Capcom has a habit of rehashing old releases, this we know. However, there is a reason behind it, and this tradition started in the era of the arcade. According to one of my old college friends, when Street Fighter II was popular in the arcades, there were black marketers who attempted to cash in on the craze by doing subtle tweaks to the arcade hardware to make it “better” than the originals, such as over-clocking the motherboards to make the game run faster. In order to compete, Capcom had to release new, better versions of Street Fighter II, doing things like adding new characters, new moves, et cetera. This tradition continues even today, and I’m guessing Capcom likes doing it to fight piracy, among other reasons. However, the new release of Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition for Xbox Live Arcade is no ordinary remake, re-release or port. If it’s anything, it’s the right way to do it, adding enough new features to draw in new fans while enhancing old features to convince die-hards to part with their cash once again. This is the sort of remake that truly expands what the original game is all about, and recaptures the magic of the original. Having not played much of Street Fighter III before this release, I was first at a loss as to how to effectively view it, since I was no veteran.
I initially had no idea how this game differed from the other Street Fighter games, but I quickly learned: Street Fighter III is a more complex, yet also more realistic version of Street Fighter II. It’s more complex because there are more combos, more moves and methods to use them, and there’s also the parrying system; it’s a bit more realistic because the fighting is more close and in-your-face and there’s less reliance on projectiles. This version of Street Fighter quickly grew to be my favorite. It’s an effective compromise between the simplicity of Street Fighter II and the precise, extremely technical button-mashing craziness of games such as Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Still, it was hard for me to learn at first, with the single-player Arcade mode’s default difficulty being nonetheless quite punishing. (The final boss of the single-player Arcade mode, Gill, is also a prick. I repeat: Gill is a prick!) This is where another single-player mode comes in quite handy: the new Trials mode. I found that complete newbies to the game should start with the Trials, as they actually teach you how to not only play the game, but play effectively!
Trials does so by setting a bunch of challenges before you, and these challenges teach you how to do everything from parrying to doing the specific combos for each character. They can be difficult for a novice to do, don’t get me wrong, but they are nevertheless important to learn, especially if you want to be competitive in the online world of Street Fighter III. The online mode of this version of Street Fighter III is perhaps the most important feature; this version is called the Online Edition, after all. It is here where this game truly shines. There are multiple ways to play online – Ranked Mode, Player Matches and Tournaments are the match types here. Ranked Mode is a bit limited, as it’s essentially a quickly set up one-on-one match with little fanfare. It’s understandable why Ranked Mode is set up like this, so no one can create a fixed match, but it could’ve done with a few more bells and whistles. However, those bells and whistles are definitely present in the other two modes, which are quite customizable. Standard Player Matches can be adjusted to a specific set of rules (i.e. seconds on the timer, number of rounds, etc.) and can even be customized as to which characters can or cannot be played. Players can even be a spectator of such matches, waiting in line for their turn to shine. Tournaments are set up for 8 players to compete with each other, and it’s a standard elimination tournament.
This feature XBLA review continues on the next page, please click Page 2 below to read more of our final thoughts on Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online.
