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What happened - Streetfighter 3

RAIDEN1

Member
A great video looking at the troubled development of Streetfighter 3, after the blockbuster success of the previous entries in the Streetfighter series...(and still to this day the 360/PS3 versions have not been ported to PS4/Xbox One..)

 

anthony2690

Banned
I'll give it a watch I guess, I remember seeing this game on the dreamcast, apparently shifted under 100k units back in the day, and I remember just randomly seeing it in another world (now forbidden planet) in the UK and grabbing it, non of my friends even knew it existed (nor did I, till I saw it in store) was great fun fighting my brothers/friends on it back in the day.
 
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The arcade industry collapsed.
No, that's not the real reason SF3 bombed. Truth is, CPS3 was ridiculously expensive for arcade operators, New Generation was almost completely broken with bad balance, the roster was completely new outside of Ryu and Ken (who were only added when location tests proved unpopular), the Alpha series and VS. games were genuinely more appealing, and 3D fighters had eaten up a ton of Street Fighter's appeal among genre fans.

Arcades did not even fully "collapse" by the late '90s; they were in decline yes, moreso in the West than Japan, but they were still generally healthy. It wasn't until post-2001 or so I'd say before a notably sharp fall truly happened for the industry in the West, while it was a softer, more drawn-out decline in places like Japan. But that's in no way a major factor for why the SFIII series did poorly in arcades at the time.

I even believe Capcom rushed 3rd Strike out and cut updates for that a bit short simply to drop CPS3 for good and focus everything on Sega's NAOMI arcade hardware instead. Which was definitely for the best, but it also meant there are parts of 3S unfinished you can somewhat spot to this day. Pretty good game, tho.
 
The best SF game of all time. Well at least SF3 3rd Strike is.
Hmm, is it? Like I have a hard time choosing between even 3S and 2I for different reasons, 3S might be more competitive-friendly and the FGC side obviously prefer it, but I think 2I is better balanced with some core mechanics and the OST is better, let alone the backgrounds.

I know SFV gets a lot of flack and most deservedly so, but the game has a great roster, better balance than 3S and animations at least as good as that game. Plus, a smorgasbord of sexy females 😉
 
But going back to it, it wasn't JUST 3d games, Arcades as a whole were on the way out. I used to go to two arcades near where I lived, and remember playing SFIII: NG when it came out. I was blown away, but the other thing I remember, was while Tekken WAS popular, so was the PS1 + N54.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I mainly dislike not all elements have the same quality art/animation (Elena hands ug). Mark of the Wolves looks so much more consistent and is an equally technical gem of a game, but I actually prefer how the Alpha games look anyway, even though they didn't push animation to that high level.
 
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Beechos

Member
Easy capcom milked street fighter 2 for too long with sf 2 champioship edition, sf 2 turbo, super sf2, etc.

Street fighter 2 released on feb 1991
Street fighter 3 released on feb 1997

6 friggin years for a sequel even by todays dragged out development times thats long. Mortal kombat and other fighters were released in between with fresh characters and concepts and people moved on. Kinda similiar to what happened to borderlands recently by the time borderlands 3 came out nobody cared. I hope the next bioshock doesnt suffer from the same fate.
 
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Kokoloko85

Member
I think Alpha 2-3 was treated better because of the cast and look for the time.
Plus between 1995-2000 was Capcoms golden age, they had so many fighting games from the marvel/crossovers, Dark Stalkers, Rival Schools, Power Stone etc. It maybe took some of lime light out of Street Fighter 3 which was awesome in my books
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Street Fighter III New Generation, SF3 2nd Impact, SF3 3rd Strike and Alpha 3 are all available in the "Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection" on PS4 (and so PS5 via BC), XBOXone, PC and Switch.

Just sayin'......
That collection leaves a lot to be desired, especially on the Alpha side of things..
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Out of all the street fighter games which one is the most "user-friendly" ? One that allows you to pull off the dragon punches, and hadokens with ease?
 

Mess

Member
Out of all the street fighter games which one is the most "user-friendly" ? One that allows you to pull off the dragon punches, and hadokens with ease?

SF4 and SF5 both have lenient inputs. SF4 baseline execution requirement is a bit higher and some characters are gated by 1-frame link bnbs. Overall SF5 is a great start for a newcomer.
 

Yoboman

Member
From an arcade perspective, I remember nobody would play Street Fighter 3 cause nobody knew the characters at the arcades. That and everybody was playing Marvel vs Capcom which was just huge in the arcade

Capcom really flooded the market at the time with fighters as well. There was Street Fighter 2, 3, Alpha, Ex and Marvel vs Capcom flooding arcades at the same time. So they really put themselves in a spot where it was oversaturated. And people would gravitate to the game with the most characters they liked

That and they released it as a Dreamcast exclusive for 4 years. It didn't get to other platforms until around 2004. At which point you could just play it on MAME which alot of people did

That all said, 3rd strike is my jam and Dudley is my favourite Street Fighter character
 

smbu2000

Member
The cast of characters was a real turn off for me and I never could get into the game.
When Super SF2 came out I wasn’t that into the new characters, but there were plenty of old characters to use too. SF3 had none of that.
I ended up continuing to play Alpha series and other Capcom series like the Darkstalker series and VS series instead.

I still don’t care for SF3.
 

Fuz

Banned
No one played it because of an entirely new cast.
At the time, my arcade was mostly fighting games fans. Everybody hated SF3's shitty cast. Not only was mostly new, but they also mostly sucked too.
We all already switched to KoF and nobody cared for SF3.
 
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DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
@18:00

Similar to what I said earlier this year.
The cast deviated greatly from Street Fighter 2 and other Capcom fighters featuring Street Fighter characters, such as Alpha and X-Men vs Street Fighter. This was also during the time when arcade scene was on a downward spiral. EVO really brought life back into to the franchise as many people saw what these new characters were actually capable of.

Here's a clip from 2002.

You can hear the crowd going crazy over a Urien combo.


I remember going to the arcade and finding the Street Fighter 3 cabinet empty. Shortly after the footage was released, the Street Fighter 3 cabinets were packed. It really felt like the early Street Fighter 2 days.
 
I mainly dislike not all elements have the same quality art/animation (Elena hands ug). Mark of the Wolves looks so much more consistent and is an equally technical gem of a game, but I actually prefer how the Alpha games look anyway, even though they didn't push animation to that high level.


MOTW gets overlooked a LOT in these talks, but I think it deserves attention as well. I preferred its Just Defend system over SF3's parries, not just because it was more forgiving but because it also felt more natural to do. That and, IIRC anyway, you either couldn't do them in the air in MOTW or if you did, they'd push you back forcing some type of reset back to neutral.

Art/animation-wise it's amazing, too, and it has a great roster and arguably did more with its returning lead and some of its new characters than SF3 did. I mean they managed to make Terry look and feel like Terry while still making him fresh and giving him a makeover. Rock being Geese's son and being of age enough to compete was big story-wise for the franchise moving things forward in the timeline, something SF is still afraid to really commit to.

For 2D background art tho I think it's between SF3: 2I, RB FF Special and Orochi-saga KOF games for best in the genre. So much craftsmanship in that background artwork.

Most overrated FG of all time.

I do think 3S is kind of overrated, too. By how much I can't say, but it's like there are people who will always complain about balance in SFV acting like 3S doesn't have a broken tier list. Maybe it's because most of those people only played with top-tier anyway. Characters like Remy don't even have a real cross-up (and the only he sort of has is either a jump attack with a 1% chance of working, or timed meaty booms to someone in the corner and even that isn't reliable).

It gets a lot of hype from EVO Moment #37 but that's not even the most cool stuff I've seen from competitive 3S TBH. I can respect it, though. Sometimes it feels like the endless praise 3S gets does a disservice to other great fighters from the era including some that do some things better than 3S, and there are quite a few of them. All that said tho, even with its issues I still love the game and it's probably the one fighter I'm most acclimated with skill-wise, tho I've been wanting to learn other fighters more seriously too.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I love third strike but its cast and balance is actually rather terrible.

In SF2 I used everyone, they were all memorable from Dhalsim's stretch limbs to Zangief wrestling shit and ofcourse Blanka. And they were all useful. Alpha 2, same story. Awesome characters like Gen, Guy, Sodom, Adon etc who ran away from Final Fight and SF1. Most characters in this game were good, though I hated CC.

In 3S you have this weird Necro dude I never really enjoyed, Sean which was a bad shoto clone in his 3S appearance, Remy I really tried but its just too much work to be good with him compared to Guile and Nash. Twelve was just weird. I also tried Alex a lot but it just felt like too much work when fighting good Chun Li's, Kens etc. There are some awesome chars like Makoto though, but this game is just full of unconventional characters that aren't as effective to use. I mainly used Urien, Ryu, Ken, Chun Li. Third strike could've used another upgrade, that would buff Sean, Twelve etc. Sean in SI was actually pretty cool but perhaps a bit too OP.

SF3 mainly nailed the animations and presentation.
 

nush

Gold Member
Out of all the street fighter games which one is the most "user-friendly" ? One that allows you to pull off the dragon punches, and hadokens with ease?
R-C.56b5687c1a44d78d0de910a146b655c3
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
Easy capcom milked street fighter 2 for too long with sf 2 champioship edition, sf 2 turbo, super sf2, etc.

Yes, that's why Alpha 3 was more popular than SF3.

It was entirely on the roster. Had SF3 launched with the full SF2 roster + new characters, it would've been a different story.
 

iQuasarLV

Member
An arcade market saturated with 2D fighters
A revolution in console platforms surpassing arcades in sales
An inexperienced team tasked with making the 1st version of SF3
Insanely long development time for 90s

It took the entire lifetime of Street Fighter 3 releases on home platforms for the game to turn a profit at the very end.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
A great video looking at the troubled development of Streetfighter 3, after the blockbuster success of the previous entries in the Streetfighter series...(and still to this day the 360/PS3 versions have not been ported to PS4/Xbox One..)
Why would the PS360 versions need to be ported to PS4/Xbox One when Street Fighter 3, 2nd Impact and 3rd Strike are in the 30th Anniversary Collection?
 

Pedro Motta

Member
I have an arcade cabinet at my studio, it has 3000 games on it, the only game everyone plays is 3rd strike. Best fighting game ever.
 

nush

Gold Member
It was entirely on the roster. Had SF3 launched with the full SF2 roster + new characters, it would've been a different story.

Agreed, absolute facts from someone who was there at the time.

The first (And ONLY) time I ever saw a SFIII cabinet was in an arcade in Paris. I heard that the game was out, but didn't know much about it. So I rush to it with my handful of Francs, insert coin and... No Chun Li. I main Chun Li, she's IS SF to me and my instant reaction was "Go fuck yourselves Capcom!". Played a few games as Ryu, while the game looked great, it played weird.

I have never to this day seen either of the two SFIII updates in the arcade. I knew Chun Li was added to Third Strike but I didn't ever get to play it even though I wanted to.

Finally comes the Dreamcast release and with the fucking swiftness I emailed my Capcom contact asking for a copy. That duly arrives in a padded envelope a couple of days later. "Ok Capcom, now we good".

Now to compare and contrast this was the experience the first time I saw SF IV in the arcade, it was on the Golden Center in Hong Kong. Home versions not yet out. There was a queue to play it, I've never seen a long queue to play an arcade cabinet for many, many years. A queue made of guys in their 30's I noted. That SFIII cabinet in Paris, I was the only person that played it in the time I was there.
 

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
I love this game(3rd strike) since i saw Daigo's epic parry show. Who tought it's a good idea to get rid of iconic characters like Dhalsim, Honda, Bison, Blanka, Zangief, Guile etc is responsible for it's failure(profit wise). Just look at those sales numbers. 87000 copies?
 

Soltype

Member
Remember reading a GamePro detailing all the new mechanics, characters and graphics, they even mentioned the amount of frames in Ryus fireball.I didn't get to play it until 2nd Impact back in early 98 and was blown away, wasn't until I got the DC version I actually got a hold of parrying. There was no way they were going to sell this game to the masses even with home ports.SF3 is way too organic of a game to sell on a wide level.
 

yurinka

Member
I loved it since the first time I saw it on the arcades, but as mentioned in the video back then arcades, pixel art games and 2D fighter weren't as popular as before. Even if it's a masterpiece, sadly most people didn't care about it back then when released in the arcade or its home version, the Double Impact bundle for Dreamcast (most people didn't care about Dreamcast).

As an example, gaming media at least here in my country gave it mediocre reviews to the Dreamcast version because it was a 2D game, which for them meant to be outdated. They didn't care if it had the best pixel art ever made.
 
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ManaByte

Gold Member
I loved it since the first time I saw it on the arcades, but as mentioned in the video back then arcades, pixel art games and 2D fighter weren't as popular as before.

False, Alpha 3 hit arcades the year after Street Fighter 3 and was immensely popular. The reason? It had the recognizable roster with characters people mained and they didn't need to learn new strange fighters.
 

Vognerful

Member
How big was CvS2 in arcade? Or was it even released there?

In my country, I don't remember ever seeing it there. But I liked a lot because I used to play it religiously on my ps2
 
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