This Week In Retro: Street Fighter III (Patreon)

February 1997: Talkin’ ‘bout New Generation

by Diamond Feit

When can inevitability and evitability co-exist? When can something be a sure-thing yet also remain completely up in the air? Ask Capcom: In 1991 Street Fighter II, a sequel to a modestly successful 1987 arcade game, connected with such force that it became a pop culture phenomenon. Street Fighter II cabinets circled the globe, occupying just about any space of commercial real estate available. The game made such a splash that the entire notion of what we consider a "fighting game" was modeled on Street Fighter II, as Capcom and any other willing publisher rushed to bring more 1-on-1 fisticuffs to arcades.

Part of Capcom's efforts to answer the overwhelming demand for more fighting games included updating Street Fighter II, slowly adding new techniques and even new characters to the original 1991 version. Yet the company did not turn into an exclusive Street Fighter factory; Capcom instead experimented with the nascent genre, producing fighting games starring superheroes, monsters, giant mechs, and more.

As the years passed and the genre only grew larger and more crowded, everyone had the same question on their minds: When will Capcom “count to three” and make a new Street Fighter sequel? The Osaka institution clearly maintained a flair for fighting games, as so many of the best titles from this era came from Capcom’s brain trust, but the company seemed unwilling to take the next step. Instead, Capcom gave fans iteration after iteration on Street Fighter II, beginning with the prequel Street Fighter Alpha, followed by a Street Fighter based on the 1994 live-action film, and even the first 3D version, Street Fighter EX.

As a fan, I was left wondering what could be taking so long; in the time it took Street Fighter to go from II to III, competing series Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, and numerous SNK properties all hit the arcades and had sequels of their own. I had no real right to complain, since the explosion of the genre gave me more choices to play than I could keep up with, but at a certain point the absence of Street Fighter III turned comical. This wasn't a vaporware situation, as Capcom never formally announced any plans for a sequel to Street Fighter II, but the magnitude of its success convinced the gaming world that surely we had not seen the last of Ryu, Ken, and all the World Warriors.

In February 1997, the wait was over: Six years after planting a flag upon the fighting game genre, Capcom released an actual, legitimate, numbered sequel to Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III represented a huge step forward from all previous Capcom titles, running on the new CPS-3 arcade board with levels of animation never before seen in a fighting game. Individual character sprites contain hundreds, even thousands of frames of hand-drawn artwork. While the game unequivocally resembles Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III looks magnitudes smoother and more advanced. If you showed the game in motion to an unaware party today and said "this is coming out next year," I think they would believe you.

Ryu and Ken, the two most famous best friend/rival karate experts on the planet, don their instantly recognizable gi and enter the fray in Street Fighter III. However, these two are the only characters making their return, with the rest of the "New Generation" cast made up of first-time fighters. The ostensible protagonist, at least according to the intro animation, is Alex, a blond, shirtless grappler from New York City. Other combatants include a traditional Japanese ninja, an upper-class British boxer, an African tribeswoman, and identical twin brothers from Hong Kong. Counting the twins as one (they are identical) gives Street Fighter III an initial roster of only 10 characters, definitely on the small side for a 1997 release.

Following in the footsteps of the Street Fighter Alpha series, every character in Street Fighter III has multiple super moves available, now called "super arts," capable of dealing big damage in a hurry. The catch is that only one super art is available per match, decided by players at the character select screen. This would become standard for all future Street Fighter games, adding an extra layer of strategy to every face-off, since your opponent can see which super art was chosen.

By far the biggest change in Street Fighter III is a new defensive mechanic that I’d wager no one thought would have the impact it did. From the very first Street Fighter game, players could push the joystick away from an incoming attack to block, reducing damage and providing an opportunity to react with a strike of their own. In Street Fighter III, pushing the joystick towards an attack at just the right moment completely nullifies the blow and opens a window for an immediate counter. It’s by no means an easy feat to perform or capitalize upon, but with practice this “parry” maneuver completely changes the flow of the game, giving defenders an advantage they never had before.

To quickly recap the tale of the tape: After years of development, Capcom released a highly-anticipated sequel to one of the biggest video games in the medium’s history, a technical marvel many times more advanced than its predecessor or its peers, and introduced innovations that would impact the series for decades to come. Surely this achievement was received with open arms from fans, critics, and arcade operators alike, heralding a new golden age of video games about punching another person in the face!

Alas, that was not the case. For starters, 3D graphics were seen not as the future but as the present in 1997, with 2D pixel art viewed as old-fashioned at best. For all its gorgeous animation, Street Fighter III appeared behind the times to a frustratingly large number of people upon its release.

The character lineup also took many people aback. The cast of Street Fighter II had already become iconic, having leapt from the arcades to comic books, television, motion pictures, and even toy shelves. Ditching that legacy would be a tough sell under any circumstances, but the pushback was exceptionally strong given Street Fighter III’s unusual launch roster.

Complaints about the new faces of Street Fighter III ran the gamut from “too generic” to “too weird.” Alex underwhelmed as a protagonist, lacking the hirsute charms of Zangief. Sean, with his karate gi, looked too much like Ryu and Ken. Even though green-skinned Blanka in Street Fighter II had plenty of fans, people seemed far less willing to accept either pasty-white Necro or the one-armed supercentenarian hermit Oro.

Grumbling about graphics and lamenting missing heroes did Street Fighter III no favors, but the most damning perceived fault of the game was its high barrier to entry. Street Fighter II reached a plateau of fame few games ever reach, but as time wore on the players who stuck with it acquired a level of skill that made it nigh-impossible for beginners to compete. From day one, Street Fighter III seemed to demand a level of execution that made it more challenging to comprehend. The parry system in particular proved to be crucial to winning fights, yet it required such precision and carried such weight it sent many players walking away from the game altogether.

All this bad news amounted to deeply disappointing sales of Street Fighter III machines and far fewer fans coming back to give it a chance. This was not the reception Capcom had anticipated, having spent billions of yen to follow-up on the Street Fighter II sensation. To put this flop into perspective, try to imagine a reality where Avengers: Endgame opened in sixth place at the box office. No one would have been surprised if 1997, the tenth anniversary of the original Street Fighter, became the last year anyone cared about hearing those two nouns said together.

To Capcom’s credit, the company never threw in the towel. Instead, just like Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III saw arcade updates and expansions twice over, adding more characters (including a few familiar faces) and adjusting move sets. Surprisingly, the company doubled-down on the technical aspects of the game, leaning into the image that Street Fighter III was for hardcore fans.

1999’s much-improved Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike barely resembles the vanilla 1997 edition, but the revamp did little to move the needle of popular opinion. As a result, Capcom put the once-ubiquitous franchise on ice for almost a decade, and the 2D fighting game genre as a whole fell into a dark age with very few commercial successes in the early 2000s. This left fans like me wandering in the desert, desperately snatching up the last few Neo Geo releases and whatever ports happened to make their way to the already-defunct Sega Dreamcast.

Even though Street Fighter III eventually found a fanbase, its commercial and popularity struggles tainted its legacy. Absolutely none of the New Generation characters were included in the launch rosters of Street Fighter IV or V, with only a handful of them showing up as late-season add-ons. Contrast that with every single original Street Fighter II character appearing in both Street Fighter IV & V, most of whom showed up on day one. It's as if every new Street Fighter game is positioned as a sequel to II, with III tucked away in Capcom's back pocket, only to see the light of day once the company feels comfortable taking a chance.

I know I did not embrace Street Fighter III as I had II (or Alpha, or even EX) but I grew fond of 3rd Strike when I imported a copy for my Dreamcast in the summer of 2000. Parrying never got any easier, half the characters still strike me as inscrutable, but the animation nerd in me couldn't resist all that eye candy. Sadly, it is unlikely we'll ever see another game company gamble on creating that much original artwork ever again. Today, even the "2D" fighting games are made in 3D, and only a few invest in the extra effort to keep up the appearance of hand-drawn animation.

At the very least, technological advancements and digital re-releases have granted more players access to Street Fighter III than ever before, and its reputation today is much improved. It may lack three-dimensional graphics, but its exquisite sprite-work has aged far better than any pre-millenium polygons. You don't have to love Street Fighter III, but I think you have to respect it.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.