GET IT ON NOW
SELECT AND MAKE YOUR FIRST PICK
GET IT ON NOW
10 9 8 7 6
GET IT ON NOW
CHOOSE AND PICK THE BEST ONE
GET IT ON NOW
5 4 3 2 1

As soon as people throw around 'greatest of all time' I start to get suspicious, but I can't deny that 3rd Strike is the fighting game I've been playing before, between, and after the many fighting games I've reviewed recently.

The most satisfying parry this side of Sekiro, the most interesting gameplay this side of Garou, and the most fluid animations this side of... also Garou. As an apparent Guile main I immediately tried Remy and went "nope", so I had to pick someone else, and after trying everyone I landed on Dudley, who might be my pick for the most fun-to-play character in the genre.

A good fighting game is one you can suck at and still enjoy, and this is that game. I suck at 3rd Strike, but I want to keep playing it. I also want Dudley to come to Street Fighter 6.

Edit: ED?????????

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I swear that I did legitimately believe the moment I laid eyes on Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future (at the Redondo Fun Factory (RIP) in Southern California) in 2016 that if there were ever a game to convert me into a bona fide frame-counting, arcade stick-wielding, competitive freak-show, it would be the one. I knew it again, more powerfully in 2018 when it appeared before me at the Chinatown Fair Family Fun Center in New York, though neither time could I exactly articulate my belief beyond being enamored with its stunningly beautiful 2D character animation. Three years later, the prophesied freak-show has at last begun to emerge.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future is tactile, fast, heavy, tactical, dense, and intensely mechanically immersive. For the dedicated player, the depth of its fighting system sparks learning moments and microscopic improvements with every round fought. Win or lose, the growth is palpable, and is better earned here than in just about any game I can think of. Pick any of its masterfully rendered characters (Makoto), and feel as the pattern of their personality (and unique directional inputs) burns its way into your strategic rhythm. Learn the ins and outs of your opponents and their chosen avatars, slip headfirst into some accidental parries, then land one on purpose. It's a canvas for legends, delivered in an audiovisual package that remains nigh unmatched.

The more I play 3rd Strike, the more I realize how central parries are to its design, and how fundamental of a misstep it was for every fighting game after this not to copy that mechanic. Every main series Street Fighter entry has its universal gimmick mechanic, but SFIII is the one that went beyond being a gimmick and really changes the core gameplay.

The concept is simple enough to understand, holding back to block is the safest option in most every fighting game, but if you guess the timing of your opponent's attack and press forward at just the right time instead, you're rewarded with one of the most satisfying sound effects known to man, and turn the tables on your opponent putting you into an advantage state. This is carefully balanced however to not be an automatic win state, and introduces a whole new set of mixup opportunities. The difficulty of getting a parry is very carefully balanced as well, anyone picking up the game can get some their first time playing and you'll immediately realized how cool it is, but it's still difficult enough to do consistently that you can't just parry everything all the time. One of the beautiful things this mechanic does is level the playing field. In a lot of ways, 3rd Strike has incredibly imbalanced characters, and at a top level that is actually true, but for most the difference between Chun-Li and Sean or Twelve can be overcome with a good read on your opponent's habits. Parries also help to encourage aggression and varied playstyles, things that almost everyone likes but knows deep down aren't the winning answer in most fighters. I'm not joking at all when I say I think every fighting game should have shamelessly copied this.

People have already discussed the other great aspects of this game, from the top notch animations, to the personality and variety of the characters and their toolkits, to the amazing soundtrack and sound design in general, but I wanted to draw some attention to why I think parries are what truly sets this game apart and has given it staying power where it might otherwise have faded into relative obscurity.

I have been thoroughly allergic to fighting games for literally the entirety of my engagement with video games, but a partner of mine who loves them has slowly been wearing me down and, after receiving a snack box micro from my parents as a Christmas gift, we finally properly sat down for her to start schooling me in SFIII, one of her all-time favorites, and folks I'll tell ya - after her coaching me through various fighters I took Chun-Li for a spin and the tumblers finally, resoundingly, started clicking.

I'll save further thoughts for another time when I have a better handle on this, but: I think I could, in fact, learn to love fighting games after all.

GG, well played. You just need to work on your combos, movement, blocking, neutral, aggression, punishes, conversions, border escaping, aerial control, air combos, resets, DPs, reversals, deck, flowchart, electric wind god fist, footsies, option selects, frame traps, fuzzy guard, pressure, air tech, ground tech, anti-air, cancels, auto-pilot, backdash, roman cancels, block strings, BnBs, meter, chicken block, chip damage, corner carry, counters, skill issue, execution, frame data, friendship, gimmicks, throws, knockdowns, high profiles, low profiles, hit stun, IADs, juggles, korean backdash, mash, meaties, mind games, mixups, okizeme, crossups, poke, projectiles, mentality, reaction, knowledge, family, respect, safe jumps, salt, sandbagging, set play, shimmy, side steps, spirit orb management, homework, stamina, tech traps, trades, whiff punish, yomi and zoning.

"You know, there are many different approaches you can take to game design. One approach, which we took in SF3, is to design your game around "unanswerables." I think with any game, players will search for the best tactic, the best strategy... like, if X happens, you should always do Y; if you do this here, you'll always win. There's competitive games like that, where the match is essentially a confrontation of theoretical knowledge that each player has built up. But Street Fighter 3 is a game that, by design, doesn't have a fixed answer to those questions. There is no "best" tactic; you can spend your whole life trying to find the perfect theoretical approach to a situation in SF3, but it will never be quite right. You always have to be reading your opponent in the moment; you can't just fall back on your theories. It's a game that lets you search for answers... Forever."
- Shinichiro Obata, Street Fighter III planner, Capcom Japan

Até o momento o melhor jogo da franquia, sai do SF2 bem frustrado com o arcade, e fui descompromissado no 3 que ouvi que era um dos mais difíceis.

E cara, que jogo divertido, além de ser uma das coisas mais bonitas já feitas na história puta merda que bagulho maravilhoso. Trilha irada e o arcade, talvez seja muito facil pra quem é bonzão em jogo de luta, mas eu to bem satisfeito, passei uma dificuldade daora em uns inimigos, principalmente os últimos, foi longe da frustração que foi tentar jogar o SF2.

Outra coisa IRADA é o parry, nossa deixa o jogo muito complexo e bem doidão nos combos malucos que tu pode fazer, dá muita vontade de aprender a usar.

Street Fighter 3rd Strike eu vou salvar pra ficar jogando mais depois, porque esse sim eu me diverti pra cacete, quero fazer o arcade com mais personagens.

to disparage 3rd strike is often blasphemy in fighting game circles. for many, this is the ur-fighting game, a dizzying concoction of tight and expressionist mechanics, gorgeous spritework, and a dnb soundtrack that is absolutely fuego. it even has that little fundamental spice that all premier fighting games must aspire to possess: a disregard for balance. most modern titles would never dare nerf a character so significantly purely for thematic purposes, but then again, no modern title would ever think to include characters like twelve or chun-li (edit: this is a patent lie. tekken 7 season 3 had both leroy and fahkumram.)

still, what makes this game fascinating years on has little to do with any of its individual elements. fundamentally, it's the mood. it's a game that feels as though it was made on the verge of something great and unknown, and is one of those rare few titles i'll posit encapsulates a certain je ne sais quois, a snapshot of a particular zeitgeist heading into a new millennium. sure, you can point to the more overt references and stylings - strong WWF influence, character select rap, yang, yun, and q are maybe the most 90s characters ever designed, the illuminati as an antagonistic force and its seemingly benevolent villain - but more importantly, it's a composite of characters who are just wandering, trying to find themselves in some instances or seeking mastery in others. there's no pressing tournament to attend to, and even the machinations of the literal illuminati are vestigial, with its plotting mostly centered around biblical rivalry between tyrants. street fighter 3 was originally just about a new generation - itself neatly characterized as 'of its time' - but 3rd strike flips the script. rather than establishing new legends, this game is about characters unsure about what the future entails, about what their next move should be, about what it even means to continue fighting - they waver, they fail, they practice, they move on. even though these ideas are reflected in little moments (chun-li teaching children to put up their dukes, elena reflecting on her journey and her future with a pen pal, alex losing to ryu but refusing to back down),even just aesthetically this theme is completely overpowering - its what imbues 3rd strike with a kind of melancholic ambience, but also what fuels the players' determination to prove themselves.

even better, to this day, this is still the only street fighter that is aesthetically unique to itself. street fighter 2 features worldly caricatures, alpha often feels like it lacks confidence or that it's missing something, 4 is nostalgic pageantry, and 5 is a slipshod mess of meaningless platitudes with no direction. this is the closest capcom ever got to imbuing their flagship franchise with unique stylings; it's something that actually has character and personality comparable to an SNK title. this, probably more than the joy of hitting a parry, setting up aegis reflectors, or getting in my opponent's head, is probably what keeps me coming back. fight for the future, so what's it gonna be, the third strike y'all it's street fighter 3

this game fucks and cums. i couldn't think of a good way to start this review so i just decided to go with that. there's no subtle way to go about this: third strike is a game with a shitload of style and swagger, and it rules for being such a remarkably and uniquely presented game.

in terms of changes, it doesn't necessarily feel like a lot was edited to III's formula going from second impact to third strike. the 5 characters added round out the cast to a solid 19, and there's a lot of winners here (i ADORE twelve, love gayboy remy, and this entry made me become a makoto main). i think any potential issues i had with the past two entries' cast were a tad overblown, but still, it's great to have these additions and get a fuller and more fleshed out roster. this fighting game has the best ratio of characters that i want to main relative to the cast size; you're telling me i want to use 25% of the cast? you must've done something right in the design stage. characters here are visually appealing, aesthetically distinct, and fun to play as.

there's really something to be said for the fact that even though this roster isn't quite as big as say alpha 3's, it feels brimming with creativity and personality. maybe quality is in fact more important than quantity when it comes to these casts. we only have 4 returning SF characters here, the other 15 are all distinct characters that feel very well-defined. on a gameplay level, a lot of these new characters buck established SF archetypes too. sure, remy has similar specials to guile, but he's got much lankier normals and a much taller sprite, so he plays fairly distinctly from guile. nothing here feels recycled or reused, and in that sense, this is probably the most innovative SF game and maybe even fighting game of its time.

visually, i'm saying nothing new when i tell you that this game is eye candy. the animations, much like in the past two games, are extremely detailed and add personality to these characters in small yet important ways. but i think of all the left turns the street fighter series could've taken, the soundtrack of third strike is one i'm nearly positive most wouldn't have anticipated. III's OST gets completely overhauled here and goes in a direction that fuses hip-hop, drum and bass, and house. and it works incredibly well, in one of those ways where it feels like a natural progression of both fighting games and street fighter. i don't give a shit what dunkey says, the rapping in this game is great and there's not a single misstep in this OST. this genuinely might have taken the spot of my favorite fighting game OST of all time, but that's something i'll have to marinate on.

before i played this game at home, i played this game in the arcade, both growing up and as an adult. it captured my attention in a way that very few fighting games ever have, and, sitting down to analyze it, it's clear to see why. there are so many fine touches and refinements here that all cascade into a joyous experience. when i played this game for several hours at the arcade, i was playing it because it was providing a delight on a visual, aural, and visceral level. there's an argument to be made that if you only ever play one fighting game in your life, it should be this one, and it's a very convincing one.

(the following is a blurb I contributed for pangburn’s massive “sight & sound” project from earlier this year, preserved in this lone journal entry to please no one beyond myself. i thought it would be nice to have something on my page for my favorite traditional fighting game, and after seeing djscheddar do something similar for silent hill i thought it would be a good excuse to crib his style and finally post something small on third strike.)

Being a series that founded its core identity on timeless, generalized depictions of caricatured combat, it’s fascinating to me that Street Fighter tried to reinvent itself with the SFIII Series, seemingly to appeal to the masses and ultimately burning bridges with a large number of their fans in the process. I think that’s a large part of why it's so special to me though: this series of games (especially Third Strike) stands nowadays as a perfect time capsule of a bygone era laced in frivolous sass and a shared optimism for a new generation. Third Strike could easily be held up on the merits of its artistic tendencies even if it wasn’t strong mechanically, but this aesthetic isn’t just cheap set dressing - this drive for creativity and spunk is interwoven with every thread of its design. While mechanics like parrying and a brand new roster of bozos may not appeal to everyone who loved the simplicity of SFII, the confidence on display in every element to the identity of SFIII makes it a peerless monolith in one of the most colorful and creative genres in the medium. As the turn of the millennium draws near and the world resets at midnight, what's the harm in being the most honest and playful versions of ourselves in the meantime?

https://www.igdb.com/games/street-fighter-iii-3rd-strike

Game data is pulled from IDGB. You can add your own contribution to update any missing or incorrect information such as the cover art. (Which as of this review appears to be a promotional ad)

The game is in my top 10 favorites of all time. It's the one that got me into fighting games and one of the few I still go back to play.

If I had to describe 3rd strike in one word that would be "freedom". The game gives players a plethora of options in any situation. This is by design and has been discussed by Shinichiro Obata [1]: the game is built around "unanswerables" - the idea of creating situations with no clear answers/solutions/resolutions. This is done in order to avoid gameplay based around preset knowledge of situations, and instead emphasizes RPS mechanics more than other games in the genre. But how is this achieved in the game and what are its consequences?


The key to achieving such freedom is the heavy reliance on universal mechanics. The parry is an obvious example of this, along with mechanics such as the throw protection after blockstun/wakeup, crouch teching (also the extra damage done to crouching opponents). With the existence of those few mechanics, the player has plenty of tools at their disposal, that are universal across characters. There are no situations where the pool of answers is severely limited. Additionally, while some options cover a broader range of actions, the game always has a way to reward guessing the exact action that the other player will take. Because of this, every single decision carries risk and nothing is truly safe. Blocking is still the "safest" option, but it can be opened up by overheads into confirms and command grabs for reasonable damage. If that is not in a character's toolkit, then the simple throw loop in the corner can force out a reaction other than blocking. All of this contributes to creating an extremely unpredictable playstyle. Habits and predictable play can be punished severely, resulting in a game that promotes more attentive play and non-rigid playstyles.


Let's take a look at a practical situation in which those tools come into play. Dudley is a character with a strong 50/50 of an overhead or a low hit confirms that could lead to yet another 50/50 each time it is successful. If it is blocked correctly it leads back to neutral. In most other fighting games, without considering reversals (which still exist in 3S), this would be a situation where Dudley can use his absurd okizeme to play in a highly beneficial position. However, since this is 3S the opponent can always go for the parry instead. If successful it would give the defender a very strong combo in retaliation and more pressure afterwards as well. This turns the 50/50 into a double-edged sword. Yet while parrying is strong it still has its own counters - throws, delayed meaties, normals into cancels. In turn these have their own counters. The key takeaway is that, starting from 2 options (and potentially a throw sometimes), that would be the most efficient in most other fighting games, we get to create a variety of new options both sides have to consider and can use viably.


It is important to mention that those tools also limit the theoretical knowledge needed to play the game. While there is knowledge that could benefit a player, any situation provides enough information by itself for its resolution (answer). While frame data has its usage, it takes a backseat to elements like the pushback and ways in which an attack can be parried (low/high or both). Both of those elements can be deduced from the visuals alone. Even if it is a player's turn/a player has priority/advantage, the threat of a parry can steal that turn. This can be used both to escape pressure situations from frame traps or to even further your own pressure - the parry is a tool that can be used both defensively and offensively. Character specific tools still have their play, but rather than limiting or completely substituting your universal options, they tend to instead give you completely new options and create new situations.


All of it leads to some of the most unpredictable matches that one can find in the genre, while also being reasonably easy to play. It does require knowledge of those universal mechanics, but while more specific knowledge is helpful, it is often not required.


[1] If you want to read it for yourself I recommend the SF3 an oral history feature from polygon, the topic in question is discussed in the final bit of the interview.

While I have wondered aloud what a 4S would look like, a vision where maybe Chun’s SA2 doesn’t get to store a whole goddamn bar, I cannot simply feign reality like this and claim Third Strike isn’t worthy of full marks. I previously had it at 4.5 stars, and it was that way since I joined this site. Reason? I dunno, a mix of self-perception issues and a fledgling handle on how I’d divvy up these (ultimately pointless) scores. It does say something, though, that I quickly shelved it at 4.5 - near perfection, but lacking something to elevate that... uh, that...

That what, though? Like realistically, would I care if they made Twelve better in the roster, OR is that yucky little glue-ball ultimately more valuable to me as a character so obviously shit that when I’m playing against my friends, I can choose him and pray that I get a match, leading to the moment where I state, dryly, “Dude, you lost to Twelve.”

At some point, I’d have said differently. However, I think I’ve finally reached the moment that 3S has been selling this whole damn time. Countless hours (seriously, this may be my single most-played game ever) have slowly shaped me into someone who just paces through the cast of characters, taking a stab with Necro or Remy (though I always have a home in Urien) in hopes of discovering something that sparks the fuse again, as this game has reliably done several times since first playing it.

It’s ultimately a trustworthy game for me, one of the only multiplayer games that I value both as a design and as a surefire lightning rod for good experiences. I love basically everything about it, even if it does come out sounding differently.