Street Fighter III: The semi-end of a halcyon era

Before I delve into the inner workings of the long-time-in-coming third installment (numerically) to the Street Fighter franchise, I'd like to preface this by saying that I like Street Fighter III quite a bit. In fact, its third incarnation is one of my favorite fighting games ever, even if it isn't a flawless product. It was the game that should have been the final new title in the series released (in the US, at least), and not the execrable Street Fighter EX 3.

The sub-franchise as a whole has a reputation for being underrated, and honestly, I can see why. For as intricate and intuitive the game is, the learning curve is incredibly steep, much more than any other games in the franchise. Street Fighter III introduced parrying, a technique that required you push forward on the joystick/controller the minute an attack landed on you. It was a worthwhile technique, for it left an open window between you and your opponent for you to freely attack. Finally, the infamous Dragon Punch (and other attacks) could be countered with a precise parry like this, and finally the rampant fireball spammers would find their strategies completely useless.

But mastering it took a ton of effort and studying. To parry many attacks successfully, you had to memorize when an opponent's attack would land exactly so you could leave them open. Not an easy feat for a game that has 20 characters with at least three moves each, along with being good at predicting when your opponent would execute them. The hardcore Street Fighter fanbase adored the innovation the franchise had received, but this feature simultaneously alienated the more casual fighting audience from even approaching the game.

Street Fighter III may have had the most beautiful character sprites ever seen in a fighting game (and probably the most animated you'll ever see), but that came at a tremendous price. Drawing all of those frames of animation by hand requires numerous artists and hard work, and those artists demanded a hefty paycheck for the investment. Think about that and put it together with the aforementioned steep learning curve and you have a bona fide financial failure on your hands.

It took three installments to refine the mechanics and character roster to a supposed perfection. Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact added EX techniques, which were advance versions of a character's regular special move. While these helped give the matches a more brisk pace along with more variety, it also made for more moves to memorize to parry.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is the game that's the most popular among fighting game fans. Its popularity lives on to this day, where the game is still featured in tournaments across the world. It's basically the definition of a timeless game, where its vibrant 2D graphics will always be considered beautiful, and the core game also remains solid for competition. It takes a high level of dedication, but a lot of people didn't want to put the time commitment in to learn every aspect of it (and I don't blame them). The balance between the characters is also suspect; Yun, Chun-Li, and Ken can all be abused because of specific moves, while others like Sean, Ibuki, and Yang sometimes don't stand a chance against intermediate competition.

One of the main purposes of Street Fighter IV was to create a gameplay system that would be not only appealing to fans, but also to older fans as well. Too many people drifted away from SFIII's too complex system, and with IV Capcom aims to make things up. So far, it looks like it's working very well. People who haven't played a Street Fighter game since Street Fighter II and Alpha have welcomed this game with open arms, with its sense of nostalgia and ostensible simplicity being something that puts fun before complication.

While SFIV is considered, in a way, a less hardcore game, it's all for the better in terms of respect for the franchise among the greater populace. But we'll also still have SFIII to come back to whenever we want to go online or head to an arcade to parry ourselves crazy. The two are going to coexist nicely in tournament play.