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Street Fighter Alpha 3 Review - GBA

To most of you the Street Fighter series needs no introduction. But many of the new breed of gamers might not played or fully understand the history behind the series. Street Fighter started way back in 1988 when the very first arcade game was released. It had pressure sensitive buttons. Instead of having six lined up, one row for punch and one row for kick, with light, medium and heavy variants, you had two, and depending on how hard you pressed the button determined the strength of the attack. The system didn't work very well, but it established some very well known characters and made way for the most revolutionary fighter ever to be developed. That game is Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior.

Released in 1992, it revolutionized the fighting genre in many ways, Street Fighter established responsive and balanced characters, gave them a repertoire of stylish characteristic moves that were not only instantly recognisable and also required skill and co-ordination to pull off. Buttons bashers were quickly overwhelmed by those who learned to use the joystick and buttons in unison, and gave rise to a new level of skill needed to be successful in gaming. In true Capcom style a somewhat questionable semi-sequel was released in the guise of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper. This is the game that has been ported to the lovable handheld by the old and now dead Crawfish team (R.I.P.)

Gameplay

When it comes to fighting games, you either have it or you don't. Street Fighter has always had it in abundance. Some has been lost in the translation to the handheld, but that was to be expected, and it could have been done a little better.

There are a few key issues with the game play itself; the most noticeable is the strange lag that seems to beset the characters. Rather than executing the move straight away, the game draws every single frame of animation, drawing out the attack and lagging it up. A frame skip option could have added to clear this little nuisance up, but sadly it wasn't implemented, which sadly gives the incredible animation a double edge.

There also seems to be some problems with the timing of certain moves, which could just stem from the animation, but it still puts a dampener on things. The only other problem with the game play is the controls. The d-pad is just too damn small. It plays better on the original GBA rather than the SP, due to the loosed and more maneuverable d-pad, but it also makes it harder to see and respond to your opponents attacks. The controls have been mapped to the Game Boy's buttons really well, but the problem remains that there simply aren't enough buttons on the handheld to do a perfet port. Why Nintendo didn't just put the full six buttons from the SNES onto the handheld to begin with is beyond me. It would have made the innumerable SNES ports as well as Street Fighter itself ... (continued next page)