STREET FIGHTER ALPHA 3 - History of the GREATEST Street Fighter of all time!? 

I must say Capcom 2d games of the 90's are so timeless..... And just looking at the art directions is a visual delight.....

How can you go over the roster and all but ignore the greatest fighter of them all - Dan.

“Triumph or die!” 😆” Go for it, man!” 🤣 “that was great, super, excellent!!!!” 🤣🤣🤣

I'll never forget that M. Bison boss fight, I used to throw the controller when I was younger playing Alpha 3! His Psycho Crusher X-ism takes like 60 or 70% of your health!

I had Dreamcast and my best friend and I mostly played Panzer Dragoon, and Alien. I got Alpha 3 around 8pm one night and called him over to play. We almost instantly decided we had to cut school the next day to really get into it. It was pouring that morning and we came up with the plan to stand near a huge puddle and wait for a car to splash us so we had a "reasonable excuse" to turn back. Worked like a charm! 🤣

This is the game that made me start playing fighting games

Got it on the PS1. Amazing game. We will never see something like this ever again. Complete full roster, bug free,, fun and easy to unlock stuff.

It's amazing how much more gracefully the 1990's-early 2000's Capcom and SNK 2D fighting games have aged, relative to early 3D polygonal fighters like Tekken and Battle Arena Toshinden. I remember being absolutely blown away the first time I saw a Tekken cabinet at the arcade. It must have been 1994. I thought to myself, "I bet it'll be like five or ten years before we get graphics this good on any home system." Less than two years later, we had a near-perfect port on the PSX (which is what we called the original PlayStation back then, as it didn't become known as the PS1 until after the PS2 came out). Now looking back at the original Tekken, with its low resolution textures, with barely a single pass of anti-aliasing to cover up the jagged edges of those pitifully low poly count models it's hard to believe just how awesome I thought it looked. I thought Tekken's arcade contemporaries like the original KOF, Super SFII, and other SNK fighters were old news, and apparently that was what most everyone else was thinking at the time. It makes me wonder which games considered amazing from a graphical standpoint today will suffer the same fate, and which are the equivalent of SF3 that we're currently overlooking.

Alpha 3 on the dreamcast was and still is a great game

This is the best Street Fighter Alpha game ever. The Dreamcast and PSP versions hands down greatest

This probably is one of the greatest game of all time This is also my favorite street fighter game with 2 and 4 not to far behind. Truly a gem.

Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for the PS2 was the ultimate. Change my mind.

This is my favourite title in the Street Fighter series Alpha 3 had almost every character that was playable in the series at the time I wish we have another SF game with every single character similar to Mortal Kombat Armageddon and the Tekken Tag Tournament games.

*You know what I'm such a sucker for?? The different Now Loading screens Alpha 3 has on the PS1 Verison. Just like how Rival Schools on the PS1 also has various Now Loading screens. I LOVE THAT SOO MUCH!!*

I just had my grandfather's funeral. I needed this. Thank you

The saturn was probably the best version. Mostly on the basis that u could battle the entire roster 2 on 1 against the computer

I don't know how I never realized that A in A-ism is for Alpha and Z is for Zero. It's so obvious. My guess would then be the X in X-ism, being the Super Street Fighter II Turbo style, comes from the Japanese name for that game being Super Street Fighter II X. Wonder why they didn't change that one to T-ism in the west for Turbo.

Not even started the video, and I just said YESSSSS on seeing the title.

I'm not big on fighting games but this is THE ONE that I played to the point of blisters, specifically World Tour mode. As a JRPG gamer, that mode kept me coming back for more with it's RPG elements and is what made me master multiple characters and play styles! ❤️

Oh and that PSP version is brilliant.

My FAVORITE game of the franchise

Love the Saturn version. The Saturn was a 2D fighting beast. Still one of my favourite consoles ever as a result

The World Tour mode was also phenomenal!! It definitely gave the game a lot of replayability. Anybody else play as Akuma or Evil Ryu and use 1 raging demon as soon as the fight starts against a weakened opponent and defeat them in one hit?

Which is the best?!? Obviously the one that introduced R. Mika and her flying butt attack

The best 2D fighting games came out the same year: Street Fighter Zero 3 and King of Fighters 98.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is awesome. It had a great version of Vega(he’s my main in every Street Fighter) and it’s glorious.

This is my favorite fighting-game of all time. It has so much depth for a console fighting-game. It kept me engaged longer than any other. Usually, fighters bore me after a while.

The Alpha series was by far my favorite. I love the chain combo system in 1 and 3 was where I had the most fun. I hope Capcom makes Alpha 4 using the same system that's in Alpha 3 and bring back some of the characters they had in Street Fighter 3 Alpha Upper, also make the art style like look like Guilty Gear.. ...Deejay and Fei Long ftw.

Amazingly, I was searching for such a video during the week without success. And this just popped up today :)

Awesome video! Cool to see Alpha 3 Upper footage featuring from our channel . There's not a lot of Upper and Max footage going around - so fellow fans of the Alpha series who are also interested in Upper/Max, feel free to come check out our channel SF Alpha Aus (ru-vid.com) :) We're an Australian group with videos of live and online tournament footage, combo/character guides, playthroughs and even a podcast. We've also found a way to host local tournaments for SFA3 Max with no lag and intend to post footage in the future!

Street Fighter 3 Alpha did play it first on PS1 a lot... then again on PSP this game was awesome !! 😎 By the way .... awesome review like always, enjoy your vids Mr. Top Hat Gaming Man. hope your are doing better now a days 😀

SF: Alpha 2 Gold is still my favorite in this series, even though it doesn't have all the all the fighters and modes of Alpha3.

I think SF Alpha 3 is probably the best, however I found the backgrounds to be a bit drab and the music inferior to that of Street Fighter Alpha 1 & 2. I'd love to see a mash up with all the characters, music and backgrounds from the Alpha series in one game.

Links for anyone who wants to check out our full play-throughs seen in Top Hat Gaming Man's video at: 7:00 & 10:26 & 17:53 - V-ism Dee Jay play through - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fuRkkH2Nhpw.html 8:49 - A-ism Fei Long play through - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q05acf7oFk0.html 9:29 & 15:06 - V-ism T-Hawk play through - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Xwxft333z0o.html Nobody blink...go for broke!!

"History of the GREATEST Street Fighter of all time!?" Third Strike: Am i joke to you?

Cannot wait for 6! The way they revived the series with 4 was genius.

I love how every alpha/zero is different from each other. I love the seriousness of alpha 2, but 3 was that loud in your face game.

I prefer Alpha 2, the third game was quite ambitious but 2 has the refined fast-paced combat I always wanted in a Street Fighter II game. Alpha 3 just doesn't click with me for many reasons, though I was surprised that different countries had a favourite Alpha game, and I'm surprised that Europe of all places preferred 3.

I used to go to the local arcade (rip) many years ago and play this. When I was a teen and it was the weekend, this was my thing. Miss playing the cabinet!

Still my favorite Street Fighter game. Took it for another spin just a few days ago.

A3 on the Saturn was a thing of beauty. So glad that my 15 year old self appreciated A3's 2D sprites over the 3D models of EX.

I love this game with all of my heart. Thank you for giving it the coverage it deserves. Top notch!

Had this on Playstation. Never knew there was an arcade release. It seems like at that time it was all vs games Street Fighter III and Teken 3

Definitely my favorite feature packed Street Fighter. As a hardcore fan of the franchise, when it comes to the retro entries, it's very hard to choose. It's like someone asking "Which one of your hands are better?". They are both great in one aspect or another. Street Fighter 2 is the most iconic. Street Fighter 3rd Strike has the best graphics, animations, and control. Zero 3 is the most feature packed. I love them all. Even EX.

Because of nostalgia, the only thing I wanted from the 2nd game that didn't make it to the 3rd was the field stage. Probably because of the 2nd animated movie. Soo good.

I like Apha 2 the best, and it's not based on the complaints of Alpha 3 that you addressed in this video. I've got two that you didn't discuss: 1. The music: everyone in the game got the techno treatment. At least in the previous Alphas, every theme complimented the character and the stage that it was associated with very well. In Alpha 3, Rose and Vega are the only two characters you can say that about. 2. Bison was restored as the final boss for all characters; whereas, in the previous Alphas, the final battle for each character was with their main rival - this made for a more dramatic story that got taken away in Alpha 3. Were it not for those two things, I'd agree 100% that Alpha 3 was the best. But they messed with those two things.

"select your character, select your fighting sign." So nostalgic

Oh yeah, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max standalone video! :D Good luck making it if you do~!

Even though I always claimed Street Fighter 3: Third Strike as my favorite Street Fighter game, I've come to realize Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3 is my favorite SF game! It just feels perfect. SF3:TS is my second favorite SF game now. Wish I could play these again! (Being poor sucks)

I was shock to hear the sintetized music that CPS2 can produce with this game, that simply blown me away!

I had Alpha 3 on PS1 and I used to play that so intensively everyday after school that I was constantly dealing with nasty blisters on my thumbs all throughout my freshman year in high school. Still my favorite 2D fighter and version of standalone (non-crossover) Street Fighter game to this day. The intense uptempo music, atmosphere of the stages, special intros between rival characters, and ultra fast pace of the fighting on 2x Turbo was everything ❤ And it was so satisfying seeing my opponents still getting juggled by my V-ism shadow combos post K.O. 😂😁 That game was a complete and total masterpiece.

My all time favorite Street Fighter iteration. I started with the psp version. Excited to know you're considering covering it seprately.

I hope all-a-ya'll got yourselves a Saturn and a Dreamcast.

Hell yeah Street Fighter Alpha 3 was an amazing game for its time I still play it and this game still holds up Alpha 3 it's just a phenomenal fighting game in the street fighter series of games.

Hi Top Hat, Thanks for the info on the SFA3 UPPER. You just taught me something. I am impressed with your research. It's disappointing that this version is not in the 30th Anniversary.

Great series. I would love to see you do one on my new FAVORITE fighting game of ALL TIME! The Last Blade. Just got it a couple of weeks ago and I’m hooked.

This makes so much more sense always thought Alpha 3 was Street Fighter 3 as a kid and always confused why the roster for SF3 hardly had any of the iconic fighters

Oh I remember putting in hours in this game on the PS1 and eventually the Dreamcast. It was what made me finally buy the Dreamcast arcade stick. That Dreamcast D-Pad was like rubbing your thumb over broken glass.

Don't forget the great arcade mode and incredible music.

Remember “Cannon Spike” for the Dreamcast? Cammy even references her time there in Street Fighter V. “Cannon Spike” was a weird gun game with Nash, Cammy and Author from Ghost ‘n Goblins. What’s up with that?

I never had anyone to play with when I was a kid playing A3 Max, but I still put so many hours into that game. World Tour Mode, Dramatic and Reverse Dramatic battles, working my way through arcade mode to get another shot at Bison. I have so many fond memories of this game

Most definitely my favorite in the whole series. I've been waiting for this video for quite some time.

My favorite Street Fighter game, my favorite fighting game, and among my top favorite video games across all genres and systems. I was eagerly awaiting this video.

While im not a fan of the games art direction( it feels too flashy while alpha 2 felt like an art renaissance piece) I will say the gameplay was phenominal and really pushed gameplay to new heights!

This game is pretty well balanced compared to the others. Even Dan is a threat in the right hands. I agree. It’s also a personal fave of mine. My local video store had this when I was growing up.

Great video, thank you! I don't know if it is the greatest, but it is definitely the one I played the most. I couldn't wait to play when I'd have free time from studies and all, and more importantly, it left me with the best memories ever. Tops my own list for sure 👍🏻

I seem to remember this being the pinnacle of the 1 on 1 street fighter games, as street fighter 3 was always "some other ish" and SFZ3/SFA3 was essentially the epitome of the "modern" vs/2-on-2 feel. In other words, SFA3 can basically drop the A/Z cuz it's essentially SF3

One thing that I think should be mentioned is that the first Alpha 3 game were a CPS2 game while the Alpha 3 Upper was a Sega Naomi game and the Alpha 3 Max (Double Upper) was never released for other plataforms than the PSP. As some have said, the Alpha Anthology game on the PS2 is one of the greatest compilations of the Alpha games as it includes the Alpha 2 Gold Edition and the Alpha 3 Upper, while the latest Street Fighter collection ignores those and just emulates the CPS1, CPS2 and CPS3 games, and leave behind the Sega Naomi versions. TBH the Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper is waaaaaaay better than the original CPS2 release, specially for someone who loves to play as Fei Long.

Excelent video Top Hat! Remember on 2003 i was insane with this game in the PS1. My Fei Long was unbeatable, super fast !!! Also love the world tour mode, a unique feature!

SFA3 was a gem when it was released. Just funky to see, not everyone was happy with it. Because of the added systems, and options. I don't know about them, but I love it. It was a refined edition, feels amazing to play, and master

This is my favourite Street Fighter game by far. I owned the NTSC version on PS1 and it was amazing how well the game ran on that system considering its limitations.

I've always liked these chunky designs over the original designs. Just my personal choice.

World Tour Mode was a blast! I wish they brought it back in a new SF game, as well as the Tournament Mode that was in the SNES version of Super SF2. Though I did like the WTM of the Dreamcast better than the one on PS.

Great history rundown!

I prefer A2 over A3, the -isms in this game feel mostly pointless, there are fighters in A3 who take way too long to beat, and can crush you instantly, (Zangief and Chun-Li are pretty annoying), and having to completely restart from the beginning if you lose to M. Bison, which is completely unfair if you fight him for the first time. I feel A2's difficulty was better balanced than A3, as I find myself dying way less in A2 than A3. The alpha counter changes done to A3 feel unnecessary as it is harder to perform (at least it is for me personally). There are exploits in A2 and A3 that can allow you to completely bypass fighters that otherwise would actually require you to defeat them, one example I can give is by using Balrog, if you can manage to knockdown an opponent once you can just crouch under them and spam your weak jab and combo them with dash ground straight to constantly knock them down until you win the round. Another exploit I found which works with most opponents (which is basically the only way to beat Zangief) is to wait for them to approach you, press weak jab, and hit them back with any move that can counter them while they jump over you. Although you don't need to use these exploits in A2, they are absolutely vital to you winning A3, which feels like there was some polish missing.

Excellent video!!

I really wish Alpha 3 Max was released outside the PSP. The best Street Fighter roster to this day.

Great vid mate

the thing I most like in Alpha series is that you can use various supers during the battle and even if the supers aren't helping use custom combos(if it's alpha 2 or 3 a-ism or v-ism)

I was actually addicted to this once upon a time! World Tour Mode was on another level! They still never brought that back!

Thank u Big Daddy Top Hat, due to your thursday video, the week goes by fast while waiting for it , really hope u do sonic blast man series and maybe the more obscure beatem'up , especially shadow force and i hope one day i remember that arcade game that i can't recall, cheers big daddy .

I played with my friends with one single rule: no Ryu or any Ryu clon, and the game is amazing, since it pushes you to give a chance to master other characters like Guy, Rolento, Blanka, and the matches are pretty fun.

A bit dissappointing how awesome it was to get a significant amount of additional characters for the home ports; only to get shafted now, when releasing a complete Street Fighter Collection , composed of only arcade ports.

Super bueno el video. Muchas cosas que no sabía

Street Fighter Alpha 3/Zero 3, as well as Street Fighter 3 (and Second Impact/Third Strike) are both amazing games. I had a Japanese import (well, Hong Kong produced silver disc for mod chipped PSX) version of Alpha 2 back in the day, but completely missed Alpha 3. I've played a lot of SF3 as well as Alpha 3 on the Anniversary Collection for the Switch, and both are great games. Alpha 3 strikes me as the more technical and "hard core" fighting game, while SF3 and its various iterations are the better looking and more accessible entries in the series. Unfortunately back in the day I, like so many others, ignored these games in favor of 3d polygon-based fighting games like Virtua Fighter and Tekken series. I'd love to see a Capcom 2d fighter collection of some sort released, with games like SF versus X-Men, Marvel vs Capcom, Capcom vs SNK, SF4, etc released for the Switch although that's probably unlikely due to licensing issues.

Ah, vivid feather display in the arcade wilderness. You can tell they had fun giving the characters character.

My very first Street Fighter game and I have a lot of fond memories of it. I had the PSP which in my opinion is the best version of Alpha 3 as it has all of the characters as well as the addition of Eagle and Ingrid. I mostly played in the Dramatic Battle and World Tour mode more than the actual arcade mode as both of those modes were tones of fun and the roster was brilliant, there were so many good characters I enjoyed playing as, from Akuma to Sakura to Cammy and even Cody who are still my main in any street fighter game he's in, it is still my favourite street fighter and I wish we get another street fighter game with the same massive roster and vast amounts of modes Alpha 3 had, I would love to play dramatic battle or variable battle mode in 2.5d.

Great video i will wait for the history about the psp version :)

Excellent man ✊!!! A legendary game and legendary RU-vidr 🎩!!! #LondonRealArmy

My friends who were all PS1 owners weren't aware of how superior the Saturn version of SFZ3 was to the PS1 port until I brought my Saturn over for a gaming gathering once. They all wanted to get a Saturn and the game, but at that point, the game was going for way more than they were willing to spend. They still ask me to bring the Saturn by every gaming gathering as a result!

It's weird to hear people saying "Japan alternate name" since Alpha is the alternate name for me in asia where SF Zero came out first.

One thing you forgot to mention is SFA3's SPECTACULAR soundtrack!! When you play this game you play it LOUD!!!

I think Alpha 3 is the absolute best of the SF series. The characters, art style, backgrounds, music and game play. Just perfect. Loved the arcade version and spent a lot of time and quarters on it. I still have the PS1 version for the World Tour mode and the PS2 version for its arcade perfect graphics and quick load times. "Go for it man!"

one of the things i loved about this game was its unique rock style soundtrack. It Pretty much ditched the overly used traditional soundtrack from the previous sf games

The best of the series, The PSP version was great, it added new characters and I think had the GBA exclusive characters too

The craziest thing about SFA3 is the project lead later went on to direct Ape Escape 2 and 3.

Best Alpha game in the series! Still one of my favorites to this day!

Man! I had a Copy for the ps1, Saturn and later for the dream Cast. And than the finally for the ps2 for the 20th Birthday SF edition! 👍

Out of Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 on the PS, I liked Alpha 2 better, but once I got into Capcom Vs SNK 2 on PS2, I never went back.

It actually was the greatest SF of them all, but Capcom put 50% effort into making the game which gave it even more plot holes and continuity errors. For example: · Why was Nash still alive? Wasn't he supposed to get replaced by Agent Shadow after he got Krillined in SFA2? · Wasn't Ryu supposed to wear the red headband I gave him? · Wasn't I supposed to cut my hair neck-length during that time already? · Wasn't Violent Ken supposed to show up in this game? · Wasn't Shin M. Bison's suit supposed to turn silver? · Wasn't 鑑 恭介, Kyōsuke Kagami from Rival Schools supposed to be in SFA3 Upper alongside Eagle, Maki and Yun? · Speaking of Yun, what was him and Yang doing in this game?! SFA3 takes place in 1989 and SFIII takes place in 1998!! Do they stay as teens forever?! · The only kind of plot that SFA3 had was in it's intro dialogues, boss dialogues and ending dialogues. Typical bareboned story-mode in fighting games. · Julia is a missing girl from T. Hawk's Thunderfoot tribe in Mexico. Juli is one-half of an explicitly German pair of brainwashed minions named after the two months in the middle of the year. According to T. Hawk's ending, they're the same person. It took the Comic-Book Adaptation to clear this one up. · "I was pale because I was sick" says Birdie, what a weak origin story. Why not just say that the last Birdie from SF1 was an impostor to make all of England fear him? · They should've kept M. Bison slender and gave the buff M. Bison to SFIII where he is a complete son/clone to the original. · Capcom would later make the incomplete Hyper Street Fighter Alpha in 2006 as an unlockable for SFA Anthology.