How did Street Fighter Alpha 3 manage to fit on a single Game Boy Advance Cart? | MVG
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- A closer look at how Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the Game Boy Advance fit into a single 64 Megabit GBA Cartridge.
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Additional Music:
► Street Fighter Alpha 3 Arcade Soundtrack : Capcom Sound Team
►Ghouls'n Ghosts Music- Stage Four - Original Composer : Tamayo Kawamoto. C64 Composer: Tim Follin
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#SFA3 #GBA #ImpossiblePort
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If Keith is reading these comments, I just want to thank him for making one of my favorite childhood GBA titles
@PickledKong64 I'd assume Street Fighter Alpha 3...
@PickledKong64 whats a fortnite? i think it sounds familiar but i dont wanna be reminded of it
@PickledKong64 did Keith program Fortnite?
If Keith is reading these comments, I just want to thank him for making one of C0dyGaming's favorite childhood GBA titles
@@Xenofinite a fortnight is 14 days
Games in 2006: We made this fit in a 32mb cartridge.
Games in 2021: This patch is 47gb.
Optimization? Is that a Pokémon?
What, you mean you DON'T love having a complete collection of uncompressed 4K textures forced down your throat even if you don't have a 4K screen?
@@ohnoitschris hahaha it is exactly this
@@ohnoitschris If your console is native 4K and your TV is not then that's all on you there.. not the company's fault..
@@ohnoitschris dude 4k textures have nothing todo with 4k screen resolution lol
You're doing a wonderful job on putting names, faces and stories into the people who made our childhoods happier. Thanks MVG.
Seriously this is important historical work
Trve that! Greetz from Europe!
Crawfish Interactive were downright wizards. Their GBC version of Street Fighter Alpha was absolutely incredible.
It's really something. One of the best handheld fighters of that generation of systems. I'd compare it to a lot of the NGPC's fighters, and that is very high praise.
I don't know about absolutely incredible but it was certainly better than the SF II port.
@@symbiote1982pk it was incredible for the fact that the button input response time was practically flawless. Not even most of the home consoles ports were able to get it as accurate as it was on the gbc. Plus the game had all the characters including Dan, m bison and akuma, all the stages and all the music on an 8 bit handheld and it played extremely well for a 2 button handheld, I would say that yeah it is an incredible port for the hardware it was on
Yeah I had this and SFA1 by Crawfish. They did some great work.
THANKS Crawfish for Street Fighter Alpha on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance and Angel Studio for Resident Evil 2 for the Nintendo 64.
Absolutely amazingly (enhanced) ports of great games for systems that some initially assumed were incapable of handling these types of games.
Capcom screwed them hard for no reason, took their work, profited from it and put them out of business.
I'm fairly sure all these deadlines were stipulated in the contracts signed by both parties.
@@JohnSmith-XYZ What you did there is called a "Straw man". You run on the false assumption (the strawman) that "if not capitalism, then communism", and then attack this strawman, claiming victory over the original (unrelated) comment. It's lazy, and only serves to defeat yourself and any not wise enough to spot the fallacy.
It's greed, not capitalism.
@Itanno imagine coming to a UA-cam video about a video game port to shill your politics. That's dope man
X-Men: Mutant Academy was another fighter they made for the GBC that was pretty good. In fact, I heard that game was the base to make the SFA1 port.
I always feel bad for the small studios that ended up closing. is not fair.
true .. I would add to this .... its not FAKING fair!
RIP WHOOPEECAMP
@@ArkanceloAutore French company Focus Home Interactive did this to Frogware of Ukraine.
There is no fair in business unfortunately, welcome to the real world.
That's how I feel about a lot of businesses closing due to the pandemic
The impossible ports are always the most interesting
I have one
I like these "impossible port" episodes.
I do too, I love diving into how things work
Agreed, the only problem I have with them is that I'd like to watch like a 30 minute deep dive into each case rather than a 10 minute surface scratch.
Needs its own series
I always loved looking into ports and how they were made for a particular system. Especially when a port goes to a platform that it never had no business being on. I have a huge nostalgia for the SNES port of Doom and It doesn't get enough love it's a perfectly playable port and there are far worse ports of Doom for sure
Oh man, the amount of hours in school i've looked down at my game boy advance playing SFAlpha 3, while completely ignoring the class.
you meam you were looking at your Game Boy Advance playing the Sekiro cartridge that travelled through time?
Keith Burkhill if you're reading this... I still remember the first time I fired up this port & was amazed by how accurately it was made. I did notice a few differences but considering the device it ran on made it more amazing and understandable at the same time. I'm glad you got the deserved recognition for your work :)
Thank you!
Only to me it sounds like Capcom requested the three more characters to cause the delay on purpose so they hadn't to pay royalties?
Capcom will have their cake and eat it too
It is certainly possible...
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 Yeah, but it kinda sounds like Capcom screwed them over.
That's been a popular rumour for a long time. Capcom were not in a good way in the 2000s, that's for sure, and I wouldn't put it past them being dirty bastards like that.
@@THENAMEISQUICKMAN and considering your User name you are not necessarily an enemy of Capcom...
Neither am I but I have to agree: business moves like that are just terrible!
If the devs make happen what you couldn't do yourself, at least pay them their goddamn money!
The most intelligent people are always the most humble. Not surprised Keith didn't want to comment. I'd still be bitter too.
Him being bitter about it has little or nothing to do with not being comfortable talking about it. That's really obvious to anyone with more than half a brain cell. You've managed to both be wrong on all points and also show that you're really fucking dumb. Well done, so weird.
@@toby2581 I wouldn't say he's needlessly unpleasant, the original comment is in fact pretty dumb.
Personally I'd hate for people to assume I'm bitter for simply declining to comment on something. We don't have all the information.
I would beg to differ. The most arrogant people are usually among the smartest of their peers.
@@echodff From MVG's last quote about the project represents some of the "worst" I'd say he's not over it.
"Punching above their weight"
Stop skeletons from fighting: "hey! I'm watching you!"
It never occurred to me how impressive this port was at the time. Thank you, Keith, for achieving something I took for granted as a kid. The game was fabulous.
His name is mvg to you. Gtfo calling him by his government you don't know this man
That was really heartless from Capcom to thanks this company that made this amazing port like this, really heartless from them.... thanks MVG for another great video ! would have love to see you go more in-depth of the superb technical tricks used into this port :)
Crawfish lost them their big Christmas handheld game that year, and keep in mind this was supposed to be a LAUNCH game. It's not hard to see why Capcom were harsh with the penalty.
There's no feelings in business.
Ehh, Crawfish delayed this game so much it was known as the longest developed GBA title for a bit. It might still have that distinction. I remember it being kind of a joke on forums as everyone assumed it was vaporware. Every few months the update from Capcom was just "Uh it's uh coming soon... oh wait a few more months... ok uh just a few more months. Just keep waiting." IIRC it was pretty much delayed like the month it was supposed to ship too. I think the rumor is because Crawfish kept delaying the game that Capcom finally said "OK, keep delaying it but then you have to do something special for us - add these three characters in to make it up to the fans who have been waiting so long for this game."
Originally supposed to come out months after the GBA launch it took over a year and a half before it finally was released. Capcom obviously had contracts in place, so what is Capcom supposed to do when they have their own employees/debts they need to pay and revenue is being held up by Crawfish. MVG really glossed over how troubled this development was and how it was not Capcom's fault for coming down hard on them.
Just learning about the hoops programmers and designers had to jump through to overcome the limitations of the hardware they're presented with is just so interesting and so endearing, I'll never get sick of these videos.
Great job!
MVG, one reason I love these videos of yours is that you dive in to the timeline, talking about Speccy conversions of Space Harrier & Ghosts'n'Goblins would be missed by most but here you give proper credit to past work - and the reason so many UK devs ended up being able to get incredible results from later hardware is precisely because they cut their teeth on the limited 8bit micros.
I had no idea this was on GBA. I gotta get my hands on it.
It basically lives in my GBA. Get it, you will not be disappointed.
It's quite impressive, given the limitations of the system. I'd check out Grand Theft Auto Advance as well, if you're into GBA games.
@@Channel9001 Already ahead of you 😎
This was my first GBA game along with Final Fight One and Gekido Advance: Kintaro's Revenge
A fantastic first game!
What a great way to start on your handheld. I purposely purchased two copies of Final Fight One and Double Dragon Advance to ensure that I would be able to play multiplayer in the future.
classics
Gekido Advance: Kintaro's Revenge waiting for Baldo?
Ah, Gekido...hearing that guitar fight theme still gets me started to this day lol
When I was in college I had my GBA and this game, I would play this game inbetween classes sometimes for an hour+ learning each character and all their supers etc. I'm still impressed they fit so much into that tiny cart.
Seems like the GBA doesn't have enough buttons for a Street Fighter game
This is the same person who brought me 2 of my sweetest SPECCY memories and GBA SFA3 ???
Wow, respect !!!
When I first played the game, I was disappointed by the absence of some backgrounds that were shown in the screenshots on video game magazines before the release, but now I know why they were omitted. Also, even as a kid, during playing the game, I realized that they had drawn main sprites of characters by hand, but a lot of in-between sprites were automatically downscaled from the arcade version, which is a clever way to save developing time.
This a sad story. Such a fantastic work rewarded with the studio's demise.
Capcom always doing something shady
I still can't believe you don't have over a million subscribers yet.
I scrolled up to check and I legit thought he was over 800k by now. 595k is really low for such high quality videos
I remember playing this as a kid and just was completely blown away, it was the reason I got a Gameboy Advance in the first place.
... You got a GBA in 2006??? O_o Someone was fucking doing it wrong lol. Should have just got a GBA compatible DS at that point.
@@Cooe. Why do you assume that was attainable? My family didn’t have much money. Odd comment.
@@zekesalazar7643 It you could afford brand new GBA releases at full price, you could afford a DS.
@@Cooe. this one never grew up 😢 poor guy's stuck at the mental age of asphalt
Thank you kindly for your content, and as someone who worked for Crawfish, it's so wonderful to see this gem of a game, and its studio, acknowledged. I didn't personally work on the game, but I recall that it was a really gruelling project, with all the sprites being painstakingly redrawn to an extremely high standard, which was incredibly labour intensive. The game had some extremely dedicated and hard working artists on the project, in addition to the exceptional engineers.
Shout out to Little Kev where ever you are.
As one of the many Speccy owners who probably received Elite's Space Harrier conversion on Christmas day 1986 ....what Keith achieved on that machine will always be legendary. His "Holy Trinity" of arcade conversions for Elite Software...Space Harrier, Ghosts and Goblins alongside Commando, only elevated his status amongst those of us old enough to remember :)
Elite indeed meant quality games back in the day. Thundercats and The Fall Guy...
I didn't even grow up playing these games. Being a little to young first time around, I got into collecting for the Spectrum much later in life and yet I still play these games. They really are that good.
Loved this vid. I really like the retro, ASM, and homebrew vids. The more technical the better, and this one feels good.
Thanks MVG!
As someone who lusted after this port for so long (never had a copy as a kid, loved the GBA and Alpha 3), who eventually moved on to Alpha 3 Max on PSP, it's amazing to discover how this port came to be in the first place. Mad props.
The editting in this video is superb. I liked the part shows off how the characters were broken into multiple spirtes then had thier own bit for flipping. The background and explaining "mode 0" was great too. Really eye opening stuff.
I appreciate the fiming of your actual physical gba...that was probably awkward to play and get good clarity. I imagine your hands were at an awkward position.
Thanks for making this, SF Alpha 3 is easily my favourite SF and how they managed to get it on the GBA has always intrigued me!
This is really interesting history of under appreciate programing magic
It's really mind blowing someone can optimize and convert one genre who famously hard to make into small size and run properly even still hard to do in modern era
Alpha 3 was my favorite SF game.super happy to see you do a video of this😄
I personally love hearing stories about some of the people involved in making my favorite games.. this includes you mate.. one of coolest channels on YT.
I can only imagine how salty he is. To have put in all that work and to be treated like that.
I love the depth you go into with your vids. This one was great.
“The speed of sensation” great name for a band. Love your work MVG!
I remember seeing, in a VHS tape from GBX magazine, an interview with one of the people who worked on this port!
You're done it again. You made me tear up and happy by seeing SFA2 on SNES, and now once again SFA3 on GBA. Thanks man.
Funny how this was some people's first introduction into fighting games, such as myself being a kiddo
Didn't knew that Keith made the SFZ3 GBA port. As a kid I loved his incredible Space Harrier port for the Speccy, I played it countless hours!
I always look forward to your videos on Monday morning! Great video as usual!
We got this on GBA, we got Street Fighter Alpha 2 on SNES, we got Street Fighter 4 on 3DS. But Street Fighter 5 or 6 on Switch? No... that's out of the question!
Crawfish getting screwed over sounds just like mid-/late 2000s Capcom. I feel REALLY bad for those mad chads.
It is a shame that crawfish didn't receive the due credits for his port.
I always look forward to this type of video. I don’t understand most of the technical aspects, but I sure appreciate the work that went in. I’m a big space harrier fan too, but I’ve only ever played it on the saturn
Thanks to all of Keith's efforts. Great Port!
What a remarkable video!
Thank you!
I love how you respect the developers and always reach them.
Congratulations ♥
As soon as you mentioned Crawfish made this, I was certain I used to own this. Wish I had kept my older games when i was younger.
I still remember being blown away seeing this game on the store shelf and bought it immediately. My favorite GBA game at the time, I ended up playing it far more than my PS1 or PSP copies.
"punching above their weight" paging uncle derek!
Gameboy advance is actually a 32-bit system, just like the original PlayStation. Most people forgot about that or didn't know it.
Man I loved this gam in college. everyone was playing it and I was always stumped how they got it to be soo good
all of these videos i'm imagining duke nukem being like "how do all those clowns fit into that tiny car?"
Those ZX Spectrum games are HUGELY impressive. I've never even played a ZX Spectrum but just knowing the limitations of it and knowing what games typically looked like, those are downright magical. Kinda reminds me of Argonaut doing wireframe 3D graphics on the Gameboy, only more impressive.
Last fall I purchased a mint-in-box copy of the game. So cool to have it in cartridge form.
0:32 - That’s gotta be $300 worth of black ink right there..
prob. more like a greenscreen, lol
@@rioghander2te greenscreen ? sir it's a book
@@FultonRecovery and what about that makes it impossible to be keyed in using a greenscreen?
@@rioghander2te that's fucken paper mister
"They managed to make the GBA play SFA3."
Me: "Wow, that's impressive."
"And they included three additional characters not in previous versions."
Me: "Oh now they're just showing off."
Idea for next video: How they managed to make Alien Breed 3d for Amiga - the impossible programming!
Wow, great video, it brings a whole new level appreciation for a game I bought just because I wanted a portable street fighter game. It was great at the time and this video makes it even better.
If Keith Burkhill and Nick Pelling weren't household names, they certainly are now, thanks to this fabulous video. Cheers.
One of my favourite GBA games and one of the most cherished games of my childhood. Really interesting to learn how something so important to me was made.
To this day, this port is incredible and even back then I was in awe of how amazing this version was given it was on the GBA.
I will always be furious at Capcom, for screwing over Crawfish Interactive with zero remorse despite the fact that they did magic on multiple games for them.
This is the 2nd time (that I’m aware of) that a Capcom game gets compressed and put onto a Nintendo Cartridge and yet still manages to be an Awesome Experience (the 1st one being Resident Evil 2 on the N64).
I can tell from his ZX games that the lead dev had skill. To think SFA3 could fit in a GBA cart, look correct, and play correctly is astonishing. Some ports lack in the worst places, but all things considered, SFA3 was definitely the limit the system could handle.
I still have this master piece in my collection and I remember those hours playing it overnight in summer outside my parent's house with only stars in the deepest sky ever. One of the best and real conversion I've ever seen.
you really should cover Payback on the GBA and ask how a 3d GTA clone where able to fit in there!
When I first got this game I remember how amazed I was at how close it felt to playing the arcade version.
Back when optimizing your code was a requirement. And now it's just... Well, I could complain about this a lot
I recently watched a video by some guy who made a tetris OS, the motherboard's Bios loads the code fine so he was successful.
CoD Warzone has entered the chat
@@GenericPast Warzone is optimized for 5400rpm console hard drives. That means duplicating commonly used assets to reduce seek times. Apart from that, the runtime performance is very good as well.
@@serch3ster File duplication does that. Also quickly available DLC bloats the size considerably. Probably the biggest contributor.
@@lonergothonline cool story bro
I have been enjoying a lot your impossible ports videos, equally interesting and educative.
Thank you so much for your dedication!!
I'm just glad that mistakes weren't made.
Alpha 3 on the gba was FIRE.
Bag of Chips? Ready. Bottle of Coke? Ready. Another MVG Clip? Definitely ready and day made!
As a GBA and GBC modder, I enjoy seeing your lit LCD display mod !
Oh wow, it's Chun Li and Ryu from Fortnite!
😆😆😆😆😆🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
*default dances*
@@dangrel 😆😆😆😆😆😆🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂
More impossible port episodes! Great content. Your content and video ideas are getting so polished and punchy. Great work MVG
This port is much better than what you'd expect. It's not a gimped experience
This was my favorite of your videos yet. I loved the psp port of alpha 3
I played the shit out of this port throughout my childhood - the GBA SP had an excellent d-pad for it. What a shame to hear how poorly the dev team was treated..
The game is amazing not just about how graphics looks like, and also how hitting animations feel like. I really learn a lot from this game and this episode, thanks!
Did capcom did that on purpose? They wanted additional content to make the delay and not pay as they should?
No, the game was already months behind schedule at that point. Capcom requested the additional characters (from Capcom vs SNK 2) as a makeshift apology to fans when the game eventually came out.
Porting a 6 hour RPG I've created to VR, this is one of those videos where I knew I'd enjoy and be inspired every moment from it. Thanks!
How about Midnight Club 3 on PSP
Insane how they got that complete game on there
I forgot about that!
Fun fact, this is a similar approach we are taking with our graphical assets for Konsui Fighter. We have developed our own proprietary image format for our engine that utilizes a compact data structure and PPM-based compression to achieve a slim asset footprint. We have had this as a design goal from day one to minimize our install size and make downloading the game as snappy as possible.
0:07 hey guys this is Derick and welcome to punching weight! 🤣
But seriously though, hearing these stories from a developer is so insightful.
heyimderickitsmederick
This was one of my favorite games back in the days. I never realized the amount of effort to make it fit inside the cardridge. Really cool
Killer Instinct Arcade 1994 on the PSP
not that crazy. the psp was basically a ps2
@@DatOneGuy901 an overclocked ps1
pretty sure that was never officially ported
@@FultonRecovery I second that but I'm glad he brought it to my awareness 😁
This comment....eh
So weird, your Alpha 2 video came up as a recommendation last night, and I rewatched it.
So Capcom helped Crawfish go out of business. I wonder if they hadn't asked for three extra characters if they would've made their target date and survived.
Nope. Multiple delays happened and Capcom essentially requested the three characters from Capcom vs SNK 2 after one of them to go "look, you missed the deadline multiple times now, we need something as an apology to the fans"
@@THENAMEISQUICKMAN Yeah, the truth is closer to this, but mainly because they didn’t realise all the artwork had to be completely redrawn frame by frame, so it became a much bigger project than originally anticipated. The quality of where that time went shows in the extraordinary final result though.
After experiencing the First Hour of Street Fighter V at Launch, I questioned my love of Street Fighter in it's Fundation, I couldn't believe that I love Street Fighter, after that hour of SFV.
I opened my Cupboard to play on my GBAsp which funnily after all these had Street Fighter Alpha 3 inserted so I played Street Fighter Alpha 3 again and thanks to this Game I could remind myself Why I love Street Fighter. Thanks to Keith and All of the Clawfish Staff who worked on this Game. You created the Best Street Fighter Game or Port of All Time.
Keith Burkhill doesn't understand words like "impossible"
Having played the hell out of this game on Dreamcast I can tell you that when I saw this running in person on a GBA I was blown away. Like I was dreaming or something.
Its a fine port in the sense that it plays well enough. I actually own a physical copy because I think its neat they made this. But it bugs me this could have been a much better product if the developers could work with more storage space.
What an excellent video. Really impressed with the research you did here.
The best part of Monday morning.
I seriously don’t know how these devs did it to port SFA3 on the GBA, is an absolute genius for doing this. If they can port SF2 on the original GB. They’ll surely do it on this one too.
MVG Upload = Christmas
SFA 3 is pretty good tho
Man I just wanna say I appreciate your videos.
So CrapCom "shifted the goalposts" on the project at the last minute in order to frustrate the contract and legally punish the developer. That is so abusive. They did not really care about the game lore etc to add the characters, they wanted to have a straw to break the camel's back.
What's especially sad is that these guys didn't rush the product or pencil whip the extras either. They got punished for caring about their work.
Read up more about the development. Crawfish kept delaying the game so Capcom said "Fine, delay the game again. We will give you extra time, but in that case add these three characters in to make it up to the fans who have been waiting 2 years for this game." Crawfish had been delaying and mismanaging the project before the demand for the three extra characters came in. The extra characters were a way for Capcom to appease angry fans who were wondering why the game which was originally a launch title still wasn't available for 1.5 years.
@@1UpBebop Ahh, that sounds a little better, thanks for the info
All three characters are canon to the Street Fighter universe, so I have no idea what you're smoking about the "lore".
@@THENAMEISQUICKMAN I have no idea about the characters or Lore
Keith - Thanks so much - I remember buying this and thinking it was going to be trash and finding out it was one of the best things I brought that year