There's no denying Capcom's Street Fighter franchise is one of one my influential and popular arcade series ever created and thanks to 2009's Street Fighter IV, it help revive the fighting genre after years of neglect. However, while the various Street Fighter spin-offs and versus games enjoyed huge success, the third "proper" sequel was something of a slow burner. For many the new parrying system was too hard to execute and ignored as a failed experiment, for many more the strange and unappealing cast of fighters was just plain off-putting, with only Ryu and Ken returning from the myriad of other SF games. Thankfully, Capcom continued their trend of releasing updates to their Street Fighters and the third iteration, subtitled 3rd Strike, nailed it. Perhaps it was the improved roster that encouraged people to stick with the game and master the parrying system or perhaps it was because fighting fans had to go nearly a decade before the true king of fighters returned, but whatever the reason, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is now recognised as perhaps the greatest 2D fighting game ever made.
Today Capcom released this seminal game on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200MSP and PlayStation Network for £10.20. As well as a near-perfect emulation of the original arcade game, Capcom have included multiple display filters, from sharpening up the aging, lo resolution sprites, to applying a scanlines and curved edges, as though you're playing on a tradition arcade cabinet, rather than a HDTV. More important for all you budding Daigos out there is the inclusion of the GGPO net code, which provides the best online fighting around.
If you have any love for the genre, I cannot recommend this port enough - especially if you own an arcade stick for your next gen console. Let's take a look at the trailer, shall we?
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