Review | Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition

There are a lot of reasons to love classic cars. One of which is that they’re so different then what we know today. They were built and made in a different time, a different culture, with different needs. One of my personal favorites, the 1965 Shelby Cobra was a landmark in its day. Less than a decade before its inception seat belts were becoming standard and predated the invention of the airbag. The shape and styling exude a beauty and sophistication of days gone by.

Which brings us to Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition.

Released in 1999, Third Strike was the third iteration of the Street Fighter 3 arcade game. With it, bringing an old face (Chun-Li) and creating a fan favorite (Makoto) to the series. It never quite gained the traction its precursor but helped sustain a dedicated fan base for this landmark title.

Fast forward over a decade later and Capcom is bringing an arcade perfect version to home consoles with Online Edition to the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. With a slew of graphical settings and even a choice of remixed music, you can play the game with sights and sounds that closely resemble the game’s original form or one that is more complimentary to today’s HDTV systems.

Under the hood you have something that simply wouldn’t pass in today’s gaming society. As seen with the Sentinel nerf in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the upcoming SF IV: AE 2012 update, and King of Fighters XIII adjustment – the vast majority of players prefer a cast of characters that are reasonably close to one another in terms of power. Third Strike has over 11 years of high level play that have set a tier list that will likely not see any heavy volatility with the re-release. Can you win without using Yun, Chun-Li, or Ken? Yes, but you will need to work that much harder for it as this was far from the most balanced game of that era.

Parrying was introduced in Street Fighter 3: New Generation (the first iteration of the SF3 series) as a method to allow skilled players to come back from seemingly impossible situations. By pressing forward or down the moment an attack would hit your character, you would ‘parry’ it and negate it’s damage allowing for a possible counter attack. Mistime it however- and you’ll be looking quite foolish. As well as having a fist or foot hitting you in the face. The best example of this technique can be seen in the “Evo Moment 37” video that’s made its Internet rounds and has been included as a parry trial in Online Edition. To help facilitate this timing intensive feature GGPO was included for its online middleware. To prevent this article getting too in-depth with this technology, it is something that was build with fighting games in mine and because of that, does a remarkable of helping poor connections to be more playable and great connections that much better. It’s a difficult mechanic that takes time, patience, and practice and will deter and frustrate newcomers as it can also be used by those well versed in the game to dominate even further as the comeback mechanic allows them to press the advantage. When you do a well time parry that lets you win the match however, it makes it worth it.

Is the re-release everything I would have liked? Well, not quite. The game doesn’t provide any timing examples or replays for parrying in the parry training. The rhythm game genre has done a fantastic job trying to teach players exactly when to press the button but Online Edition attempts to teach in what could be regarded as an archaic method of brute force trial and error. The training mode is identical to the PS2/Xbox and (I believe) Dreamcast port. While it does add a new playback feature, it doesn’t allow for any input display which may have been helpful for those new to fighting games as Third Strike’s inputs are not nearly as lenient as Street Fighter IV.

If it seems like I’m being unnecessarily harsh on the game it’s only because there isn’t anything I can really say to hurt the game. It’s stood the test of time and is still being played competitively to this day and won’t likely stop any time soon. If you’re a hardcore fighting game fan then the only value of this piece is to reinforce that this is a fitting swan song to a game that helped sustain the fighting game community when the genre had all but dried up. For new players wondering if they should pick it up I can, with mild hesitation, say yes. It is a great and fun game but it is something that you have to put serious time and effort to become good at it. Like a classic car, they simply just don’t build them like they use to.  [9]