Monday, July 20, 2009

Street Fighter III - 3rd Strike aka - "Back in my Day"


I've been playing Street Fighter III since 2003, and I don't think I will ever stop playing it in some form. When I first started playing the game, it did not feel like the other fighter which I was playing at the time, which made the game hard for me to get into.

Six years and several tournaments later though, I find the game to be still fun and interesting, the dash, super jump, and parry mechanics make new strategies and tactics always interesting to try out on other players. Other fighters I've played have dropped by the wayside as I've always come back to SF3.

Of course the game has its balance issues, like any other fighter. But the fact that it still has an important spot on the SBO roster after all these years shows that it is a loved and solid fighter that is now considered a classic. Players fly from all over the world to attend the tournament in Japan, which is considered by most to be the world championships of fighting games of many kinds.

Also, its always fun to hear about the qualifiers on Shoryuken.com, and hear which top players are teaming with who for the 3-on-3 battles towards the finals crown. There are no longer people at the tournament texting to others in front of their computers, who relay the winners and losers to a group of hardcore fans in the IRC channel. Now we can see some of the matches played on youtube, and the DVD's of the main events can be bought online.

Seven to Eight years ago, people would have killed to get their hands on the footage of top players, it was simply never seen. Not that many people had portable cameras or video cards capable of proper editing. The tapes you could find were just poor VHS copies.

We've come a long way from 1990, where the kids down at the bowling alley arcade whispered of an unbeatable Guile player who only came in on thursdays.

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