Street Fighter 3: Double Impact

Suffice to say this was, aesthetically and mechanically, a very well-designed game. Moving away from the Alpha and Vs. series, air blocking has been eliminated, replaced with a much more skill-oriented option, the parry, which requires very good timing and reflexes to pull off. The parry option makes the battles much more uncertain -- in one tournament one player has been known to turn the tide by parrying 14 hits of the opponent's super art move, and then retaliating. The new style of drawing, which is more like U.S. comic books (contrasty, shadowy, distinct lines) than manga (the animation style of the Alpha series), is very nice to look at, and controls were some of the tightest in Street Fighter history. And the game is well balanced -- there's no overpowered character like Wolverine or Ryu in Marvel Super Heroes, or Adon in Alpha 3, which means that skill counts for more than button-mashing or endless air combos. I once lost a game using Ken against a master at Hugo, one of the "alternative" characters, but I also routinely beat Ryu fanatics with Sean (weaker version of Ryu and Ken), so there aren't any novelty characters like Dan or Juni (Alpha 3) here. Every character is equipped with strengths and weaknesses that don't tip the handicap drastically. So even after three years, I still love this short-lived but well-designed series, and its appearance on a home console was long overdue.

You'll have to know how to handle these beautifully animated characters without falling back on excessive "safety" moves and "super" moves as in the Alpha series. And the new characters are fun to play as well, from the one-armed 140-year old Oro to the US brawler Alex (my favorite, he's fast AND very powerful). Ryu and Ken are here again but they're mostly the same old with new animations. Alex is the new focal point of the series, but the storyline also continues to emphasize Ryu as the one with most skill.

Another note to make is that the 2 games on the disc here are actually somewhat different. The first SFIII has ten characters and weaker music, and it has less moves to perform. BUT, it has awesome animated backgrounds! There are actually three different backgrounds for some characters, one for each round of a normal 3-round fight! The newer SFIII variant has superior gameplay and sound (and four more characters) but the backgrounds were toned down--too much--in animation and variety. The two SFIII's together make for an awesome 2D fighting package.

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