But first, let's look at the game's features. Over 35 playable characters from every previous release of SFA3, along with Ingrid from Capcom's overlooked Capcom Fighting Evolution. A dozen game modes, from training to arcade to story to dramatic battle (2 on 1 or 1 on 2) to world tour mode. World Tour allows you to build up a character with customized options, such as Street Fighter Alpha 1-style dial-a-combos to dizzy immunity--making your character extremely strong for arcade play, or even better, head-to-head gameplay.

Head-to-head gameplay is acheived via the PSP's Wi-fi Ad-Hoc functionality, allowing you to challenge another player wirelessly. This mode works flawlessly and even allows for dramatic battle fights among 3 players. Lag is almost non-existant and never interferes with gameplay.

The graphics and animation are arcade-perfect; the PSP's screen really highlights the fluid animation and crisp colors of the game. The trademark grunts, thuds and smacks of the series are delivered very cleanly, even through the PSP's speakers.

Every single special, super and combo is available, and arcade perfect. Actually pulling them off, however, is the problem--and therein lies the main drawback of this game. This is unfortunate because this is something that is out of Capcom's control--Sony's PSP digital pad was not designed with a fighting game in mind. Circular special moves such as Ryu's hadoken are somewhat easy to pull off repeatedly, but charge characters such as Guile or M. Bison become nearly impossible to play. Thankfully, this is somewhat remedied by Capcom's inclusion of control tweaking in the Options menu. By allowing you to set the time you have to correctly enter a special move to "Arcade", "Normal", or "Long", you can make the controls more forgiving and actually acheive a decent gameplay experience. But sadly, if you are an experienced fighting gamer or Street Fighter fan, you will find yourself missing standard moves and combos far too often.

Technically, as mentioned above, this is the best version of Street Fighter Alpha 3 made. The control of the PSP however, hinders the title's gameplay and as such makes the game a must-buy only for those hardcore fighting game fans who must have every game available, or for those desperate for a fighting game fix on the PSP platform. If you can tolerate the struggle of the PSP digital pad, you will find a deep and complete fighting game. But for some, the control issues may be a dealbreaker.