fighter II. It’s compelling even if you’re a casual fan of Street Fighter.
The graphics haven’t made a significant leap between Alpha games and yet they somehow look cleaner. They’re chunkier and larger, and you can tell they’re getting closer to the Alpha 3 streamlined version that became the hallmark of the Street Fighter experience in the early to mid-2000s before the advent of Street Fighter IV.
Thankfully, while there isn’t a big leap forward in the look between games, there is a sizable improvement in the soundtrack of Alpha 2. Quite a few tracks stand out and it’s worth hunting down the playlist because there are some gems. It’s still not at the Alpha 3 level but it’s getting there if you need reassurance.
What I didn’t care for in Alpha has improved in Alpha 2: how it plays. The play feel has improved with the introduction of Custom Combos, and while clunky to execute, it’s a nice change of pace for the series. They’re in their infancy here so don’t expect the absolute dominance of Alpha 3 V‑ISM but they are cool to see and it’s satisfying to get them to work consistently in play once you know what you’re doing. Watching high-level play shows how Alpha 2 is meant to be played, and it demonstrates Alpha 2’s strengths: Nuanced strategy and a clean engine.
Alpha 2 does have its quirks, though. Sometimes the game just doesn’t feel quite right and by that I mean, I don’t like how it feels sometimes. It can simultaneously feel slow and sluggish but then it course corrects and the game plays like a dream. Combos work but then sometimes, I struggle to get things going. I can’t place my finger on it, even years later, but there’s something off about Alpha 2 but I’ve learned to accept it for what it is and overall just accept Alpha 2. It may be because I didn’t start the series until Alpha 3, but Alpha 2 doesn’t always feel right. I still prefer to play Alpha 3 in every respect, but acceptance of Alpha 2 is a sign of maturity.
Alpha 2 is the midpoint of the Alpha series and that’s OK. It’s got its growing pains but the growth is there and it’s still regarded as a strong fighting game. Alpha 2 has value and as the middle child of the series, it’s got a lot to offer and a certain charm that brightened by the fact that Capcom learned its lesson and seemingly learned to count to three. Alpha 2 is a good bridge to greatness.
Street Fighter Alpha sets the tone for spinoff franchise
I promise I can see the potential in the original Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams. I can look down from my high perch of love for Alpha 3 and accept that the series came from somewhere. After all, every series must have a start. But it’s a long hard stretch to say it’s an all-time great start.
Street Fighter Alpha establishes the series’ story: After Ryu wins the first World Fighting Tournament (as depicted in Street Fighter), he returns home to find his master Gouken murdered and sets out to get revenge. At the same time, Chun-Li, Guile and Charlie — along with other various members of the cast such as newcomer Rose — work together to take down M. Bison, who is working to establish his empire and achieve world domination. Know two things about the story: One, it’s a sequel to 1987’s Street Fighter and a prequel to Street Fighter II; and, two, its storyline is supplanted by Street Fighter Alpha 2. Capcom deployed this strategy with the Darkstalkers/Vampire series as well, which was coincidentally created around the same time as Alpha. And this isn’t the only instance of crossover concepts, either.
Alpha plays and feels much like early Vampire as well. The new additions of multi-level super combos and air blocking are here, too, and like Vampire, represent an upgrade from the days of Super Turbo. But, as much as I like the upgraded mechanics, I don’t like how Alpha plays. It feels clunky and slow with a molasses edge to the movesets. While the series did eventually improve with time and speed adjustments, it’s painfully obvious here that it needed a speed boost.
Alpha also resembles Vampire in presentation. The graphics are nice and big, and the sprites are nicely drawn. It’s an early version of the Alpha 3 presentation that we’ve come to know and love, and it’s pleasing to see it here. The music isn’t at the Alpha 3 level yet, but there are a few tracks that might make you tap your toe.
What I wanted from the first game in the Alpha series shows up later in the final game, but the start isn’t terrible. It needed some work and given that Alpha 2 made improvements on this solid foundation in Alpha, I think it’s safe to call this the beta of the Alpha series.
There was a time when all the early generation Street Fighter games weren’t available in the same place. Us old-timers had to own multiple systems and collections on those systems to complete the library of fighting street games. But then along came the 30th anniversary of the landmark fighting game franchise and wouldn’t you know, Capcom thought it prudent to offer a bonanza of Street Fighter. Whether or not it’s a bountiful buffet is still up for judgment.
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection aims to do one thing: Give you all the Street Fighter you can shake a stick at. Included out of the box are: Street Fighter, all versions of Street Fighter II (including Tournament Battle, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch); Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper; and, Street Fighter III: New Generation, 2nd Impact: Giant Attack and 3rd Strike. This essentially covers all the bases for early Street Fighter, which is great. Give me everything in one package and let me choose what I want to play. But alas, there is a catch: All the versions included are the arcade versions of the games. That means, for example, with Street Fighter Alpha 3 you aren’t going to get World Tour Mode. Whatever you received in the arcade is what you’re getting here so I hope you like the vanilla versions because that’s what’s served here. That’s not a bad thing if you love Street Fighter, and it’s the smart solution because including the home additions would have pushed this collection to double discs or more.
The package is fine graphically. The games included are going to look exactly what they way they did when they were released, which is exactly how they should here and isn’t the focus. What should be the focus is the surrounding package and it’s nice. The graphics look clean, and menus are inviting. However, I do have a gripe with the menus: Capcom is in dire need of a copy editor. I found at least one error in the text (Akuma’s bio in Super Street Fighter II X for the curious), and this isn’t the first time I’ve found this type of thing (there’s an error in Super Street Fighter IV’s text as well).
As a former professional editor, this type of thing in video games gets on my nerves. Capcom is a billion-dollar company; hiring a copy editor to spell check the menus and text shouldn’t be a problem. It reeks of sloppiness, though I shouldn’t be surprised as this is the same company that refuses to translate the board game in Project Justice or the dating sims in both versions of Rival Schools. But I digress. The presentation is good, and it looks fine on modern systems.
The music is the same as the graphics: just as you remember it and perfectly fine. There is a sound test and that’s helpful if you don’t already have any of the tracks in your music collection. There are a few remixes in the menus that you may not have heard before, but there isn’t anything noteworthy like say Mega Man X Legacy Collection. The extras are mid, though some of the artwork and the official timelines provided are neat. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of it and there should be with this many games included.
And just like the presentation, the playability is just as good as you remember. I was able to finish several games in the arcade mode — once I adjusted the difficulty, which is a godsend — and everything felt great even with a PlayStation 4 Pro controller. I also jumped online to test the netcode, and it was decent. However, with the superior Fightcade now in full swing, fighting online with 30th Anniversary has been made irrelevant.
This is the collection to end all Capcom collections for their fighting games. Yes, Capcom insists on releasing other collections with these games, but this is a good stop gap if you want the mainstream stuff all in one place. Come for the nostalgia and the convenience and maybe stay for the extras. Three decades of Street Fighter should be a spectacle to behold but it’s lacking in the knock your socks off draw-ins. It’s still a rad street fight, however.
Ultra Street Fighter II needs to be the final final challenge
As a Street Fighter fan of a certain age, I can remember the many jokes back in the day about Capcom never learning how to count to three. It wasn’t a lie, though. Capcom couldn’t count to three because they continued to make major revisions to Street Fighter II while other fighting game series were starting and making sequels. More than 30 years later, even after Capcom learned what trés meant in New Generation, Giant Attack and 3rd Strike, we’re still returning to the SFII well and I don’t know if this return trip with the buckets was worth it.
By now, we all know the story of Street Fighter II: A bunch of World Warriors get together and fight the megalomaniacal dictator/drug runner/supernatural enthusiast M. Bison. Someone among the based crew that is Ryu, Chun-Li and Guile got their revenge and faced him at the end of the second World Warrior Tournament until the ever-present Akuma showed up and promptly took Bison out with a well-placed Raging Demon. Except that given the story events of Street Fighter V: Championship Edition, this no longer holds true exactly (see Bison’s resurrection in Street Fighter 6’s DLC). Anyway, at the point of Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers, Bison is dead, on his way to hell with gasoline undergarments on for his various misdeeds. This has always been Street Fighter II’s storyline in its basest form, and nothing notable has changed about it in Ultra.
The controls also are the same old Street Fighter II that’s been played and rehashed to death during the past 35 years. It’s the same shoryuken, hurricane kicks, and hadokens you’re used to, and to Capcom’s credit, that’s the best thing they could have ever done. Don’t fix what isn’t broken and what generations have learned to cut their teeth on. That said, if you can play Super Turbo, you can play this because that’s all this is in terms of how to play Street Fighter II. And to mitigate the potential issues, buying a Pro Controller is a smart idea, but you already knew that if you bought this port because there is no way you’re casually playing a port of a 35-year-old fighting game without knowing you need a decent controller.
Now, the one thing that has changed is the graphics. Graphically, this is more in line with the weird Street Fighter IIHD Remix that featured anime style graphics. It’s kind of gorgeous but also kind of not. It feels a little like a rehash of that port and not too many people were clamoring for it outside of the fact that it was one of the few ports of Super Turbo released in the U.S. Some of the stages look great and benefit from the art style change and some of them just look rather meh. Also, one of the few things that mercifully stayed the same is the soundtrack. SFII has always had an excellent soundtrack and it, too, is untouched from the Super Turbo version.
The new additions to this are what’s going to influence your decision to get this or pass. On the roster side of things are newcomers Evil Ryu and Violent Ken. Why, they aren’t new you say? Exactly. They aren’t new at all if you care about Capcom fighting lore. Evil Ryu is a mainstay evil version of the beloved Ryu who’s been hanging around ever since Capcom USA forgot to ask if he was real or not in the heyday of Street Fighter Alpha 2. Violent Ken is a little deeper but not by much. If you played the weird SNK vs. Capcom Chaos — better known as SNK’s attempt in the Capcom vs. SNK series — you’d recognize this version of Ken. He also kind of made a what-if appearance in Street Fighter Alpha 3 in the arcade story mode. While I get that they’re a novelty and people love these characters for whatever reason, I’m not sure I understand why we needed another version of Street Fighter II to include them. Because for the folks playing along at home, this makes the sixth version of the game to be released as an official port. By the time this was released, Capcom was talking seriously and making a lot of noise about Street Fighter V, so this is unnecessary quite honestly. And throwing in the moribund and extra Way of the Hado mode does not justify the need for a wholly new version of this game.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Street Fighter II. It was instrumental and paved the way for my favorite genre of video games. I’ve played every version of SFII at this point and every spinoff of it, too. But when it comes to these highly unnecessary retreads of the same game that Capcom won’t let loose, I have a problem. As much as I have come to love the franchise in my later years, I can’t stand that Capcom beats the SFII horse to death while ignoring their other viable fighting game franchises such as Rival Schools/Project Justice and Vampire/Darkstalkers. We get it, Street Fighter II is extremely popular. But Capcom has released enough versions of it to last a lifetime and this version is not needed. Capcom really needs to let this be the final challenge for sure.
“Street Fighter perfection.” That’s what they were calling it in advertisements in 1999. Perfection it is. There are a select few Street Fighter games that we can call perfect, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 is at the top of that list. Street Fighter Alpha 3 begins and ends with the concepts of Street Fighter II and choices. Alpha 3 — set between 1987’s Street Fighter and 1991’s Street Fighter II — goes backward in storyline to tell the story of the future. Street Fighter II is what it is: A fighting game with simple mechanics and super moves — as of Super Turbo in 1994. But choices? In a Street Fighter game, no less? Unheard of, until Alpha 3. The mechanics present choices early and frequently. Once you pick your character, you then choose the fighting style from three main choices (four in the Dreamcast version). A‑ISM is straight-up Street Fighter Alpha. It plays just like the previous games in the series and grants access to three bars of multiple super moves. V‑ISM features manual custom combos, first seen in Alpha 2 and removes super moves. X‑ISM is most consistently like Super Street Fighter II Turbo, with access to one bar of super meter and one super move. There are distinct differences and nuances to using each ISM, and advantages and disadvantages in their styles with top characters for each. What works for Alpha 3 the most is the fact that there is so much variety for a single character across all three ISMs. You can make something out of nothing with almost everyone on the roster, even the lower-tier characters. And the roster is something to behold in this game. The arcade version has a nice roster of who’s who in Street Fighter up to this point but getting it home for the console versions adds even more playable characters. Favorites like Evil Ryu, Shin Akuma and Guile join in the fun and make it an even more rounded cast. Basically, if they were in Super Turbo or mentioned in Street Fighter they’re here with a few new additions like Cody, R. Mika and Karin. The roster plays nicely as well. The mechanics are easy to understand, especially if you have previous exposure to Street Fighter in any form. It plays beautifully and handles well in all of its various modes. And a variety of modes there are. While some have to be unlocked — such as Final Battle and Dramatic Battle — the other modes are fun to play and are well-interconnected. One of the best modes available from the outset is World Tour Mode. This is where you should spend most of your time because it’s fantastic. Traveling around the world facing various Street Fighters with specific conditions that utilize the different ISMs is the perfect way to learn how Alpha 3 works. Using World Tour Mode effectively blows the game wide open and is fun to play through with a ton of replay value. Also adding value is the soundtrack, one of Capcom’s masterpieces. The game is set in the mid-to-late 1980s and it sounds appropriate to that era. Beyond the bangers for multiple characters — Sagat, Balrog and Juli/Juni instantly come to mind — even the narration deserves praise. It’s over the top but it fits perfectly. The soundtrack also works well with the graphics. The sprites are big and colorful as are the detailed and stunning stages. It’s one of Capcom’s better-looking games and is a massive improvement from the rest of the Alpha series. It almost looks like it belongs in an entirely different game series. A perfect soundtrack, visuals and gameplay experience is what Street Fighter Alpha 3 brings to the table. As usual, it took Capcom to get it right by the count of three, but right is an understatement. Even after nearly 25 years, this is truly Street Fighter perfection.
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Dreamcast version The Dreamcast version warrants mention because it is significantly different from the PlayStation and Saturn versions. The Dreamcast version is enhanced with the addition of an online mode and later the Japan only Matching Service, which allowed online play as Capcom had with several other fighting game titles such as Vampire Chronicles, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Super Street Fighter II X. The most notable and useful changes are the secret characters Guile, Evil Ryu and Shin Akuma are already unlocked for use and the additional ISMs and ISM-Plus mechanics available to unlock. The PlayStation version was plagued by a bug that prevented some ISM-Plus items unlocking in World Tour Mode. These were made available for the full experience, and the S‑ISM that CPU-controlled Final M. Bison uses was also made available. Finally, the Saikyo Dojo mode is available here. This mode pits a weak character against two strong opponents. It imitates the Saikyo character select mode available in the PlayStation version.
Ports of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Street Fighter Alpha 3, Sony PlayStation, 1999 Street Fighter Zero 3, Sega Saturn, 1999 (Japan only) Street Fighter Alpha 3: Saikyo Dojo, Dreamcast, 1999 Street Fighter Alpha 3: Saikyo-ryu Dojo for Matching Service, Dreamcast, 2000 Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper, Arcade, 2001 Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, Game Boy Advance, 2003 Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, PlayStation Portable, 2006 Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, PlayStation 2, 2006 Street Fighter Alpha 3, PlayStation Classic download, 2011 Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, multiple consoles, 2018
World Warriors collecting mad money in this bundle
Let’s be frank and call Street Fighter Collection what it really is: A money grab of the finest order. Thankfully, it’s a good money grab for the time period it was released in but make no mistake that you’d have to be a hard-up Street Fighter devotee to grasp the inherent value of the contents from Capcom. Street Fighter Collection features three games: Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo, two certified hits then and now and one that could have been left at home in comparison with the others. Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold is a slightly more enhanced port of the custom combo classic, featuring Cammy as a secret character and the perennial second-best evil shotokan Evil Ryu. There isn’t much else different in this port, and Alpha 2 is what it is: a better version of Warrior’s Dreams. Take that for what it’s worth if it’s the deciding factor in purchasing. The other side of the coin are the Super Street Fighter II games. Plain old New Challengers is here, and it’s instantly made irrelevant by including Super Turbo. Super Turbo is everything New Challengers hoped to be with super moves included, so the collection really didn’t need New Challengers. The only possible reason that both revisions were included in the collection is because it was a way to have the most recent Street Fighter II revisions in the latest generation at the time. Super Turbo wasn’t released for home consoles for obvious reasons — no one was spending $70 for another Street Fighter revision when New Challengers had just been released in 1993 for the dominant Super Nintendo. Capcom might have been foolish, but they weren’t trying to push their luck, either. Make no mistake, Super Turbo is the draw here, just by its existence alone. Because this is a collection of already existing games, we’re not touching on the graphics, sights and sounds, because you’re already familiar with Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha 2. None of that changed for these ports and that’s actually a good thing. If you’re going to buy this collection, buy it because it’s arcade perfect for Super and Super Turbo. Sure, you can find other versions of these games these days and in faster, better formats, but this isn’t a bad collection if you remember what exactly they stood for: Accessible Super Street Fighter II revisions and an exercise in Capcom cash grab mechanics.
Don’t call it a comeback: SFV cleans up after launch
I’m going to be intensely personal for a minute: My life by the time of my mid-30s was not fun. It was a time of change, reboots in nearly every area (partner, career, school again), loss and learning from the mistakes of my 20s. I’m good now, but it wasn’t without struggle and pain. And the oldest entry in the fight game can commiserate with me because they know what that time is like. Street Fighter V is sitting at the bar with me, drowning its sorrows because it and the series, too, went through it in its mid-30s and like me is doing much better than one could expect after the struggle. SFV didn’t start out as magical as it has become. The launch was mired in problems and things just weren’t where they should be. The game’s story mode didn’t launch alongside the actual game and the netcode was terrible. But what a difference time makes.
The story, while still not as engrossing as past entries, has improved. It moves the SF world mythos along and makes sense if you know the series’ past. Taking place between Ultra SFIV and SF3: 3rd Strike, Charlie wakes up in a tomb and is guided to steal an item from Guile, which would help him defeat M. Bison. Third Strike boss Gill drives the plot overall, tying up the loose ends between SFII and the endgame of 3rd Strike, which is the known end of the series storyline-wise. I love that Gill is tied into this as it always seemed like he was out of place as the end of SF lore. I never fully understood why he was the boss of that trilogy of games except as something new for Capcom to try because everyone was sick of M. Bison by that point.
While I’m impressed with the story, I’m more impressed with the presentation. Much like its predecessors, SFV looks gorgeous. The backgrounds are beautiful as are most of the character designs. Even the menus look good. Sometimes, when I start the game, I take a second just to marvel at the main menu and how the modes are presented. And let’s talk about the soundtrack for a second. The music is all-around amazing. Every time I get in-game, I discover another track that I feel like I haven’t previously heard, and I fall in love all over again. It’s so good that it’s worth tracking down and adding to your music collection.
While I love the game, there is a big section I don’t care for: the play style. I’m an Alpha purist, specifically SF Alpha 3. That’s my Street Fighter style and has been for years. However, SFV plays kind of stiff — a lot like SFIV — and that’s hard for me to grasp. It’s playable, obviously, but it’s not my style of Street Fighter play. And that’s OK. It really doesn’t detract from the game’s ability to shine or be Street Fighter, but it’s not my personal preference to play. It is a lot of fun to watch being played professionally, though.
Street Fighter V has come a long way as the most current entry in the series. Game elements have gotten a lot of polish, whether it’s fixing the netcode or expanding the roster with old favorites and skins alluding to long-dormant characters. It’s now the flagship game it should have been, and it’s still ruling the fight game roost while everyone waits for the announced Street Fighter 6.
Sometimes, with the struggle comes the rewards and SFV has more than earned its life fight money.
Though I play a lot of fighting game series, I keep coming back to Street Fighter. I don’t know if it’s out of habit or because I’m comfortable with the series’ systems, but I find myself intimately familiar with the Capcom creation. It started with Street Fighter II for SNES, not the arcade. As the series moved along incrementally, so did I and I discovered the upgrade. The home port of Super Street Fighter II for SNES was one of the best and that accolade still stands after nearly 30 years.
Though Capcom still hadn’t learned to count to three and Super Street Fighter II reeks of milking the franchise for all it was worth, it’s technically a good port. This is the best version of the arcade experience before Super Turbo, and the SNES, despite its problems with censorship, is the best version you’re going to get. Super is where you’re introduced to the four new challengers, who add some interesting elements. Each of their fighting styles are already represented in the game with other stalwarts, but they’re fun to play, nevertheless.
The music has hit its peak here, too. It’s the same as the original Street Fighter II and Hyper Fighting, but it’s Street Fighter at peak Street Fighter. That also applies to the controls. It’s the Street Fighter that you know and love but cleaned up just a tad.
My main gripe with the game is the fact that it’s not Street Fighter III, which it would have been if not for the insistence of Capcom not counting ahead. Capcom knew it had a winner on its hands but repeatedly milked the franchise until there was nothing else to wring from it. Super would absolutely have been great if not for the fact that Super Turbo came a year later and there had already been two other incremental iterations of the game previously. That cheapens Super to a degree all around. However, given that Super Turbo did not come home from the arcades for the SNES, Super gets a boost in nostalgic factor.
What you need to take away from SSFII is the refinement of the Street Fighter II experience, and this is where it shines. Everything about Street Fighter II was at peak condition and refined to a tee with this iteration. Yes, this is pre-Turbo super moves and specials but in a way that makes it the last true unspoiled Street Fighter II experience. It was so good that later Street Fighter games attempt to replicate this version with modes that play like Super with no super moves and most, if not all, of its mechanics. That’s how you know it’s a defining moment in a series’ lifespan. It’s a super fighting game for a super system that still holds up.
Gone are the days of roaming a local arcade to play the throng of would-be challengers and pretenders to the throne of the best local fighting game champion. In its place are home consoles designed to push the power of the arcade. Fighting game franchises have had to keep up or suffer irrelevancy or, worse yet, extinction. The earliest king of the genre, Street Fighter, has had a challenge of sorts: continue forward or go the way of its ride-a-longs of the ‘90s. Super Street Fighter IV attempts to continue the tradition with mostly success.
Super SFIV, at its core, is a fighting fan’s dream. A robust engine with plenty of options for either the novice or the advanced, SSFIV makes playing a fighting game easy. Even if you haven’t played since the heyday of SFII, there’s a lot of compelling content here to draw you in and get you started in the world of competitive digital fighting. Various modes are here, ready for a deep dive, and there are more than enough new characters and old stalwarts to make fighting interesting. The general rule of thumb is, if the character was in SFII and its derivatives, SFIII or SF Alpha, there’s a good chance they are available for play in SSFIV.
Fight locales associated with many of the characters are available with a great soundtrack accompanying them. SSFIV does an exceptional job of reminding more experienced fighting enthusiasts of the Street Fighter origins and piquing the curiosity of newer fight fans. The controls also hearken to the old days, so much so that it’s easy to pick up and play and learn about the different systems afforded to each character. Most new characters will play like an older character on the roster so it’s easy to learn the nuance of fighting with a newcomer if you’re experienced with previous SF games. If you aren’t experienced, there’s a great tutorial mode that runs through combo and movesets of each character to teach the basics. That varied level of depth goes a long way toward replay value.
My one gripe out of all the loveliness that is the mixed nostalgia fest of SSFIV is that it’s Capcom being Capcom as usual. For the uninitiated, Capcom gained a reputation in the ’90s for having a solid franchise in Street Fighter II but not being able to count to three. The constant upgrading and reissuing of SFII got old quickly. And, quite frankly, Capcom hasn’t learned its lesson because Street Fighter IV should not have multiple retail versions of its upgrades. Arcade Edition should have been an update that could be bought digitally and downloaded to patch the game up to whatever version Capcom wanted consumers to have. Even when the original version was released, the capability was there. This just screams of cash grab and Capcom being ignorant of tiresome tactics wearing on the fan base. The fact that Ultra Street Fighter IV — one more version beyond this one — exists is proof positive of this.
Other than the fiasco of multiple versions, Capcom has a solid winner on its hands with the fourth entry in the long-running series even as it fades into the background in favor of SFV. If SFV is not your cup of tea, but you want to stay current with the world of Street Fighter, SFIV is a good balance and at the right price now to delve into the world of Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li.