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[No_Style]

I was hoping someone would be able to shed some light on the reasons behind Street Fighter III's release interweaving with the Alpha series.

• Street Fighter Alpha - June 1995
• Street Fighter Alpha 2 - Feb/Mar 1996
• Street Fighter III: New Generation - Feb 1997
• Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact - Oct 1997
• Street Fighter Alpha 3 - June 1998
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike - May 1999

What happened here? Why did Capcom decide to release Street Fighter III before they were done with the Alpha series?

The VS series and the EX series were running parallel but they had their own distinct play and graphical styles. Alpha and SFIII series have their differences but from a laymen's perspective, they were both seen as the "more grounded" Street Fighter games with direct ties with SFII.

I remember enjoying the Alpha series and all the attention it received while SFIII: New Generation was seen as this weird offshoot with strange characters and fewer gameplay features (no custom combos, fewer supers at once, no air blocking etc). Everyone I knew stayed with Alpha 2, didn't even give SFIII a chance and waited for Alpha 3 when we heard it was on its way.

So what gives?

I can see it being a project to put out a game on CPS3 hardware but they could have released Alpha 3 on it.

Thanks in advance!

 

[RS4-]

Could they have had different teams working on it? I have no idea since I rarely hear anything about how the games were made and such unless it was about sf1 and 2.

 

[spazchicken]

My guess is they were looked at as different series with different styles of play.

EX, Puzzle, Dark Stalkers and Gem Fighter (and who knows what else) was out around that time as well, right? Just another piece of Capcom's milking strategy back then.

 

[Lights and Waves]

No idea. Did it have something to do with PlayStation? As a kid, I never had any arcades near me. I found out about new games from Blockbuster, and that's where I first saw and rented Alpha 3. It wasn't until years later that I learned SF3 was a thing.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Back in the day, Capcom making fighting games was like Square making RPG's or Nintendo making platformers, so yeah, they had different teams making different experiences. Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter III, Darkstalkers, Star Gladiator, Xmen Children of the Atom, Cyberbots, etc etc.

Where I lived at the time, we would have loved to get a chance to play SF III but alpha cabinets were the only ones making the rounds. SF III was kind of seen as the true sequel that was taking the series forward, while alpha was kinda seen as a transitional game that became way more successful than they thought it would.

Capcom was also going for different audiences. Alpha was more straight up generic anime while III was more grown up and hardcore. Trying to please different audiences within the genre. Obviously when you make many offerings available to the fanbase, one will rise to the top, in this case it was alpha and the smen vs games while SF III had a more niche audience ... probably because they took more risks.

 

[JayEH]

It was back in the day when you made fighting games all the time because the genre was at a peak. Then it had a hard crash.

 

[Pop-O-Matic]

Not a SF historian by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if they released Alpha 3 simply to recoup losses from SFIII since it was apparently a big failure at launch.

 

[Leafhopper]

Not a SF historian by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if they released Alpha 3 simply to recoup losses from SFIII since it was apparently a big failure at launch.

That is what I always thought the reason was. SF3 New Gen didn't do well like at all.

 

[entremet]

Arcades games are a bit different than console games in terms of release strategy. At least back then when they were more popular.

SNK was all about fighters too.

 

[Shadoken]

Not a SF historian by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if they released Alpha 3 simply to recoup losses from SFIII since it was apparently a big failure at launch.

Pretty much this , And they werent able to port SF3 to home consoles until the Dreamcast came along.

 

[Tizoc]

Just to calrify something:
Both SF3 NG and SFA1 are 'prototypes', you could say they rushed their release; both games had any of their plot stuff retconned in their immediate successor game.

For example, SFA1 had chain combos like what Darkstalkers had, this was removed in SFA2.
SF3 NG didn't even have EX moves making certain characters pretty weak, plus infinites.
Granted they toned various stuff down in 2I but you can see where I'm going here.
Actually SF3 NG's stages were a little interesting; Ryu and Ken shared the same 'location', namely Japan; round 1 would be outside an onsen, Round 2 INSDE an Onsen.
Ibuki's NG stage would cycle through times of the day as well as have various ninjas in the background, this was removed in 2I and the stage is pretty much barren.

 

[bwahhhhh]

i'm not sure, but given the 2+ year long gap between Alpha 2 and Alpha 3, i think it's possible that they WERE done with Alpha, but then the response (money-wise) to SF3 was so tepid, that they did an Alpha 3. The fact that they brought back so many (S)SF2 characters in Alpha 3 (then even more in the home versions) may have been to appeal to the SF2 crowd they lost with SF3. but i don't have any evidence for that.

 

[lazygecko]

That is what I always thought the reason was. SF3 New Gen didn't do well like at all.

The fact that it didn't get a home console release certianly didn't help matters either.

 

[kenta]

SF3 at the time felt kind of like a weird relative... Someone you thought you recognized but couldn't quite put your finger on why they were... off. Like Raging Spaniard said, SF3 cabinets were uncommon and Alpha was hot.

Third Strike finally came out and I remember it being received well at the time but it was still uncommon to see one in an arcade and it still didn't turn into a success until years went by and people had more time to reflect on it...

Obviously all hyper-locally anecdotal, but perhaps it relates to the way the games were released/developed the way they were

 

[Hurt and Scared]

Not a SF historian by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if they released Alpha 3 simply to recoup losses from SFIII since it was apparently a big failure at launch.

 

[No_Style]

Capcom was also going for different audiences. Alpha was more straight up generic anime while III was more grown up and hardcore. Trying to please different audiences within the genre.

I considered this possibility but how confident in that assessment did they have to be to even start catering to specific demographics within a certain play style? Was it a western market thing? I never got the impression that there was a huge audience of fighting game fans were ignoring Alpha series because of its anime influences.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

Capcom had no restraint in the late 90s. They flooded the market. It was a great time to be a fighting game fan, but it ended up drowning out the less known games (IE Darkstalkers).

 

[Shadow Ranger]

SF Alpha came along after Darkstalkers, which was apparently the trial of an anime looking Fighter. Alpha itself ended up being a baby step, demo, beta, what have you with Alpha 2 improving everything (unless you liked chain combos).

No idea why III came, but probably as a means to have a prequel and a sequel going at the same time. In their ideal world, maybe that would have been their initial reason to drop old faces in SFIII since they'd be in Alpha, alas that didn't hold for long, and even more evident with SFIV onwards (which is thankfully way better documented thanks to the Internet!).

It's sad to say, but only Namco got away with big time skips and drastic roster changes (Tekken 3 and Soul Calibur 1 to a lesser extent).

 

[qcf x2]

i'm not sure, but given the 2+ year long gap between Alpha 2 and Alpha 3, i think it's possible that they WERE done with Alpha, but then the response (money-wise) to SF3 was so tepid, that they did an Alpha 3. The fact that they brought back so many (S)SF2 characters in Alpha 3 (then even more in the home versions) may have been to appeal to the SF2 crowd they lost with SF3. but i don't have any evidence for that.

Yeah, also I kind of doubt they created Alpha saying "we're going to make 2 of these, plus a Gold version and a SNES port with per-round load times."

Alpha was not really treated as a linear entry until later. It looked and played so differently (and had the whole prequel thing) that it was essentially its own thing. There's no real reason Capcom (supposing they weren't in their current position of distress, incompetence and general disarray) wouldn't be able to make a Street Fighter Alpha 4 a few years from now.

 

[Kelsdesu]

Capcom had no restraint in the late 90s. They flooded the market. It was a great time to be a fighting game fan, but it ended up drowning out the less known games (IE Darkstalkers).

I beleve it was this. The gettin was good, so they went for it.

90s were the goat.

 

[Shadow Ranger]

I don't really see any real reason to make an Alpha 4. What more prequel stuff is worth a whole different game? Just switch it up again in VI or something.

(SF2010 please...joke).

 

[No_Style]

Not a SF historian by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if they released Alpha 3 simply to recoup losses from SFIII since it was apparently a big failure at launch.

i'm not sure, but given the 2+ year long gap between Alpha 2 and Alpha 3, i think it's possible that they WERE done with Alpha, but then the response (money-wise) to SF3 was so tepid, that they did an Alpha 3. The fact that they brought back so many (S)SF2 characters in Alpha 3 (then even more in the home versions) may have been to appeal to the SF2 crowd they lost with SF3. but i don't have any evidence for that.

Considered this as well but it didn't seem to be very Capcom-like to only release 2 revisions for a series. Also the amount of work that went into Alpha 3 (new animations, moves, characters, play styles and more) could have warranted a longer dev cycle?

I like this theory though. It seems to the most obvious move if you ignore what I said above.

 

[RiderKairuu]

I'm bummed they never released a SFIII collection even if 3rd Strike steals the show. I would love to play NG and 2I.

 

[Stone Ocean]

They basically tried to brute force the market into buying the CPS3 with SF3. CPS3 was a colossal failure so they went back to CPS2 with Alpha 3.

I'm bummed they never released a SFIII collection even if 3rd Strike steals the show. I would love to play NG and 2I.

IMO NG and 2I are best left forgotten.

 

[fader]

Capcom had no restraint in the late 90s. They flooded the market. It was a great time to be a fighting game fan, but it ended up drowning out the less known games (IE Darkstalkers).

But I do think the more appropriate reason is to soften the lost from SF3.

 

[bwahhhhh]

Considered this as well but it didn't seem to be very Capcom-like to only release 2 revisions for a series. Also the amount of work that went into Alpha 3 (new animations, moves, characters, play styles and more could have warranted a longer dev cycle?

yeah, two revisions seems low, but they did already re-use the Alpha sprites in X-MenvsSF and MSHvsSF before SFA3, so I guess you could count each of those as half-revisions, at least in terms of re-using assets.

or, alternately, XvSF and MSHvSF the two years before, then Marvel vs Capcom the same year as SFA3 could explain why SFA3 took so long.

 

[freeofgreed]

Not a SF historian by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if they released Alpha 3 simply to recoup losses from SFIII since it was apparently a big failure at launch.

Yeah came in to say this. Capcom probably had no intention of making an Alpha 3 and probably intended to move on to SF3 after Alpha 2 but the lukewarm reception to the 3 series is probably is what motivated them to release another alpha game.

 

[RiderKairuu]

They basically tried to brute force the market into buying the CPS3 with SF3. CPS3 was a colossal failure so they went back to CPS2 with Alpha 3.

IMO NG and 2I are best left forgotten.

I don't want to forget a game where Sean was considered good..

 

[Boney]

I loved Alpha 2 and 3 back in the day. I was shocked when I found out there was a street fighter 3 around 2003. It blew my mind that there were 3 versions already.

 

[Beautiful Ninja]

I'm bummed they never released a SFIII collection even if 3rd Strike steals the show. I would love to play NG and 2I.

The Dreamcast port had both 2I and 3S. As others have mentioned, the reason why practically no one plays or talks about NG or 2I is because they just are not good. I think half the reason people care about 2I at all is because Sean is good in that game, even if it's for the absolute dumbest reasons (sHP whiff spam to build meter and confirm anything into SA)

 

[deadscreensky]

Not a historian, but back at the time the Alpha series felt like a stopgap to a lot of us.

This might also be an unpopular view, but I've always thought that SF3's biggest problem at release was that it was too advanced to see good home ports. If late 1997 had seen a PS1 port of New Generation, things might have gone a little differently.

(I know New Generation was pretty undercooked, but that's true of a lot of first fighting game iterations, including Alpha. It was still a fun game.)

And other people have mentioned it already, but you have to understand just how many fighting games were being released back then. Combine your timeline with releases from SNK, Sega, Namco, Capcom's non-SF stuff, and half a dozen other smaller publishers and it will seem less questionable.

 

[Man God]

2D was dead.

 

[Mr. X]

You missed SF2T in your timeline

Each SF was viewed as it's own franchise basically. Capcom let them coexist because they played differently, catering to different groups.

SNK did this with their KoF, AoF, RB/FF, SamSho

 

[Alex_Mexico]

For me the only Street Fighter with a number 3 in the title that I cared about was SF Alpha 3. The real SF3 never did it for me.

 

[Man God]

For me the only Street Fighter with a number 3 in the title that I cared about was SF Alpha 3. The real SF3 never did it for me.

Yep.

 

[MegamanXZero]

You missed SF2T in your timeline

Each SF was viewed as it's own franchise basically. Capcom let them coexist because they played differently, catering to different groups.

SNK did this with their KoF, AoF, RB/FF, SamSho

I bet you mean SSF2T or ST, doesn't count though since that one was released in 1994 and not after 1995 or in between Alpha and SFIII.

 

[dragonzdogma]

The guy who operated the sf3 arcade told me the game was on a cd, and he actually showed it to us, but was it real, or did he inserted a fake cd in there?

 

[the_standard]

Remember when the first version was simply titled "3" in some territories? That was probably not the best idea. I like some of the backgrounds that are in 2nd Impact but not in 3rdStrike. Wish there was an all encompassing version with all the content of 3,2I,and 3S without needing to boot in an out of them.

 

[Renekton]

The guy who operated the sf3 arcade told me the game was on a cd, and he actually showed it to us, but was it real, or did he inserted a fake cd in there?

Ya it was for their flaky DRM killswitch

 

[entremet]

SF3 was also harder to pirate and cabs cost more money being CPS3.

I never saw a Warzaed cab.

 

[Nocturno999]

I can't tell you what was Capcom thinking. Maybe they released it to push their CD CPS-3 system even though it wasn't the first title for it.

The arcades were flooded with SNK titles, Vs. and SF of course. Among them SF3 was too complex for its own good.
The gap of a player that could parry to someone who didn't was immense. You kicked the player's ass and he simply moved to another machine.

 

[smurfx]

ah the good old days of arcades and being surprised at new fighting game releases. still remember being blown away when i saw street fighter alpha and the new art direction.

 

[Gr1mLock]

Late cps2 early cps3 golden era happened.

 

[Lyte Edge]

They basically tried to brute force the market into buying the CPS3 with SF3. CPS3 was a colossal failure so they went back to CPS2 with Alpha 3.

Yeah, I'm sure this was a big reason why Alpha kept on going. More arcades stuck with CPS2 and got Vs.and Alpha games instead of CPS3 systems and SF3. Hell, I know for a fact that when I got a CPS3 and 2i of my own in 1999, none of the arcades in the city had it.

What I always wondered was why Capcom never ported SF3 to the 32-bit consoles. It's not like they didn't port games to the PS1 that had lots of animation cuts already, and the Saturn with 4MB ram cart should have been able to handle it. They couldn't have seen the game as a failure since 3s came out and all three versions came out on the DC. It's just odd to me that they chose to port the unknown Jojo's game first and even localize it ahead of SF3.

 

[Renekton]

I can't tell you what was Capcom thinking. Maybe they released it to push their CD CPS-3 system even though it wasn't the first title for it.

The arcades were flooded with SNK titles, Vs. and SF of course. Among them SF3 was too complex for its own good.

They were very determined to make a technically-astounding SF3 as a worthy sequel, hence the pricey sprite-chomping CPS3 board.

Not sure about the elaborate DRM though.

 

[ReyVGM]

The Alpha and SF3 series were done by different teams.

Alpha was not the successor to SF2 (obviously), it was more of a spinoff so to speak, so it wasn't really considered competition to SF3.

Remember Capcom was also doing the Street Fighter vs series at the same time, so they were more like a family of Street Fighter games and not successors or competition.

 

[ReBurn]

I honestly didn't know that SFIII even existed. I always thought Capcom just went in a different direction with the franchise by making the Alpha games. When SFIV was announced I went back and checked and learned that there was a SFIII, I'd just never heard about it.

 

[Dachande]

Not only were Capcom happy to flood the market a bit with fighters at that point in time, I think the reason both Alpha and SF3 existed at the same time was because SF3 was always intended to be the 'true successor' to SF2 with a new hardware revision to launch further games from, with CPS-3, and it just didn't work out as they hoped.

SF2 was originally a CPS-1 game, and it was eventually 'ported' to CPS-2 with the release of SSF2. I believe Capcom wouldn't have wanted to release SF3 so quickly after SSF2T, because by this point, people had realised they were milking SF2 a bit and they were getting some bad press for it - releasing SF3 would've been the punchline everyone was waiting for.

But fighting games were still selling, so Alpha was released as a kind of intermediary series - made for the CPS-2 board, exploring new mechanics to the genre further. It's not SF3, it's Alpha, Capcom says. Plus Darkstalkers, X-Men, etc etc.

These things are planned years in advance, so while the iron is still hot, Capcom would have planned CPS-3 for their future even-more-impressive 2D games, with Street Fighter 3, the sequel everyone's gagging for, as the initial flagship title for the platform. Right?

But as we all know, the market for 2D fell apart around 97, 98 as 3D became the new hotness. Capcom went with CPS-3, SF3 came out as the first game to launch the hardware, and as people in this thread have posted about, not many really cared or got a chance to try it as it was just the wrong time. CPS-3 was clunky, not very operator-friendly and expensive, so as less and less arcade operators decided to buy it, the system kind of goes into a death spiral, gets 5 games made for it and then shelved.

I'm no 'historian' but that's pretty much how it played out from my perspective.

 

[Shadoron]

I can give some insight into this, from an Operator's point of view. I was a teenager during this time frame, and worked at the family business. For most operators, the time period that existed during SF2 and Mortal Kombat was still a good one for arcade machines. Quarter drop had begun to slow, but was reinvigorated with the release of those two games. Remember at that time, arcade game platforms were still better hardware than could be found with home consoles. If you wanted to play SF2 with proper controls (joysticks and buttons) and get the full experience, it was arcade or bust.

For those who aren't familiar with arcade hardware, Capcom was using the CPS2 cart system for their games. This started with Super SF2. Operators ended up with a number of those systems, because the price of hardware carts were cheap (relatively speaking), and operators had advance knowledge of games that would be coming out for the hardware. Think along the lines of launch window games now. By the time that Alpha 1 released, things had already begun to slow down again. Most operators saw that the arcade market was dying and basically stuck to cart systems: CPS2 and SNK's NeoGeo system. By the time that Alpha 2 and SF3:NG came out... most operators sided with Alpha 2 rather than an expensive new hardware platform.

I was the guy (well, kid) in charge of picking what arcade game kits we were buying at the time, and I basically forced our company to pickup a CPS3 system with SF3:NG. I can't recall exactly how pricey it was, but we are talking thousands of dollars. Arcade kits weren't cheap; Capcom knew that we would be making money off of them, and priced accordingly. However, you have to realize that it wasn't just the operator making money off of them, there was usually a split of the profits going to the location, and also state sales tax on each play to deal with. Anyways, back to the point: the SF3 kit did terribly. The reason was probably multi-pointed. A dying arcade scene, new advances to the SF system that players weren't used to, and operators that either bought only one kit to try or took a wait and see approach (and bought none). This final point led to limited exposure, which would only make the cycle worse. Why would operators want to spend money on something that really wasn't showing a return on investment, when they could spend $800 or $900 on a new Alpha 2 or 3 CPS2 cart. Most of our arcade "scene" locations were happy to get Alpha 2 instead of SF3, so why waste the money?

By the time that the other 4 CPS3 games would release, most operators (and players) had abandoned normal arcade games completely. Golden Tee golf would arrive on the scene in '97, and go on to dominate. Unless you were an operator in the NYC area, tourist destinations, or the West Coast... there wasn't a player base for fighting games, let alone anything that didn't involve a trackball and golf.

I remember our office got a call from someone at Capcom USA right after SF3 released. My dad put me on the phone with him, and we spent a few minutes talking about the failure of the CPS3 system. I have no proof, but the guy all but said that Capcom JP was going to extend the life of the CPS2 system as long as possible. They knew that the only way to keep pumping out arcade software that operators would buy, would be to basically keep prices as low as possible. That meant CPS2 carts, since that would have been Capcom's best selling platform.

I wouldn't surprise me if some former Capcom employee came out and said that SF3:NG was incomplete and rushed simply to try to get the product out before the arcade slowdown of the mid 90's. They just weren't fast enough to get the hardware out there before most of the market collapsed on itself.

 

[jhmtehgamr20xx]

They basically tried to brute force the market into buying the CPS3 with SF3. CPS3 was a colossal failure so they went back to CPS2 with Alpha 3.

IMO NG and 2I are best left forgotten.

NG? Maybe. 2I? Fuck no. It had the better backgrounds and some of the best music in the 3 series. Plus Sean was actually decent in that version and I somewhat like its' approach to air parries more.