Street Fighter Alpha 3 Review

Alpha 3 is the series at its most generous. Over thirty fighters, most of the Final Fight cast smuggled in, home ports that kept adding characters until the roster passed the point of sense, and the ISM system offering three genuinely different games depending on whether you want the Alpha counters, the classic Super meter or the custom combo engine. World Tour mode on the PlayStation is one of the better single player modes any fighting game bothered with, letting you build a character across a map of challenges.

The sprite work is lush and the backgrounds are the best in the sub series. The problem is V-ISM. Custom combos let a skilled player convert a single opening into most of a life bar, and once the community worked out the routes the other two styles became curiosities for everyone playing to win. The arcade endings are throwaway and the story continuity is a mess even by the standards of this franchise.