TGS 2001 Fall: Hands-onStreet Fighter Alpha 3 GBA

Along with a handful of other GBA games on display, Capcom's TGS booth had a few healthy spots running the handheld version of Street Fighter Zero 3. The favorite fighter of many die-hard fans of the genre seems to be coming along on the handheld, and a couple of new surprises were revealed at the show.

Namely, the inclusion of some new characters. Specifically, some of the new fighters from Capcom vs. SNK 2: Maki, Eagle, and Yun. This increases the character count significantly, which was already pretty thick to begin with. Each of their representations were for the most part faithful, as you'd imagine, so a few sacrifices had to be made in the animation department. Judging from what we were able to play, luckily, no essential frames were stripped--Maki's four-hit chain went off without a hitch, as did Eagle's flurry of prods.

The control scheme is worth mentioning. Unlike the recently released SF Revival edition (which had both light and medium attacks mapped to the same buttons and relied on a tap/press distinction to execute either), SFZ3 has you use the shoulder buttons to execute light attacks and act as a sort of shift key for mediums. Basically, if you hold down either shoulder button while pressing a face button, you will execute a medium attack. Many will find this to work much better than the previous GBA SF game's scheme; the distinction between commands is much more defined, allowing for characters with string combos to thrive more practically.

We'll have more on this one as soon as it becomes available.