Street Fighter III is a fighting game produced by Capcom, released in 1997, which is a continuation of the famous Street Fighter series of games.

The game was produced in three editions, each adding more characters as well as making minor modifications to the gameplay:

• Street Fighter III: New Generation
• Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact - Giant Attack
• Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - Fight For The Future

The games are often referred to by their subtitle. For example, Second Impact or Third Strike.

History

A sequel to Street Fighter II was in high demand, due to the popularity of the second game. Rather then releasing a sequel, Capcom created four updates (each one taking about as long as a sequel generally would at the time) to Street Fighter II, and created a spin-off series called Street Fighter Alpha, before finally creating Street Fighter III. Some fans began to become impatient with Capcom's unwillingness to release a true sequel, while others saw the constant fine-tuning as an effort to make sure the game would be known for its great gameplay.

Street Fighter III: New Generation, or alternately, Three: A New Generation of Street Fighter (or simply Three as it was called on its marquee), was the 'true' sequel to Street Fighter II, and retained the character duo of Ken and Ryu which fans of the series loved. Because of the high amount of animation frames used per character (as of this writing (November 16, 2004) the most fluidly animated fighting game sprites), the original edition of Street Fighter 3 only included eight characters; however, the second and third editions of the games slowly added new characters, as well as reintroducing Chun-Li and Akuma. Some fans were put off by some of the added characters, viewing them as overly exotic.

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, one addition to this game was 'parrying'. This is described as 'offensive blocking' ^{[1] (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9823&letter=S)}, and differs from simple blocking in that no damage is taken from parrying the move being conducted against a character, and that the person performing a sucsessful parry has no block stun (block stun being the split second after a block is executed that nothing else can be done; this in effect enables the player to immediately counterattack after a parry). Parrying is a skill that requires a lot of honing and practicing, however, as it requires that you press toward (or down, if it's a low attack) your opponent at the exact time the move hits, leaving you wide open if you time your parry poorly. Many top players however, were able to parry most any special move, and this caused the game to be focused primarily on quick "poke" normal moves which would lead into combos.

Another twist to the gameplay is the Super Arts system. Unlike most other fighting games, where everyone's super move meter is exactly the same length and can be used to pull off one of a small group of super moves, in Street Fighter III the player is asked to choose one of three Super Arts before the match starts. Each Super Art has its own meter length, and amount of "stocks" it can hold. Some moves take a long time to charge up, and can only be stocked once, while others accumulate stocks quickly and allow for multiple firings of the same Super Art. In addition, the Super Art meters power EX Moves (similar to the Enhanced Special moves in Darkstalkers), which are basically powered up versions of character's moves performed by pressing two punch or kick buttons instead of one. Different Super Art meters allow for different amounts of EX Move usage, usually between 1 and 3 when fully charged.

External link

• Street Fighter III (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9823&letter=S) entry on the Killer List of Videogames
• The Street Fighter Wiki (http://streetfighter.binarycult.com/)

ja:ストリートファイターIII