The concept is as simple as the original Street Fighter, straight forward brawling. Luckily for us, Capcom has been getting better at handing out the extra goodies when it comes time for a home conversion. If you have not seen the game since the arcade you will notice quite a few changes such as the addition of a few characters and the all new World Tour mode. You can even watch some of the games endings by choosing the final battle option to fight M. Bison right from the second you pop in the disc. Or you can join a friend in taking on the world warriors side by side in the Dramatic Battle mode. Nothing beats recreating the final fight from Street Fighter: The Movie (animated). The options are plenty and it will surely take you a while to master them all.

The Street Fighter universe has never been as complex as it is in Alpha 3. After selecting one of the over 30 characters you get to choose your ism, or style of fighting. A-ism is the classic Street Fighter Alpha style where you have multiple super combos, the ability to alpha counter and air block minus the power to pull off a custom combo. X-ism is all about power since your attacks will do more damage. You also only have one powerful super but you can not air block, alpha counter, or perform custom combos in X-ism. V-ism is more about speed and high combo counts since your attack power is low and you will only be able to store two custom combos. Since you have these three distinct styles, many of the characters will play very differently from one ism to the next. Players can spend hours figuring out which ism is best for their favorite characters or play style.

Out of all of these modes the one fighters will be abusing the most is World Tour. In World Tour mode players pick their fighter and ism to set off on a journey to become the most powerful street fighter. Just like in RPGs, as fights progress, your character gains levels and new abilities. With each level brings new strength and speed as well as special abilities like infinite guard or “guts” which increases your overall power while decreasing your defense. In some fights certain requirements must be met in order to progress to the next stage. For example, some fighters can only be damaged by super moves or combos. Others may have to have their guard crushed before they can be taken down. This may be reminiscent of the extra play mode in Soul Edge, but it is definitely not an afterthought of Capcom’s programmers. A lot of work went into the World Tour mode and it shows. After defeating all of the world warriors you can save your character to VMU, allowing you to use your hyped up fighter in vs. mode. Of course, this would be an incredibly unfair match to use a level 30 Shin Gouki against a standard Guile, but it can be done nonetheless.

Your newly saved characters are also what Street Fighter Alpha 3’s Internet capabilities are based on. After registering your character in the game, you must go to the Network mode and enter the Saikyo Dojo where you will face three fights with students before you are allowed to download the master character. My student fights consisted of Dan, then Ryu, and a gang fight against both Sakura and Karin. The only real problem I had was taking on Ryu whose AI was pumped up to the max and responded to my errors with lightning fast blows. Any of my friends who fought him were given quite a thrashing. Ryu posed quite a threat to even the most self proclaimed Street Fighter Alpha master.

Once my victory was complete however, I proceeded to use my Dreamcast on the net for the first time to visit Capcom’s Street Fighter Alpha 3 page. Once the site loaded I had the choice of clicking on Dan or Chun Li. Quickly clicking on Chun Li and ignoring the pink Gi-ed showoff, I pressed my way through a few info screens and saved the data to my VMU. Unfortunately, like most other game options that need the VMU, the data takes a considerable amount of space (62 bits). I quickly got over my lost VMU space and returned to the Dojo to face Chun Li only to find out that I had received Rolento instead! Hopefully, this case of mistaken downloaded identity is something that Capcom will resolve shortly. So, a little miffed and frustrated I entered into the fight with Rolento and beat him on only my second try whereas Ryu took at least 10. Looks like the masters need to go back to school. While you can download different master characters every week, the novelty wears off quickly. You don’t even get to keep the masters as playable characters. While you could achieve the same effect as a master character by romping through the world tour mode with every character, few gamers have that much patience.

I have to admit that I am mostly disappointed with Capcom’s new net features. The novelty of using your Dreamcast’s modem to finally download something that had to do with a game was fun at first. But, it soon becomes a tedious boring process. Looks like we will just have to wait till September when we can have truly net playable titles. As for the game itself, Street Fighter Alpha 3 is a huge improvement over the arcade original. With the large cast of characters and different play modes, street fighters everywhere will have plenty to tool around with. The World Tour mode is the best addition to a Street Fighter title yet, taking plenty of ideas from Soul Edge. In this case, however, borrowing is a good thing. In all, it is still the Street Fighter series I have loved for years with a few nice additions. Street Fighter fans can pick up yet another great title.