A couple of weeks ago I picked up this game at Sam’s Club. Only set me back $13.95… hence the impulse buy. Normally, I wouldn’t have touched the thing, because as I have experienced through Street Fighter II Turbo Revival (fucking Capcom… and their names), playing a six button game with 4 buttons is pretty crappy indeed (not to mention the literal game-BREAKING glitches). To my amazement though, SFA3 is a solid cart.
I gotta give props to Crawfish, who are responsible for this GBA port. All of the original Alpha 3 fighters are in here, complete with DJ, Fei Long and the others from the console ports. New to the scene are Yun, Maki & Eagle, taken from CvS2, bringing the total fighters to 36 (and Shin Akuma/Bison). With all of their moves left intact, the gameplay is pretty much identical to the home versions…
On the subject of the newest characters, Yun’s palmstrike and Eagles “batter-up” move don’t negate/reflect projectiles (but Yun’s move is now hella fast, even comboable). His shoulder move and lv.3 super launchers can be flipped out of (mk one can still be jumpcancelled), making them pretty stupid, and x-ism worthless. On the plus side, they all also have hella priority on their moves.
There are a few other differences between this version and the home ports. For one, there’s no world tour mode. Ism+’s are earned through the Final Battle mode instead. There are only like 3 or 4 stages and songs, and a lot of the voices are gone (most missed is the announcer’s voice No more FACE IT STRAIGHT to signify the beginning of a match. Hell there’s not even a round 1 or 2, FIGHT, making it easy to get your ass kicked if you don’t pay attention). Some of the AI has been improved though (fucking Jun/Juli are sooooo fucking cheap since they can block now) Also, though this version professes to be an Upper port, it clearly isn’t (ie. DJ still kicks everyone’s top tier ass).
Like I said before though, this is a pretty amazing port. I highly suggest it if you had any interest in SFA3 at all, or want a solid pocket fighter. It won’t replace your console/arcade version, but it does its does its job of being playable & fun. Though the controls aren’t great, they’re way better than in Revival (you don’t need to press L+A at the EXACT same time) and as a bonus, you won’t render your cart useless if you beat the game like some other capcom gba fighter.
One thing about the controls… I wish they would have been a little bit more flexible… V-activations (namely V2) are hard to do, and CPS chains are pretty much impossible (at least with a config that makes sense). And oddly enough, DP detection seems to be tighter in Turbo Revival.
I’ve recently been having fun with Maki, even though standing 360’s (let alone 720’s) are hella hard to do.