Making sense of Street Fighter part 3

With the insanity of Street Fighter Alpha 3 going on, I had no idea that a year earlier, Capcom released a Street Fighter III. I didn't get the news until 1999 and I kept wondering how I, a self proclaimed huge Street Fighter fan, missed it.

Everything about SFIII blew me away and it showed that Capcom was looking to move forward with series. New graphics, new jazzy soundtrack, semi-new gameplay and best of all, new characters. The previous storylines involving Shadaloo, along with it's leader, M. Bison, were nowhere in sight. In his place as head baddie is Gill, a half blue, half red angelic figure in charge of the Illuminati.

Apparently, the Illuminati couldn't afford to give their leader some pants...

In its first release, only Ryu and Ken returned from the original series, added only after fans demanded they be brought back. In the place of Ryu as the hero was Alex, a wrestler from the U.S. who went after the Gill when his trainer was injured by them. Other interesting characters included Ibuki, a *ninja* high school student, Dudley, a gentleman boxer who just wants his car back and Sean, the protege' of Ken. Through time, improved versions of SFIII were released, adding more characters and more fighting modes but I don't think the series really caught on in the U.S. the way SFII did. I think one of the reasons for that was because of Street Fighter fans were too busy playing the "Marvel vs. Capcom" series. While I don't knock the series, because  it was a fun series, Street Fighter III should've gotten the attention it deserved. From what I remember, only one of the games even made it to a video game console in the States,"Street Fighter III: 3rd strike" on the Sega Dreamcast.

8 years later, I began seeing previews for what would become Street Fighter IV and thought it looked pretty cool but it didn't blow me away. I saw Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li and thought "Oh, they brought Chun-Li back. That's nice" and hoped for more. Oh, how disappointed I would become.

I don't know who did Ryu's character design but they needed to fired ASAP!

With more reveals of the game came more disappointment. When all the fighters were revealed, it was the same Goddamn cast of Street Fighter II and yes, I realize that Street Fighter Alpha 3 also had the cast of Street Fighter II but that was a prequel and I already explained my frustration with that. The new fighters didn't fare any better. With the exception of El Fuerte' and Gouken, the designs were bland at best. Now to be honest, I might have been ok with the original fighters being in it if they had been aged but none of that had happened. And then I saw the story and I thought to myself "you've got to be fucking kidding me!". Street Fighter IV takes place after Street Fighter II but before Street Fighter III. This does not make it Street Fighter IV, it makes it Street Fighter II & 1/2. The other gripe was that Shadaloo was back in the picture. Bison was back but he was not the main villain, though he was still in charge of the organization. The main villain is Seth, who is in charge of Shadaloo's weapons division and looks like Dr. Manhattan of "Watchmen".

Seth, yeah, not impressed...

To me, this was not a step in the right direction, it was a step backward. No matter how upped the graphics and combos are, if a game is giving its fans nothing new, it's only a matter of time before fans are able to through that and I guess it was my time. I played the game it was just as most of  the new characters were, bland. Even it's updated versions didn't do anything for the series, save bringing in evil fighter, Juri.  At this point, I kind of gave up on the series...

Recently, there has been footage of the upcoming Street Fighter V and it looked exactly like SFIV. Test footage shown was of Ryu, Chun Li, a returning Charlie (now looking like Frankenstein's Monster) and hints of Bison. I'll put this way, I'm not jumping for joy about it...yet.