Tekken 7. A jump down of roster quality (look at 6 and TTT2) on the initial release date really did it for me. That’s why I refuse to play it. Maybe I will finally when a DE comes out.
As much as I adore SFIII, I still lament the loss of that CPSIII Darkstalkers sequel. Darkstalkers' animations would've looked insane on that hardware.
I said this before but I think Vampire Savior should have been made on the CPS3 hardware. Since the game came out in 1997 and how the game pushed the CPS2 hardware to its limits to the point where they have to remove some characters due to memory limits, Vampire Savior on CPS3 would have been incredible!
Why you gotta open up old wounds like that? I've literally had dreams of a CPSIII Darkstalkers game and was so disappointed when I woke up and realized it wasn't real. I still think about it now and then and get sad haha
I feel bad for a lot of sprite-based games in the later half of the 90s. Being outshined by the appealing new third dimension, _right_ as sprites were hitting their peak. I don't mean to disrespect those early 3d games, and I'm usually not the kind of person to laud which "aged better" or not. I'm just sad about it because I simply love spritework and it would take almost two decades for sprites to make a comeback in the gaming scene. We missed out on what could have been the pinnacle of early spriting until the indie scene brought them back.
@@JosephFlores-yn4yi true, but +R is up there and it's gorgeous and it's just around the timestamp they mentioned (I know +R is from 2012-ish but X and XX are from early 2ks and it's teh same sprites)
@@Alloveck Shane, you gotta lose those 2D glasses. Plenty of early 3D games are as playable and fun as ever. I still enjoy getting a kick of playing Super Smash Bros. on the N64. Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Street Fighter EX and Rival Schools still offer a whole lot to enjoy even compared to today's fighting games. Games don't really age as people say. The truth is, they objectively remain the same as they ever did before. The experience back in 1997 is still the same as it was 25 years later. The game itself did not change a single line of code; as a matter of fact, the one that's changed is you. The change is not your view on the graphics alone, as many 2D and 3D games at the time were quite pixelated with sub-60 FPS, but rather on the artstyle; it's fine if you prefer 2D artstyles over 3D ones (and many who hold your views prefer today's 2D games over today's 3D ones), but at the same time, you have to see this preference as something entirely subjective. In contrast, adding a third dimension adds a new and enormous element of depth to gameplay that 2D can't do so easily. I also wouldn't say that sprite games were entirely overshadowed either; as Matt McMuscles has shown, 2D sprite games like Alpha 3 still saw great success at the time.
What's interesting about the arcade situation is that, as a kid, I never would have been introduced to games like Tekken 3 had it not been for the arcade. I remember playing it in an arcade then rushing to the game store afterwards to buy a PS1 copy.
Yep. The theater I went to as a kid had a small arcade area, and they always had the latest Tekken there. I remember playing Tag before the PS2 came out. Wanted it so bad when it launched. Also got to play 4 in my local mall arcade
Console was how i always played fighting games. In the 90s when i was in the single digit ages, i would be playing MK on Sega Genesis. When i got older in my tween years, it was Tekken 2 on PS1. A little bit later it was MK Deadly Alliance on XBOX. I think i rarely ever played fighting games in an arcade during the peak arcade era. I honestly wish i got that experience (or remembered it).
Same i got introduced to games like soul edge and soul caliber(they both had cabinets in the arcade at the same time) the marvel vs series, dark stalkers,and where i first played tekken 6 before the home console releases arcades have a very special place in my heart
SF3 is just so cool. All of the new things it tried, the music, the graphics, even those "freaks", it was all so good and I think it really set it apart from the rest of the series.
I really got into street fighter 3 during my country’s numerous lockdowns with my girlfriend. We eventually got pretty decent. There’s just something about it, it’s overall charm, it’s oddly fitting hip hop vibe, the incredible sprites and the amazingly tight gameplay. For some reason despite never growing up with it I feel a strange sense of nostalgia for it.
@hitek 9Too I've played all the SF games except the newest M vs C and saying SFIII i's terrible shows you're either a troll or know nothing about fighting games
I'm not gonna lie, I was one of those people who scoffed at SFIII at the arcade when it came out. It was a different era at the arcades and all of my friends, myself included, were preoccupied with the latest trend of 3D games: Tekkens, Dead or Alive, Cruisin' World, etc. It was a crazy time seeing the new technology, as they would roll out something insane every month, and Street Fighter was just old hat. Ironically, these days I use SFIII and Mark of the Wolves as my go-to gold standard for designing pixel art. Those teams were godly.
Absolutely! The 3D hype was insane back then. SFIII NG only had Ryu & Ken returning and as beautiful as the graphics were we still had negative connotations of 2D being last gen/16-bit so it really subverted most people’s expectations at the time. Adding in some familiar faces with the sequels helped and nowadays the “old style” 2D visuals have aged like a fine wine.
Same here - I put maybe like 1$ into New Generation, and like 50c into 2nd Impact and then never touched them again. They were too weird and I hated the new cast. 3rd strike is now my fav fighting game of all time xD
You're not alone, I scoffed at New Generation and even Second Impact when it was in the arcades gathering dust, preferring KOF, Samurai Spirits, Darkstalkers, Soul Edge/Calibur, and the Marvel/Capcom games. My personal favourite games in 2000 were Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Garou: MOTW. During my time playing MOTW, Third Strike kept getting compared to it, and I finally gave it a try to see what it's about. I was never good at 3S, but I learnt to appreciate the deep mechanics and magnificent pixel art. Third Strike is said to be Capcom's magnum opus in fighting games, and I can certainly see why, even if there will always be plenty of debate about that. Alpha or EX were the more accessible SF series, but SF3's intricacies were charming in their own way that I really missed having proper parries in SFV.
With a brand new year, we have a brand new What Happened. Street Fighter III started out as underperformer, but over time, with the additions of Chun-Li (that's always important), seeing what the game can do, and that sweet character art by Artgerm in 2011, now everyone will say... "Why don't they make Street Fighter like this again?"
How about a 4th iteration of SF3? Ultra SF2 may have not gone well, but Capcom had the right idea of taking a previous game giving it a fresh new update. Perhaps they could do the same for SF3.
I am so glad you included the quote at 20:19 . I have never been able to fully articulate why Third Strike is my favorite fighting game, but that just hits the nail on the head. So many fighting games feel like you watch them as much as you play them, but every battle in Third Strike is its own unique beast, and therefore infinitely replayable.
i gotta say, out of all the 2d fighting games Street Fighter 3 is the most visually impressive for me. the incredibly fluid pixel art animation is still top tier
@@princemwamba5230 this is just a me thing, kof 13 is pretty as fuck, the backgrounds are especially pretty with that cell shaded kind of look, but in terms of pixel art 2d fighters i think sf 3 is my favorite. i'd also argue that the vfx (explosions, fireballs, lightning, etc) look better in in sf 3 cause they actually match the art style and don't look pasted on like if they were pngs
@@DDDorsett ArcSys games have not used sprites since AC+R, and those are unquestionably inferior to 3S. All of their high-def games use 3D models that are stylized to imitate sprites.
We need a What Happened for King of Fighters XIII. Explain to people why it played a big part in the downfall of the company and how the graphics were actually achieved.
@@matthewpulama106 yep! all i know about 2001 and 2002 it was done by a South Korean company instead of the main SNK division that done the previous ones.
@@gyytgy3330 13 just wasn't as good as 14. Visuals aside, 14 was better in every way. Gameplay, balance, music, online, etc. 13 also came after the dissapointing 12 and looked similar to and reused tons of assets from that game. I imagine that didn't look good to the consumer.
I have to agree New Generation was kinda lackluster, but to be fair, Alpha 1 was fairly weak too. Fortunately both series lived to see sequels that vastly improved their formulas. Third Strike and Alpha 3 are two of the best fighting games of all time, with Double Impact and Alpha 2 being in the running.
At least Alpha 1 had the benefit of including characters that Capcom fans already knew like Guy from Final Fight. It only introduced 3 brand new characters and 2 of them played like other established characters.
I have to agree. The last iterations of those IPs are the best versions. When I play emulators with my brother ( RIP big brother) on my MAME PC, CRT and arcade sticks Zero/Alpha 3 and Third Strike are our go toos, and Real Bout Fatal Fury 2.
I rememeber when every discovered the game was an RTS basically AFTER it came out. EA lied for years, and even the demo included only the axtion sequences.
Dude, that game is the best!! At least once a month I pull some online matches with a friend and I also beat it on hard every year by the end of the year; has been like that for, like, 4 or 5 years now
@@gabrieleriva651 that half-baked RTS stuff turned me away from the game, it would've been much better it really just was an hack n' slash type of game.
You know, as a kid with little too no internet at the time of SF3... I honestly thought it was a myth. I remember hearing about it in Nintendo Power or GamePro magazines at some point, but never saw it in the wild. I had older cousins tell me I was wrong, and that SF Alpha was actually SF3. Since I didn't even end up getting a playstation, I didn't really follow the news if what games were coming for them, so after a while I genuinely believed them. I just thought oh maybe the article I read was like an early working title, because of COURSE you'd follow up with SF2 with SF3.
I remember being so surprised when I finally saw and played one at my local laundry mat. When I got home I told my older brother about it and he didn't believe me until we went back the following week.
Reminds me of when I found a "Segasonic the Hedgehog" machine, on a ferry to the Isle of Wight. I hardly believed it then. You probably still don't believe me.
Third Strike and Garou we're two of the games that had some of the best sprites and animations. Thanks for this history lesson, I haven't really looked into the history for III.
Street Fighter 3 has always been in this state of mind for me where I don’t hear too much about it compared to the other entries of the franchise, so I’m curious to see what it’s development history would be like .
@@leithaziz2716 yeah, I don’t even think I even saw footage of what SF 3 looked like until a few years later, it was just that much of a topic I didn’t here too much about.
Only the characters are ugly. Another Ryu clone, another ninja (with boobs), another wrestler (with a booty), another under-Bruce Lee, strange mutants and naked GODS, lol. Japanese drugs is not for everyone.
I remember these times. I was shocked at how no one liked such a bad ass and beautifully fluent fighting game such as Street Fighter III. Side by side with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 at an arcade, people were playing UMK 3 more over it.
Makoto's hair is probably my favourite part of SF3's animation. The way it flows and follows on action while being as short as it is, it's a masterwork.
I'll always lament the decline of hand drawn 2D animation, particularly in film, but video games too. I don't even think It's that much higher of a cost, if it even is higher; I think the reason so few do it is that most employees in game studios are no longer talented in animation of that kind, and that all the big popular games are 3D so "we should keep doing 3D too" (same reasoning for films as well). Nobody wants to take the risk.
@@chrispo7610 I don't think either of those are particularly good examples; they're both by smaller indie teams, so of course a hand drawn fully animated game took them longer. I was also unable to find the development costs of either, so I'm not exactly certain if it was that high comparably to a 3D game of similar development scale. Not that I'm saying your wrong, I just don't see the evidence in either at the moment.
@@ImCurrentlyNaked King of Fighters 13 is a good example. Gourgerous sprites... but made the game cost too much when it would cost less with simple 3D characters. They needed a f****** lot of people and time and money to make thsoe sprites, and it didn't pay off... SNK was again almost brankupt.
@@kissadev. You would think Fighting Games would be the perfect piece for media for overly animated pieces without blowing the bank, but I guess not. I would love to see a survey or study where they compare 2D and 3D, the different types (puppet animation or low FPS or "retro graphics" or Pixel Art etc) and budgets and being on schedule, etc to not only see whether one is more expensive then the other, but perhaps whether one is more appropriate than the other for which genre or situation. On a side note, are you certain KOF 13 is totally Hand drawn 2D? The Characters are crazy on model with a lot of details (muscles and such), but that might have been what did them in. But I also watch youtube in potato quality so maybe I just can't tell.
I remember when Street Fighter II came out in 1991, there was a crowd around the arcade units, and you had to wait hours to play. When Street Fighter III came out, you could see at most one person playing. And those were the good days, as most of the time no one inserted a coin into the arcade unit. Everyone else was playing Tekken, Rival Schools, or King of Fighters 97.
At the time I was attending a local community College with a small game room in the student union, and I can recall that much of the time I was there the Soulcalibur and Marvel Vs. Capcom machines had the crowds around them. SF3 not so much.
The animation in SF3 is simply superb, and it is a real shame that 3d became the default art style. I know there's the whole financial logistic of making games like that, and also the all the work that goes in animating games like that, but I'd sure love to see more of hand drawn art in games.
If they were smart, they would go back to hand drawn sprites, kinda the way Guilty Gear has done. Street Fighter 3 is still considered the best SF game to date.
I remember seeing SFIII at my arcade. It was in the middle of the place, in a nice special cabinet. Nobody but myself ever played it. I don't remember which version it was, but I remember liking the hell out of it. It was beautiful, the animation was on point. The sound effects were great, the movement was great. I never understood why nobody was playing it. everybody was over on Tekken. Then one day the machine just vanished. I never saw SFIII again until third strike came out on dreamcast.
It is hard to explain to people who weren't around at the time just how much of a flop SF3 was at launch. SF2 cabinets were everywhere in the 90's, to the point that you almost couldn't avoid them if you tried. SF3 on the other hand, was practically non existent. I only ever saw one SF3 cabinet in the wild (around fall 98 I think) at my local bowling ally, and they got rid of that machine after only a month or so due to literally nobody playing it. People really did despise that game at launch. It was too much change all at once, and with 3D fighters being all the rage at the time SF3 never really had a chance.
IDC what anyone says SF3 was an amazing series that I’m still playing to this very day. It was different but a breath of fresh air. It was funky, cool and a dope hip hop vibe too it. It’s aged well.
Factsss, when I first rent Street fighter 3 double impact from Blockbuster on the Dreamcast immediately I felt in love with the game it came both New Generation and 2nd impact and both was good to me in my opinion u had the Best gameplay and definitely the Best Soundtracks so it was just under appreciated
Oh man, this was a beautiful video. I consider myself extremely lucky that my town's Aladdin's Castle arcade received a copy of "Three" and you couldn't pry me away from that game before running out of quarters. I fell in love with the music, too (or what I could hear of it that wasn't drowned by the surrounding cabinets 😅), thanks to Sean's Jazzy NYC, and Dudley's Leave Alone. And I loved that you included that new fanmade animated intro that's going around, too. Thank you, Matt. 🤜🤛
I remember when SF3, the first one, arrived at an arcade I used to go to with my brother and friends. We were amazed at the animations and played a couple of rounds..but we eventually went to play King of Fighters or the Alpha games. It was mostly abandoned. They retired it after a while. It's a shame we didn't appreciate it more on those days but we enjoy it more nowadays thanks to the SF collection released a few years ago. It's a game that has aged well. Better than any other 3D fighting games.
Me and my homeboy was always hip to Third Strike. I think, because I enjoyed Double Impact, I was sorta always familiar with the look and feel. It was never really jarring even though I grew up on 2 Turbo on the SNES and Alpha 3. I’ll never forget learning how to do Super Arts on the Anniversary Collection. I nearly flunked spending so much time playing Third Strike and then subsequently Street Fighter 4. Ahhhh, how I miss the good ol’ days.
SF III: Third Strike is still hands down my favorite fighting game of all time. For me, nothing really competes with it from an artwork, music and mechanic standpoint. Sometimes I just play it to hear the music and even now I just marvel at how good this game is and appreciate it more now knowing it was ignored for so long and glad it finally got its roses. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 comes in a close 2nd and then MK II for me.
3rd Strike, in my opinion, is probably one of the best fighting games of all time. The visuals, the combat, and the soundtrack all have a unique feel to them.
As a kid the way I played 3rd Strike was on my uncle’s original Xbox, he had the anniversary collection. I’ve always loved how the game was different from sf2, new characters and mechanics. The OST is fire, also always loved the jazz and hip hop aesthetic. This game really was aimed for a new generation 😂 I’m a 97 baby
I distinctly remember walking into my local arcade, probably 3 or 4 days after Street Fighter 3 came out, being excited to play a new SF. To my surprise no one was playing any of the three cabinets (my arcade went all out for SF3) and everyone was still playing SF2. I started playing and after 2 games went back to Street Fighter 2 and my Guile super throws and golden stances
3rd Strike is still awesome to me, and the soundtrack is🎤 🔥 . Even tho it didn't get the credit it deserved back then because of the competition, it aged well. It's good to know alot more people are starting to appreciate it today. 👊🏾🎮💯
I guess the arcade experience is very location dependent. When 3rd strike came out, it was incredibly popular. Always a line, even at 75 cents, which I'd hesitate to pay in today's money for 90 seconds of getting my ass kicked. We had tournaments where people would fly in from all across the country (US) just to play in the tournament. I'm kind of shocked to see this video talking about how it was a flop. I just never viewed it that way.
It really is a shame, it really was the perfect storm of events that not only buried SF III but more or less killed capcom fighting games for years. Its a special kind of pain when you watch it happen in real time as I grew up during that era.
@@TheShuuman I guess depending on who you are, one positive that came out of this is that it gave other devs a chance in the spotlight to prove themselves to the public. Arcsystem Works and SNK mainly. That's partly how I got into Guilty Gear, my favorite fighting game series.
I was one of them, when I saw SF3 in the arcade back then I was kinda stumped that they actually did it considering 3D fighters on consoles had such a grip on gamers at the time and ignored it
Finally you made a What Happened video on Street Fighter 3 especially since you've literally been using the "Yeah that makes Sense" sound effect for years now.
You cant emphasize how “wrong for the moment” SFIII was back then. Not only had “too many versions of SF2” become a joke, an extra 12 frames of animation on a fireball was hard to get people hype about. Even after all these years it still feels slow compared to classic SF or Alpha.
2:29 is pretty much the list of all the games (minus Street Fighters thanks to the Anniversary Collection) that need to be brought to modern platforms.
Not Capcom titles, but since we're talking about bringing cool-ass fighting games to modern platforms: How about some Tekken and SoulCalibur collections sometime, Namco?
I'm so glad somebody else feels the same way about 1 minute 20 seconds in what he says about part 3 is true. This game should have had tremendous height. How did I find out about it? All of us at my job about 20 years ago maybe 22 years ago I don't know for sure, but it was an arcade game at a movie theater. And I kept saying to myself when did this get released? How did I not hear about this? And is this game worth playing with these characters I never heard of?
Same. I remember seeing it for the first time and being like "Huh. When did that happen?" and feeling like it had probably happened a long time ago, I just didn't notice it.
I grew up post arcades, but as someone whose always been online in video game spaces, I'd never seen or heard of SF3 until online edition. The game basically didn't exist outside of the core FGC.
I was in the same situation. It came out of nowhere when I saw SF 3 NG and later editions at the supermarket. At that time I remember seeing Street Fighter EX before this. So I thought this game was a spin off series again especially with the characters I never seen before. It didn’t occur to me SF3 was the sequel.
@@laughingseal2282 Not just because it was expensive. It also had a high failure rate for the optical drive which made it expensive to repair. Sega released the Naomi arcade board around the same time frame that was just a tad bit pricer but was a lot more powerful without many of CPS3's caveats. Sega even did the optical drive better when they released the optical drive add-on in 1999.
Sf3 was a joy to see in motion. It's biggest flaws were it just wasn't widespread like the sf2 family. Also it his a high execution barrier, and it became the shoto-show. Also the joke back then with so many SF spinoffs, already feeling like a seque in existence, was if Capcom can even count to 3?
Happy new year. Quite a nice topic to start the year on. It's refreshing to see the case of a game that while considered a massive failure when it launched, was later reevaluated and embraced as the underappreciated master piece it was. And yeah, I second that Capcom is long past due bringing the Online edition to modern platforms.
SF 3 is the game that we all were waiting for, after long years playing 2 and it’s reissues. I remember when I played 3 for the first time, the amazing graphics the beautiful super arts, but I also remember the heavy feeling that all characters had and how disappointing was the new cast of characters. I also remember how there was only one machine and there wasn’t lines, it was always empty and only I had interesting to put some coins there. Here in Brazil KoF already took over the arcade scene. SF3 was a special game, very flawed but very special. I eventually moved on to The option I had in my house as Alpha 2 and 3. But I always cling to SF3, I try it again on the Ps2 and I really get into it when Capcom put the online edition on the Ps3. Now I think Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike is probably the greatest SF ever and its gameplay is just too good. SF is always on my blood and I have stories with all Street Fighter games, but that is for another time!
I feel like a Wha Happun could also work for Garou due to the financial state of SNK when it was made , heck an entire whu happun could be made about SNK at that time
Street Fighter III: Double Impact blew my fucking mind in the 2000s! The animation, the music (particularly in 3rd Strike), the parry system... everything. SFIII remains my favorite Street Fighter game, and is one of my favorite games, period. I'm glad this was covered!
As a Street Fighter fanatic (and a particularly big fan of the III series), I was waiting so long for this episode and it delivered big time! I knew a lot of the cliffs on how the development cycle went, but it's awesome to know all the little details about who was brought in and why, what specific challenges they faced, what the team was thinking about the game at different junctures, etc. I was one of those fighting game hipsters who was on board the SFIII train from the jump while people hated on it, only to be vindicated later haha. Tends to happen to me a decent amount because, I think because I'm just really open to sweeping change, bucking trends, and like to look a things for what they are rather than what they could/should be. Just today I expressed the same sentiment about Groove On Fight, which was initially blasted by Power Instinct fans for being such a big tonal departure from the other games, only to be revered later on much like SFIII. I was a fan from the first time I saw images of it in a gaming mag, same with SFIII. But I was a fan of SFIII's more deliberate, grounded gameplay, beautiful visuals, and even though a lot of the new cast was kinda wacky, I just welcomed new characters to use. Also, obviously I'm good with it now, but 3D overtaking 2D was one of my saddest times as a gamer haha. The early 3D years were pretty rough, and visually I just really didn't think it held a candle to good quality 2D stuff. It eventually forced some great 2D fighters to move to 3D and look kinda bland by comparison (the EX games, early 3D Mortal Kombats, King of Fighters). Nowadays ArcSys has the formula for mimicking 2D with the highest fidelity, and I still wish we could get a Street Fighter game (or if I want to make myself even sadder thinking about it, a Darkstalkers game) with that level of 2D feel and quality.
My question on this:. If Evo Moment #37 never happened, would people still remember SF3 the way they do now? This may be a rare case where you can pinpoint the exact moment that people's opinion of the game changed for the better.
It probably would have gotten it's due in time. There was somethings happen in 2002 and 2003, when Japan came and dominated the U.S. which made many players relook the game, but it was 2004 with 37 that put it over the top.
Depends on what you mean. If you mean the general mainstream public? Yeah probably. But in local FGC scenes, the Dreamcast was a massive hit, and so SF3 developed quite a sleeper following there.
I didn't play SF3 until 3rd Strike, so as a kid I didn't even know it was a revision lol. I do wish Capcom hadn't overcorrected so hard to 3's reception though. A lot of the time they practically pretend it didn't exist. It's cool that we occasionally get characters like Oro back, but they're usually put aside in favor of SF2 nostalgia bait which doesn't do much for me since 2 was before my time.
street fighter 3 is my favorite precisely because there was almost no returning characters and that is unheard of in modern times, to take a huge profitable success that was sf 2, a game that literally invented the fighting game genre and try to reinvent it. In an era of endless boring trash remakes, rehashes and reboots, i really appreciate the boldness and the risk this game took.
Time and memory is such a funny thing, I remember playing SF III: New Generation at a 7-11 by my school, I would play for hours on end. I totally loved playing Necro, as a fellow lanky dude it was some much fun to see his animations in action. I do hope we get to see both Necro and Effie again in the SF series. 💜
I hate how fighting game fans at the time refused to accept the new challengers in SF 3 because honestly SNK took so many risks with introducing K’ or even Kyo in King of Fighters but people easily accepted it I still respect SF 3 as a fighting game because it was revolutionary at the time and is finally getting respect that it deserves
Been waiting on this video for a long time Matt, and I’m glad you went all in for it. Great way to start off the new year. … so when’s the inevitable Garou video, huh? Groove on Fight? Tekken 4? Seriously, the 90’s and Early 2000’s were a treasure trove for underrated fighters that tried to reinvent themselves, failed, and are now seen as modern classics in their own right.
3rd strike is what got me into street fighter, And what they went with was perfect. But you know, the things he said about game design is something that flies today, and i guess what depends on a game's success.
There is one Urien who, after literally 2 decades later, amazes me with his technical prowess in this game. Two letters you will never forget: RX If you love 3S, please look this player up. He does some jaw-dropping stuff with Urien.
SF3 was okay, but had fantastic animation. Third Strike was great, but I could never get good enough to go against the sharks. Fast forward 20 years, there’s still tournaments for third strike. Some take low tiers(Remy, Q, Necro, etc.) and blow out tournaments. Highly recommend watching expert 3rd strike play.
Having only played 3rd strike, my main take away from this video is that the first two editions of the game had some awesome background stages that got cut in the final iteration.
Anecdotally, I remember back when I first saw the cabinet at an arcade in the late 90s. Seeing the game being simply labelled "Three" made it extremely hard to tell that it was supposed to be a Street Fighter game. Which in turn kept me from playing it for awhile before finally... well... seeing Ken and Ryu in it. Like... I think they were trying to do something unique with the display title, but it just made it confusing.
Third Strike was and still is my fave SF. Nigh perfection. From the parry system to the unique soundtrack, it dominated tournaments in NYC. The beautiful aspect about the arcade era, which isn’t said enough, are the bonds and friendships created from the competitions. That’s something online gameplay cannot quite replicate yet. Cheers to this outstanding post to my favorite game! 💯🙏🏽❤️🥳🆙
It hurts my soul that because of SFIII's initial reception, we're probably going to have the World Warriors shoved down our throat for the rest of eternity. If Dhalsim, Guile, Honda, Claw, Zangeif, Boxer, and fucking Blanka never showed up again, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Street Fighter's hasn't been great with new characters since SFIII; seems like for every Juri you get three or four El Fuerte or goddamn Rufus.
5 had some pretty great newcomers, rashid, menat, G, kage, (i know those last two are more or less new but theyre different ENOUGH), and personally i like the stories of characters like ed and necalli, underutilized? maybe, but i like what they were going for
The ex series after 2 had solid gameplay, but it's not from capcom, besides the license to use the character the game is from Arika, at the time most people would play Ex than III strike because it was flashier and 3d, also you had the PlayStation version
Amazing video per usual! Thank you for forever changing my speech. I can't say "what happENED" without exerting actual effort, and now say "wha happun" to people casually.
This is something that I was always confused about when it came to Street Fighter 3. I was born in 2001, my connection to street fighter was always the second game and the fourth one, occasionally hearing of the alpha series. From what little I heard online people usually disregarded the third game, in fact I remember looking at the EVO moment and thinking "Hey what what Street Fighter game is that"? It was only about a couple of years ago when I heard everyone going YEAH MAN THIS WAS THE SHIT WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.
Yeah dude, I barely knew anything about SF3, all I saw was that Ryu seemed to be replaced Alex, whom I thought was some weird hobo. Now Alex is one of my favorite characters in the series, and I was so excited when he got into 5
Funny, I was born in 2000 but it was the Alpha series I was always unfamiliar with. I grew up with SFII on the SNES (and a Hyper Fighting machine) and 3rd Strike seemed to be pretty common at arcades and I enjoyed it a lot. Alpha I never heard about for some reason.
Most of the SF2 old timers viscerally hated SF3 on launch. SF2 demands a very different skill set. Fireballs and zoning define SF2. SF3 fundamentally doesn't have that because it's trivially easy to parry fireballs. Once both characters are outside of sweep range, no meaningful interaction can occur other than meter building. (Yes, Necro exists, but he just isn't threatening in the way a good Dhalsim is.) NG's Ibuki had a 1 move infinite, requiring a ban in competitive play. 2i's Akuma was sufficiently bonkers that he required a ban in competitive play. Every version had some really bizzarre unintentional mechanics. Perhaps most famously, you can cancel the startup of normal moves with throws, resulting in so called "kara throws."
I really love this video, I like history of games and how they flopped and then got very popular over time! I just subscribed to your channel Matt, I really enjoy your content
I'm glad you brought up the eventual rise of 3rd Strike near the end, as it should be pointed out while living through those years: Even though it was released in 1999, it was heavily overshadowed by some other respectable greats in Tekken Tag Tournament, MvC1 and 2, the upcoming Capcom v SNK (1 and 2), and even remnants of Alpha 3. Only real dedicated areas held the game together in North America (Nebraska, Family Fun Arcade, TOSF, etc) and didn't start to gain traction around 2003. But what really solidified it as a mainstay (outside of Capcom laying dormant for many years) was Evo Moment 37. That was hands down the turning point of the series, but it took almost half a decade to get to that point. Better late than never.
Honestly this seems to go way more in depth than most fgc circle 3rd strike conversations. People usually just kinda go "no one bought it" and barely touch on anything else.
Absolutely love this video series so much, it’s always interesting to learn more about the troubled history of certain games and films👏👏👏 It would be awesome to see you cover Jump Force tho, since that’s a troubled game that doesn’t have that much time left.
I second that notion! It would be so intriguing to hear the reasoning for all the bizarre decisions the creators put into the game. And by bizarre, I mean that in a bad way, and not in a Jojo way.
Happy new year, dude! Love your content, from gameplays to full-on game dissection series like Gone Too Soon and Wha Happun? (the high point of my Saturdays). Cheers from Brazil!
There were a ton of Japanese 2D fighters at the time that looked just like SF3. Couple that with the fact that they scrapped OG characters for new, kind-of-wacky characters, and it’s easy to see why a lot of people assumed that SF was going in a weird new direction that nobody was hyped for. Little did we know we were sleeping on the best fighting game ever made lol.
Need more fighting game What Happeneds? Then check out Street Fighter The Movie The GAME ➤ ua-cam.com/video/3o2ZQTanCRY/v-deo.html
If you haven't do so already, I would like to see an episode about Fear Effect inferno
How about an episode about Demonic? As seen in the movie Grandma’s Boy.
please do wha happun to DOOM 2005 MOVIE pleeaaase
Tekken 7. A jump down of roster quality (look at 6 and TTT2) on the initial release date really did it for me. That’s why I refuse to play it. Maybe I will finally when a DE comes out.
Do PS Vita please
As much as I adore SFIII, I still lament the loss of that CPSIII Darkstalkers sequel. Darkstalkers' animations would've looked insane on that hardware.
We can only hope that they would have dug their heels in a kept the OG Morrigan sprite.
OMG, i never thinked on that. it would be terrific!
I said this before but I think Vampire Savior should have been made on the CPS3 hardware. Since the game came out in 1997 and how the game pushed the CPS2 hardware to its limits to the point where they have to remove some characters due to memory limits, Vampire Savior on CPS3 would have been incredible!
That would have been cool
Why you gotta open up old wounds like that? I've literally had dreams of a CPSIII Darkstalkers game and was so disappointed when I woke up and realized it wasn't real.
I still think about it now and then and get sad haha
I feel bad for a lot of sprite-based games in the later half of the 90s. Being outshined by the appealing new third dimension, _right_ as sprites were hitting their peak. I don't mean to disrespect those early 3d games, and I'm usually not the kind of person to laud which "aged better" or not.
I'm just sad about it because I simply love spritework and it would take almost two decades for sprites to make a comeback in the gaming scene. We missed out on what could have been the pinnacle of early spriting until the indie scene brought them back.
Check out Guilty Gear then
@@StellaEFZ modern GG isnt sprites tho
@@JosephFlores-yn4yi true, but +R is up there and it's gorgeous and it's just around the timestamp they mentioned (I know +R is from 2012-ish but X and XX are from early 2ks and it's teh same sprites)
@@Alloveck Shane, you gotta lose those 2D glasses. Plenty of early 3D games are as playable and fun as ever. I still enjoy getting a kick of playing Super Smash Bros. on the N64. Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Street Fighter EX and Rival Schools still offer a whole lot to enjoy even compared to today's fighting games.
Games don't really age as people say. The truth is, they objectively remain the same as they ever did before. The experience back in 1997 is still the same as it was 25 years later. The game itself did not change a single line of code; as a matter of fact, the one that's changed is you. The change is not your view on the graphics alone, as many 2D and 3D games at the time were quite pixelated with sub-60 FPS, but rather on the artstyle; it's fine if you prefer 2D artstyles over 3D ones (and many who hold your views prefer today's 2D games over today's 3D ones), but at the same time, you have to see this preference as something entirely subjective. In contrast, adding a third dimension adds a new and enormous element of depth to gameplay that 2D can't do so easily.
I also wouldn't say that sprite games were entirely overshadowed either; as Matt McMuscles has shown, 2D sprite games like Alpha 3 still saw great success at the time.
Dark stalkers 3 (vampire savior) is peak sprite work and no 3d version could ever be better.
What's interesting about the arcade situation is that, as a kid, I never would have been introduced to games like Tekken 3 had it not been for the arcade. I remember playing it in an arcade then rushing to the game store afterwards to buy a PS1 copy.
Yep. The theater I went to as a kid had a small arcade area, and they always had the latest Tekken there. I remember playing Tag before the PS2 came out. Wanted it so bad when it launched.
Also got to play 4 in my local mall arcade
Console was how i always played fighting games. In the 90s when i was in the single digit ages, i would be playing MK on Sega Genesis. When i got older in my tween years, it was Tekken 2 on PS1. A little bit later it was MK Deadly Alliance on XBOX. I think i rarely ever played fighting games in an arcade during the peak arcade era. I honestly wish i got that experience (or remembered it).
I love going to arcades but too bad they are dieing.
Same i got introduced to games like soul edge and soul caliber(they both had cabinets in the arcade at the same time) the marvel vs series, dark stalkers,and where i first played tekken 6 before the home console releases arcades have a very special place in my heart
We did something similar, basically trained on the home versions to beat people in the arcades.
SF3 is just so cool. All of the new things it tried, the music, the graphics, even those "freaks", it was all so good and I think it really set it apart from the rest of the series.
I really got into street fighter 3 during my country’s numerous lockdowns with my girlfriend. We eventually got pretty decent. There’s just something about it, it’s overall charm, it’s oddly fitting hip hop vibe, the incredible sprites and the amazingly tight gameplay. For some reason despite never growing up with it I feel a strange sense of nostalgia for it.
@@legalam are you guys playing on fightcade?
@@HarmonyOfTheVoice I'm playing on my arcade1up and it's fuckin great
@@hitek9too255 SF3 has a better cast and much better gameplay than SF2. People just let their nostalgia boner get in the way when looking at the SF2.
@hitek 9Too I've played all the SF games except the newest M vs C and saying SFIII i's terrible shows you're either a troll or know nothing about fighting games
I'm not gonna lie, I was one of those people who scoffed at SFIII at the arcade when it came out. It was a different era at the arcades and all of my friends, myself included, were preoccupied with the latest trend of 3D games: Tekkens, Dead or Alive, Cruisin' World, etc. It was a crazy time seeing the new technology, as they would roll out something insane every month, and Street Fighter was just old hat.
Ironically, these days I use SFIII and Mark of the Wolves as my go-to gold standard for designing pixel art. Those teams were godly.
Absolutely! The 3D hype was insane back then. SFIII NG only had Ryu & Ken returning and as beautiful as the graphics were we still had negative connotations of 2D being last gen/16-bit so it really subverted most people’s expectations at the time.
Adding in some familiar faces with the sequels helped and nowadays the “old style” 2D visuals have aged like a fine wine.
Same here - I put maybe like 1$ into New Generation, and like 50c into 2nd Impact and then never touched them again. They were too weird and I hated the new cast. 3rd strike is now my fav fighting game of all time xD
You're not alone, I scoffed at New Generation and even Second Impact when it was in the arcades gathering dust, preferring KOF, Samurai Spirits, Darkstalkers, Soul Edge/Calibur, and the Marvel/Capcom games. My personal favourite games in 2000 were Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Garou: MOTW. During my time playing MOTW, Third Strike kept getting compared to it, and I finally gave it a try to see what it's about. I was never good at 3S, but I learnt to appreciate the deep mechanics and magnificent pixel art. Third Strike is said to be Capcom's magnum opus in fighting games, and I can certainly see why, even if there will always be plenty of debate about that. Alpha or EX were the more accessible SF series, but SF3's intricacies were charming in their own way that I really missed having proper parries in SFV.
Pretty funny considering those 3d games now look terrible
We all thought it sucked when it came out and boy that machine was vacant. How wrong we were.
With a brand new year, we have a brand new What Happened.
Street Fighter III started out as underperformer, but over time, with the additions of Chun-Li (that's always important), seeing what the game can do, and that sweet character art by Artgerm in 2011, now everyone will say... "Why don't they make Street Fighter like this again?"
Ah ssf3 chun li one of the most op things ever
They should make every one in both styles
How about a 4th iteration of SF3? Ultra SF2 may have not gone well, but Capcom had the right idea of taking a previous game giving it a fresh new update. Perhaps they could do the same for SF3.
@@dogg-paws they’ll more than likely screw it up.
@@dogg-paws Problem is you can't play SFIII as is with good online unless you use Fightcade. Let's maybe take care of that issue first.
I am so glad you included the quote at 20:19 . I have never been able to fully articulate why Third Strike is my favorite fighting game, but that just hits the nail on the head. So many fighting games feel like you watch them as much as you play them, but every battle in Third Strike is its own unique beast, and therefore infinitely replayable.
i gotta say, out of all the 2d fighting games Street Fighter 3 is the most visually impressive for me. the incredibly fluid pixel art animation is still top tier
Have you not seen kof 13 thats the ultimate 2d art style
@@princemwamba5230 this is just a me thing, kof 13 is pretty as fuck, the backgrounds are especially pretty with that cell shaded kind of look, but in terms of pixel art 2d fighters i think sf 3 is my favorite.
i'd also argue that the vfx (explosions, fireballs, lightning, etc) look better in in sf 3 cause they actually match the art style and don't look pasted on like if they were pngs
I dunno. I'm vibing with Arc Sys's sprite work a lot more
@@DDDorsett ArcSys games have not used sprites since AC+R, and those are unquestionably inferior to 3S. All of their high-def games use 3D models that are stylized to imitate sprites.
@@CF565 Those aren't sprites in BlazBlue and P4A?
We need a What Happened for King of Fighters XIII. Explain to people why it played a big part in the downfall of the company and how the graphics were actually achieved.
Add KOF 2001 to that list as well.
@@matthewpulama106 yep! all i know about 2001 and 2002 it was done by a South Korean company instead of the main SNK division that done the previous ones.
There really ought to just be a 2-hour-long Wha Happun on the whole KOF series.
Crazy to think XIV outsold XIII. Just doesn’t seem like casual fighting game fans are into sprites
@@gyytgy3330 13 just wasn't as good as 14. Visuals aside, 14 was better in every way. Gameplay, balance, music, online, etc. 13 also came after the dissapointing 12 and looked similar to and reused tons of assets from that game. I imagine that didn't look good to the consumer.
I have to agree New Generation was kinda lackluster, but to be fair, Alpha 1 was fairly weak too. Fortunately both series lived to see sequels that vastly improved their formulas. Third Strike and Alpha 3 are two of the best fighting games of all time, with Double Impact and Alpha 2 being in the running.
At least Alpha 1 had the benefit of including characters that Capcom fans already knew like Guy from Final Fight. It only introduced 3 brand new characters and 2 of them played like other established characters.
Ehh, I'd argue Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold is the better game
I have to agree. The last iterations of those IPs are the best versions. When I play emulators with my brother ( RIP big brother) on my MAME PC, CRT and arcade sticks Zero/Alpha 3 and Third Strike are our go toos, and Real Bout Fatal Fury 2.
... you mean second impact?
@@romajimamulo Probably, they likely mistook the title because 'The New Generation' and '2nd Impact' got a bundled release called "Double Impact".
Jeez the background art on new generation is crazy. I know Tekken 3 and VF3 looked pretty sharp, but SFIII has aged superbly in comparison
It was so good that they intentionally had to lower the level of detail in stages in 3rd Strike for there to be enough memory space for the game.
Can't wait for a "Brutal Legend" episode of what happened!
I rememeber when every discovered the game was an RTS basically AFTER it came out. EA lied for years, and even the demo included only the axtion sequences.
Dude, that game is the best!! At least once a month I pull some online matches with a friend and I also beat it on hard every year by the end of the year; has been like that for, like, 4 or 5 years now
@@gabrieleriva651 that half-baked RTS stuff turned me away from the game, it would've been much better it really just was an hack n' slash type of game.
You know, as a kid with little too no internet at the time of SF3... I honestly thought it was a myth.
I remember hearing about it in Nintendo Power or GamePro magazines at some point, but never saw it in the wild. I had older cousins tell me I was wrong, and that SF Alpha was actually SF3.
Since I didn't even end up getting a playstation, I didn't really follow the news if what games were coming for them, so after a while I genuinely believed them. I just thought oh maybe the article I read was like an early working title, because of COURSE you'd follow up with SF2 with SF3.
I remember being so surprised when I finally saw and played one at my local laundry mat. When I got home I told my older brother about it and he didn't believe me until we went back the following week.
Reminds me of when I found a "Segasonic the Hedgehog" machine, on a ferry to the Isle of Wight. I hardly believed it then. You probably still don't believe me.
Lol yeah same here. I remember hearing about it at random points but didn't find out it was actually made until after sf4 came out
Third Strike and Garou we're two of the games that had some of the best sprites and animations. Thanks for this history lesson, I haven't really looked into the history for III.
Last blade 2
Street Fighter 3 has always been in this state of mind for me where I don’t hear too much about it compared to the other entries of the franchise, so I’m curious to see what it’s development history would be like .
You mean in general? That's interesting to hear. Of course, SFII would be talked about the most, but the rest is another story.
@@leithaziz2716 yeah, I don’t even think I even saw footage of what SF 3 looked like until a few years later, it was just that much of a topic I didn’t here too much about.
Just looking at 3rd Strike's animations, I cannot believe this game is soo damn old. It looks so modern and beautiful
Only the characters are ugly. Another Ryu clone, another ninja (with boobs), another wrestler (with a booty), another under-Bruce Lee, strange mutants and naked GODS, lol. Japanese drugs is not for everyone.
I remember these times.
I was shocked at how no one liked such a bad ass and beautifully fluent fighting game such as Street Fighter III.
Side by side with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 at an arcade, people were playing UMK 3 more over it.
Makoto's hair is probably my favourite part of SF3's animation. The way it flows and follows on action while being as short as it is, it's a masterwork.
This is probably one of the most bittersweet "What happen" episodes ever.
That cameo was so good. A+ delivery and A+ timing.
I wish there were sequels in the same vein but I understand the animation workload was just too insane.
I'll always lament the decline of hand drawn 2D animation, particularly in film, but video games too. I don't even think It's that much higher of a cost, if it even is higher; I think the reason so few do it is that most employees in game studios are no longer talented in animation of that kind, and that all the big popular games are 3D so "we should keep doing 3D too" (same reasoning for films as well). Nobody wants to take the risk.
@@ImCurrentlyNaked Nope the cost and time taken is extremely high, as we can see from games like skullgirls and cuphead
@@chrispo7610 I don't think either of those are particularly good examples; they're both by smaller indie teams, so of course a hand drawn fully animated game took them longer. I was also unable to find the development costs of either, so I'm not exactly certain if it was that high comparably to a 3D game of similar development scale.
Not that I'm saying your wrong, I just don't see the evidence in either at the moment.
@@ImCurrentlyNaked King of Fighters 13 is a good example.
Gourgerous sprites... but made the game cost too much when it would cost less with simple 3D characters.
They needed a f****** lot of people and time and money to make thsoe sprites, and it didn't pay off... SNK was again almost brankupt.
@@kissadev. You would think Fighting Games would be the perfect piece for media for overly animated pieces without blowing the bank, but I guess not.
I would love to see a survey or study where they compare 2D and 3D, the different types (puppet animation or low FPS or "retro graphics" or Pixel Art etc) and budgets and being on schedule, etc to not only see whether one is more expensive then the other, but perhaps whether one is more appropriate than the other for which genre or situation.
On a side note, are you certain KOF 13 is totally Hand drawn 2D? The Characters are crazy on model with a lot of details (muscles and such), but that might have been what did them in. But I also watch youtube in potato quality so maybe I just can't tell.
I remember when Street Fighter II came out in 1991, there was a crowd around the arcade units, and you had to wait hours to play. When Street Fighter III came out, you could see at most one person playing. And those were the good days, as most of the time no one inserted a coin into the arcade unit. Everyone else was playing Tekken, Rival Schools, or King of Fighters 97.
At the time I was attending a local community College with a small game room in the student union, and I can recall that much of the time I was there the Soulcalibur and Marvel Vs. Capcom machines had the crowds around them. SF3 not so much.
Street Fighter III was very different but still enjoyed the game we should have gotten a animated movie of Street Fighter III.
The animation in SF3 is simply superb, and it is a real shame that 3d became the default art style. I know there's the whole financial logistic of making games like that, and also the all the work that goes in animating games like that, but I'd sure love to see more of hand drawn art in games.
If they were smart, they would go back to hand drawn sprites, kinda the way Guilty Gear has done. Street Fighter 3 is still considered the best SF game to date.
@@thaistompGuilty Gear is very much still 3d models these days
Matt, these videos have become my favourite series on all of UA-cam. Well done, really, this is brilliant and well researched stuff!
I remember seeing SFIII at my arcade. It was in the middle of the place, in a nice special cabinet. Nobody but myself ever played it. I don't remember which version it was, but I remember liking the hell out of it. It was beautiful, the animation was on point. The sound effects were great, the movement was great. I never understood why nobody was playing it. everybody was over on Tekken. Then one day the machine just vanished. I never saw SFIII again until third strike came out on dreamcast.
SF3 is definitely my favorite art style/aesthetic design of the series so far
Thanks!
It is hard to explain to people who weren't around at the time just how much of a flop SF3 was at launch. SF2 cabinets were everywhere in the 90's, to the point that you almost couldn't avoid them if you tried. SF3 on the other hand, was practically non existent. I only ever saw one SF3 cabinet in the wild (around fall 98 I think) at my local bowling ally, and they got rid of that machine after only a month or so due to literally nobody playing it. People really did despise that game at launch. It was too much change all at once, and with 3D fighters being all the rage at the time SF3 never really had a chance.
IDC what anyone says SF3 was an amazing series that I’m still playing to this very day. It was different but a breath of fresh air. It was funky, cool and a dope hip hop vibe too it. It’s aged well.
Factsss, when I first rent Street fighter 3 double impact from Blockbuster on the Dreamcast immediately I felt in love with the game it came both New Generation and 2nd impact and both was good to me in my opinion u had the Best gameplay and definitely the Best Soundtracks so it was just under appreciated
@@RockyandAustin337 I don’t even play SF2 no more. Only SF3 and Alpha. My opinion the best in gameplay and looks.
SF3 is still the king almost 25 years after it was released. Legendary.
Oh man, this was a beautiful video. I consider myself extremely lucky that my town's Aladdin's Castle arcade received a copy of "Three" and you couldn't pry me away from that game before running out of quarters. I fell in love with the music, too (or what I could hear of it that wasn't drowned by the surrounding cabinets 😅), thanks to Sean's Jazzy NYC, and Dudley's Leave Alone. And I loved that you included that new fanmade animated intro that's going around, too. Thank you, Matt. 🤜🤛
I remember when SF3, the first one, arrived at an arcade I used to go to with my brother and friends. We were amazed at the animations and played a couple of rounds..but we eventually went to play King of Fighters or the Alpha games. It was mostly abandoned. They retired it after a while. It's a shame we didn't appreciate it more on those days but we enjoy it more nowadays thanks to the SF collection released a few years ago. It's a game that has aged well. Better than any other 3D fighting games.
Me and my homeboy was always hip to Third Strike. I think, because I enjoyed Double Impact, I was sorta always familiar with the look and feel. It was never really jarring even though I grew up on 2 Turbo on the SNES and Alpha 3. I’ll never forget learning how to do Super Arts on the Anniversary Collection. I nearly flunked spending so much time playing Third Strike and then subsequently Street Fighter 4.
Ahhhh, how I miss the good ol’ days.
SF III: Third Strike is still hands down my favorite fighting game of all time. For me, nothing really competes with it from an artwork, music and mechanic standpoint. Sometimes I just play it to hear the music and even now I just marvel at how good this game is and appreciate it more now knowing it was ignored for so long and glad it finally got its roses. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 comes in a close 2nd and then MK II for me.
3rd Strike, in my opinion, is probably one of the best fighting games of all time. The visuals, the combat, and the soundtrack all have a unique feel to them.
As a kid the way I played 3rd Strike was on my uncle’s original Xbox, he had the anniversary collection. I’ve always loved how the game was different from sf2, new characters and mechanics. The OST is fire, also always loved the jazz and hip hop aesthetic. This game really was aimed for a new generation 😂 I’m a 97 baby
I distinctly remember walking into my local arcade, probably 3 or 4 days after Street Fighter 3 came out, being excited to play a new SF. To my surprise no one was playing any of the three cabinets (my arcade went all out for SF3) and everyone was still playing SF2. I started playing and after 2 games went back to Street Fighter 2 and my Guile super throws and golden stances
3rd Strike is still awesome to me, and the soundtrack is🎤 🔥 . Even tho it didn't get the credit it deserved back then because of the competition, it aged well. It's good to know alot more people are starting to appreciate it today. 👊🏾🎮💯
Same I put it on loop when I can get away with it at work because gosh Amazon warehouse work is soul-draining and not in the fun way.
@Miles Prower Yup, and Sean was a beast on those too.
@Miles Prower I prefer 2nd Impact's art and music (Germany stage!) , but 3rd Strike is probably the better game.
I guess the arcade experience is very location dependent. When 3rd strike came out, it was incredibly popular. Always a line, even at 75 cents, which I'd hesitate to pay in today's money for 90 seconds of getting my ass kicked. We had tournaments where people would fly in from all across the country (US) just to play in the tournament. I'm kind of shocked to see this video talking about how it was a flop. I just never viewed it that way.
Street Fighter III, my all time favorite fighting game series. What happened indeed.
This game is one of the best fighters ever. Such a shame it was ignored when it released
It really is a shame, it really was the perfect storm of events that not only buried SF III but more or less killed capcom fighting games for years. Its a special kind of pain when you watch it happen in real time as I grew up during that era.
@@TheShuuman I guess depending on who you are, one positive that came out of this is that it gave other devs a chance in the spotlight to prove themselves to the public. Arcsystem Works and SNK mainly. That's partly how I got into Guilty Gear, my favorite fighting game series.
I was one of them, when I saw SF3 in the arcade back then I was kinda stumped that they actually did it considering 3D fighters on consoles had such a grip on gamers at the time and ignored it
Finally you made a What Happened video on Street Fighter 3 especially since you've literally been using the "Yeah that makes Sense" sound effect for years now.
Ayyy perfect way to kick the new year off!
You should definitely explore Mortal Kombat 4. I'm curious to know how midway handled that lol.
You cant emphasize how “wrong for the moment” SFIII was back then. Not only had “too many versions of SF2” become a joke, an extra 12 frames of animation on a fireball was hard to get people hype about. Even after all these years it still feels slow compared to classic SF or Alpha.
2:29 is pretty much the list of all the games (minus Street Fighters thanks to the Anniversary Collection) that need to be brought to modern platforms.
Not Capcom titles, but since we're talking about bringing cool-ass fighting games to modern platforms: How about some Tekken and SoulCalibur collections sometime, Namco?
_We awaited your return, warrior..._
And you didn't disappoint. Good job, McMuscles!
I'm so glad somebody else feels the same way about 1 minute 20 seconds in what he says about part 3 is true. This game should have had tremendous height. How did I find out about it?
All of us at my job about 20 years ago maybe 22 years ago I don't know for sure, but it was an arcade game at a movie theater. And I kept saying to myself when did this get released? How did I not hear about this? And is this game worth playing with these characters I never heard of?
Same. I remember seeing it for the first time and being like "Huh. When did that happen?" and feeling like it had probably happened a long time ago, I just didn't notice it.
This game failed exclusively because of the cps3 board being expensive and having dumb anti piracy measures
I grew up post arcades, but as someone whose always been online in video game spaces, I'd never seen or heard of SF3 until online edition. The game basically didn't exist outside of the core FGC.
I was in the same situation. It came out of nowhere when I saw SF 3 NG and later editions at the supermarket. At that time I remember seeing Street Fighter EX before this. So I thought this game was a spin off series again especially with the characters I never seen before. It didn’t occur to me SF3 was the sequel.
@@laughingseal2282 Not just because it was expensive. It also had a high failure rate for the optical drive which made it expensive to repair. Sega released the Naomi arcade board around the same time frame that was just a tad bit pricer but was a lot more powerful without many of CPS3's caveats. Sega even did the optical drive better when they released the optical drive add-on in 1999.
your editing/clip game was on another level this video. Really well done
Sf3 was a joy to see in motion. It's biggest flaws were it just wasn't widespread like the sf2 family. Also it his a high execution barrier, and it became the shoto-show. Also the joke back then with so many SF spinoffs, already feeling like a seque in existence, was if Capcom can even count to 3?
Say what you want, all three OSTs are some of the best music in gaming history. I’ve even grown to like 2nd impact’s more than 3rd strike
Yeah 2nd impact OST is better I agree with this. But all 3 are amazing nonetheless 💯
I love the 2i OST!!!!
@@paperluigi6132 Marvel vs Capcom 2 would like to take you for a ride...
@@paperluigi6132 YEAH THAT MAKES SENSE
Maybe development was sloppy but they deserve HUGE credit for the art style and soundtrack. The continue track is still in my head...
Regardless of its lackluster sales and delayed appreciation, SF3 and all its renditions remain to be some of the best in the series.
Happy new year. Quite a nice topic to start the year on. It's refreshing to see the case of a game that while considered a massive failure when it launched, was later reevaluated and embraced as the underappreciated master piece it was. And yeah, I second that Capcom is long past due bringing the Online edition to modern platforms.
I’ve been addicted to Third Strike lately so thanks for this
SF 3 is the game that we all were waiting for, after long years playing 2 and it’s reissues.
I remember when I played 3 for the first time, the amazing graphics the beautiful super arts, but I also remember the heavy feeling that all characters had and how disappointing was the new cast of characters.
I also remember how there was only one machine and there wasn’t lines, it was always empty and only I had interesting to put some coins there. Here in Brazil KoF already took over the arcade scene.
SF3 was a special game, very flawed but very special. I eventually moved on to The option I had in my house as Alpha 2 and 3. But I always cling to SF3, I try it again on the Ps2 and I really get into it when Capcom put the online edition on the Ps3.
Now I think Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike is probably the greatest SF ever and its gameplay is just too good.
SF is always on my blood and I have stories with all Street Fighter games, but that is for another time!
I feel like a Wha Happun could also work for Garou due to the financial state of SNK when it was made , heck an entire whu happun could be made about SNK at that time
YEAH I’ve been waiting for this!!
It sounds like the voice announcer in 3rd Strike says "I get bitches" instead of "I get the picture".
What's funnier that Street Fighter 3 takes place before Street Fighter 6 and it feels like a weird pattern.
Street Fighter III: Double Impact blew my fucking mind in the 2000s! The animation, the music (particularly in 3rd Strike), the parry system... everything. SFIII remains my favorite Street Fighter game, and is one of my favorite games, period.
I'm glad this was covered!
As a Street Fighter fanatic (and a particularly big fan of the III series), I was waiting so long for this episode and it delivered big time! I knew a lot of the cliffs on how the development cycle went, but it's awesome to know all the little details about who was brought in and why, what specific challenges they faced, what the team was thinking about the game at different junctures, etc.
I was one of those fighting game hipsters who was on board the SFIII train from the jump while people hated on it, only to be vindicated later haha. Tends to happen to me a decent amount because, I think because I'm just really open to sweeping change, bucking trends, and like to look a things for what they are rather than what they could/should be. Just today I expressed the same sentiment about Groove On Fight, which was initially blasted by Power Instinct fans for being such a big tonal departure from the other games, only to be revered later on much like SFIII. I was a fan from the first time I saw images of it in a gaming mag, same with SFIII. But I was a fan of SFIII's more deliberate, grounded gameplay, beautiful visuals, and even though a lot of the new cast was kinda wacky, I just welcomed new characters to use.
Also, obviously I'm good with it now, but 3D overtaking 2D was one of my saddest times as a gamer haha. The early 3D years were pretty rough, and visually I just really didn't think it held a candle to good quality 2D stuff. It eventually forced some great 2D fighters to move to 3D and look kinda bland by comparison (the EX games, early 3D Mortal Kombats, King of Fighters). Nowadays ArcSys has the formula for mimicking 2D with the highest fidelity, and I still wish we could get a Street Fighter game (or if I want to make myself even sadder thinking about it, a Darkstalkers game) with that level of 2D feel and quality.
Starting 2022 with an outstanding "Wha happun?"
Happy New Year Matt! 🤠🎉
My question on this:. If Evo Moment #37 never happened, would people still remember SF3 the way they do now? This may be a rare case where you can pinpoint the exact moment that people's opinion of the game changed for the better.
It probably would have gotten it's due in time. There was somethings happen in 2002 and 2003, when Japan came and dominated the U.S. which made many players relook the game, but it was 2004 with 37 that put it over the top.
I think so. If I'm not mistaken, players were already starting to take notice of 3rd Strike prior to the Daigo Parry moment.
Depends on what you mean. If you mean the general mainstream public? Yeah probably.
But in local FGC scenes, the Dreamcast was a massive hit, and so SF3 developed quite a sleeper following there.
Awesome video! Also love how you included the Fan made opening for 3S in the end.
I didn't play SF3 until 3rd Strike, so as a kid I didn't even know it was a revision lol. I do wish Capcom hadn't overcorrected so hard to 3's reception though. A lot of the time they practically pretend it didn't exist. It's cool that we occasionally get characters like Oro back, but they're usually put aside in favor of SF2 nostalgia bait which doesn't do much for me since 2 was before my time.
street fighter 3 is my favorite precisely because there was almost no returning characters and that is unheard of in modern times, to take a huge profitable success that was sf 2, a game that literally invented the fighting game genre and try to reinvent it. In an era of endless boring trash remakes, rehashes and reboots, i really appreciate the boldness and the risk this game took.
Time and memory is such a funny thing, I remember playing SF III: New Generation at a 7-11 by my school, I would play for hours on end. I totally loved playing Necro, as a fellow lanky dude it was some much fun to see his animations in action. I do hope we get to see both Necro and Effie again in the SF series. 💜
I hate how fighting game fans at the time refused to accept the new challengers in SF 3 because honestly SNK took so many risks with introducing K’ or even Kyo in King of Fighters but people easily accepted it
I still respect SF 3 as a fighting game because it was revolutionary at the time and is finally getting respect that it deserves
Bruh, fans hated kof 99 until 2002 brought back fan favorites
Been waiting on this video for a long time Matt, and I’m glad you went all in for it. Great way to start off the new year.
… so when’s the inevitable Garou video, huh? Groove on Fight? Tekken 4? Seriously, the 90’s and Early 2000’s were a treasure trove for underrated fighters that tried to reinvent themselves, failed, and are now seen as modern classics in their own right.
Always love hearing Ibuki's theme.
3rd strike is what got me into street fighter, And what they went with was perfect. But you know, the things he said about game design is something that flies today, and i guess what depends on a game's success.
There is one Urien who, after literally 2 decades later, amazes me with his technical prowess in this game. Two letters you will never forget:
RX
If you love 3S, please look this player up. He does some jaw-dropping stuff with Urien.
SF3 was okay, but had fantastic animation.
Third Strike was great, but I could never get good enough to go against the sharks.
Fast forward 20 years, there’s still tournaments for third strike.
Some take low tiers(Remy, Q, Necro, etc.) and blow out tournaments.
Highly recommend watching expert 3rd strike play.
Having only played 3rd strike, my main take away from this video is that the first two editions of the game had some awesome background stages that got cut in the final iteration.
Anecdotally, I remember back when I first saw the cabinet at an arcade in the late 90s. Seeing the game being simply labelled "Three" made it extremely hard to tell that it was supposed to be a Street Fighter game. Which in turn kept me from playing it for awhile before finally... well... seeing Ken and Ryu in it.
Like... I think they were trying to do something unique with the display title, but it just made it confusing.
Third Strike was and still is my fave SF. Nigh perfection. From the parry system to the unique soundtrack, it dominated tournaments in NYC. The beautiful aspect about the arcade era, which isn’t said enough, are the bonds and friendships created from the competitions. That’s something online gameplay cannot quite replicate yet. Cheers to this outstanding post to my favorite game! 💯🙏🏽❤️🥳🆙
It hurts my soul that because of SFIII's initial reception, we're probably going to have the World Warriors shoved down our throat for the rest of eternity. If Dhalsim, Guile, Honda, Claw, Zangeif, Boxer, and fucking Blanka never showed up again, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Street Fighter's hasn't been great with new characters since SFIII; seems like for every Juri you get three or four El Fuerte or goddamn Rufus.
5 had some pretty great newcomers, rashid, menat, G, kage, (i know those last two are more or less new but theyre different ENOUGH), and personally i like the stories of characters like ed and necalli, underutilized? maybe, but i like what they were going for
@@MoojinBoi tbf G is just boisterous Q and Kage is literally Evil Ryu with maybe some of Oni's kit
I blame you for getting Elena's theme stuck in my head again
Great video. So well done.
Wow asked for this topic like 5 months ang i am glad that it's finally here matt, awesome job as always.
I feel like Ex3 doesn't get the love it deserves. 3rd Strike and Ex3 are my favorite SF games.
Thats because the EX series was actual garbage
Ex looks like shit
Yeah it was pretty nice for a series!
The ex series after 2 had solid gameplay, but it's not from capcom, besides the license to use the character the game is from Arika, at the time most people would play Ex than III strike because it was flashier and 3d, also you had the PlayStation version
2:55 I just screamed “Caesar!” In my head
STREET FIGHTER III? THAT'S LIKE THE SECOND BEST ONE WITH THE NUMBER 3 IN ITS NAME
Gouki's Killing Moon theme has to be in most people's top 10 themes ever.
Best way to begin the year with one of the best SF. Love you so much for this! Alex forever!!!
Amazing video per usual! Thank you for forever changing my speech. I can't say "what happENED" without exerting actual effort, and now say "wha happun" to people casually.
This is something that I was always confused about when it came to Street Fighter 3. I was born in 2001, my connection to street fighter was always the second game and the fourth one, occasionally hearing of the alpha series. From what little I heard online people usually disregarded the third game, in fact I remember looking at the EVO moment and thinking "Hey what what Street Fighter game is that"? It was only about a couple of years ago when I heard everyone going YEAH MAN THIS WAS THE SHIT WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.
Yeah dude, I barely knew anything about SF3, all I saw was that Ryu seemed to be replaced Alex, whom I thought was some weird hobo. Now Alex is one of my favorite characters in the series, and I was so excited when he got into 5
Funny, I was born in 2000 but it was the Alpha series I was always unfamiliar with. I grew up with SFII on the SNES (and a Hyper Fighting machine) and 3rd Strike seemed to be pretty common at arcades and I enjoyed it a lot. Alpha I never heard about for some reason.
Most of the SF2 old timers viscerally hated SF3 on launch. SF2 demands a very different skill set. Fireballs and zoning define SF2. SF3 fundamentally doesn't have that because it's trivially easy to parry fireballs. Once both characters are outside of sweep range, no meaningful interaction can occur other than meter building. (Yes, Necro exists, but he just isn't threatening in the way a good Dhalsim is.)
NG's Ibuki had a 1 move infinite, requiring a ban in competitive play.
2i's Akuma was sufficiently bonkers that he required a ban in competitive play.
Every version had some really bizzarre unintentional mechanics. Perhaps most famously, you can cancel the startup of normal moves with throws, resulting in so called "kara throws."
1:30 gonna look in on those CAPCOM projects.
Happy 35th anniversary Street Fighter this year. Cheers for Street Fighter 6.
I really love this video, I like history of games and how they flopped and then got very popular over time! I just subscribed to your channel Matt, I really enjoy your content
I'm glad you brought up the eventual rise of 3rd Strike near the end, as it should be pointed out while living through those years: Even though it was released in 1999, it was heavily overshadowed by some other respectable greats in Tekken Tag Tournament, MvC1 and 2, the upcoming Capcom v SNK (1 and 2), and even remnants of Alpha 3. Only real dedicated areas held the game together in North America (Nebraska, Family Fun Arcade, TOSF, etc) and didn't start to gain traction around 2003. But what really solidified it as a mainstay (outside of Capcom laying dormant for many years) was Evo Moment 37. That was hands down the turning point of the series, but it took almost half a decade to get to that point. Better late than never.
Honestly this seems to go way more in depth than most fgc circle 3rd strike conversations. People usually just kinda go "no one bought it" and barely touch on anything else.
Absolutely love this video series so much, it’s always interesting to learn more about the troubled history of certain games and films👏👏👏 It would be awesome to see you cover Jump Force tho, since that’s a troubled game that doesn’t have that much time left.
I second that notion! It would be so intriguing to hear the reasoning for all the bizarre decisions the creators put into the game. And by bizarre, I mean that in a bad way, and not in a Jojo way.
YAY THANKS FOR MAKING THIS VID DUDE
Happy new year, dude! Love your content, from gameplays to full-on game dissection series like Gone Too Soon and Wha Happun? (the high point of my Saturdays). Cheers from Brazil!
Its crazy to hear all of this when Street Fighter Third Strike is what got me into loving fighting games as an adult.
There were a ton of Japanese 2D fighters at the time that looked just like SF3. Couple that with the fact that they scrapped OG characters for new, kind-of-wacky characters, and it’s easy to see why a lot of people assumed that SF was going in a weird new direction that nobody was hyped for.
Little did we know we were sleeping on the best fighting game ever made lol.
A new episode of Wha Happun to watch with my little SkeliMatt plushie to start off the new year! Perfect!
Starting this year with a bang
your a fan of third strike? and i thought you couldnt get any more badass