There are a lot of good reasons to be revisiting Capcom’s Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, the Street Fighter port released for the PSP back in 2006. Capcom celebrated its 25th birthday just a couple of weeks ago on June 11th. In May this year Capcom announced what we’ all suspected. Street Fighter 4; already heading to the arcades later this year, would also be making its way to PS3, Xbox360 and PC as well. Then there’s Kristin Kreuk. She’s still the best reason to watch Smallville, and currently she’s filming the latest Street Fighter movie – Street Fighter – the Legend of Chun Li, in Bangkok. Lastly, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max was the first game ever reviewed by The Incomplete Gamer, albeit for another gaming website. As our first piece of review code, the UMD takes pride of place in the TIG lab.

But a word of warning. while the following review holds a special place in our heart, there’s nothing new here that we haven’t all seen before. If Street Fighter was a singer and not a game franchise it would have retired to Vegas a long time ago, where it could perform the same routine seven nights a week to its loyal fans.

Back in 2006, Capcom brought the Street Fighter love to the PSP with Street Fighter Alpha 3, and threw in enough extras to warrant the addition of the word ‘Max’ to the title. If you have even a passing interest in gaming then Street Fighter needs no introduction. Here’s a gaming franchise with a rich arcade gaming heritage, old school appeal and a hardcore fan base. The Street Fighter series is one of Capcom’s most popular franchises, with 25 million sales worldwide spread across almost every major home gaming platform over the years.

Fire up Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max and your PSP has instant street cred, without dabbling in any of that messy and legally suspect homebrew scene. There it is, in all its original arcade glory. Much has been made of the fact that what once took up the space of a medium sized washing machine and took two people to lift can now be played on a handheld, and not in some cut-down compromised form either, but a perfect port with a heap of extras thrown in for good measure. If the wonders of miniaturisation still float your boat, or if you’ve been left disappointed by less complete attempts to port your favourite Street Fighter game to a handheld in the past, then chances are you’ll be initially impressed by Capcom’s efforts.

Spoiled for choice.

The main menu welcomes you with a staggering 15 modes to choose from. Those new to the Street Fighter series or those just a little rusty might want to step into the Training Mode and work on their moves before jumping into Arcade Mode, where you’ll ‘experience all the action and story of the arcade hit’. In truth the story’s a bit on the thin side; this is simply a game where you beat the crap out of the opposition, or at least attempt to do just that. You are given a whopping 37 characters to choose from, including all of the characters from Street Fighter Alpha, and 4 new characters, Eagle, Yun and Maki from Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Ingrid from Capcom Fighting Evolution. There are also 2 unlockable characters as well, M. Bison and Shin Akuma. Each character has ten fights to battle through. Do the maths; you’ll be spending hours completing this mode alone.

At this point you might want to head back to the main menu. Go to Game Options and dial back the difficulty level – from 1 to 8 fiendishly difficult stars (the default is 4). Here you can also customise the number of rounds (1, 3 or 5), the game speed, and background and sound effect volumes. Still in Options Mode you’ll want to go to Button Configuration and change things more to your liking. If you are really struggling to win a single round, let alone a fight, you might want to assign a special move or combo to one of the shoulder buttons or any of the right hand face buttons. The hardcore players will cry foul, and certainly, assigning such moves to a single button, dumbs the game down dramatically, but the option is there if you need it. If you don’t know your ‘Hadouken’ from your ‘Spinning Back Knuckle’ then you might like to try assign a special move or combo to one button, at least until you literally find your feet.

Back to the Mode Menu. In World Tour, you can travel the globe and build your fighter’s power and ability. Dramatic Battle let’s you team up in a 2 on 1 battle, probably not a bad idea if you still find yourself battling with the controls and your opponents. Reverse Dramatic Battle turns the tables, putting you on the wrong end of a 2 on 1 showdown. Variable Battle is great for those with short attention spans – you can swap characters during the fight. Free Battle lets you pick your opponent, while Vs 100 Kumite lets you see how many fights out of a 100 you can survive. Final Battle as its name suggests puts you up against the bosses, while Survival Mode lets you see how many victories you can string together. Your high scores for all modes are available in Score Ranking. Edit Mode allows you to tinker with your character’s style, while Entry Mode allows you to enter an edited character into other modes. Rounding out the offerings is Network Mode. Sadly it’s ad-hoc only, and there is no game sharing so you may be hard pressed to find another Street Fighter toting PSP gamer ready to throw down.

If you can’t win in 2 on 1 Dramatic Battle mode you’re doing something wrong.

While the various modes on offer are impressive and you’d clock up many an hour before playing through all that’s to be had here, it’s the Street Fighter fighting mechanics that give this game it’s real depth. You can choose the game speed and your fighting style – the unusually named ‘ism’s X, V or A. The real enjoyment of any Street Fighter game is mastering the combos and supers, and in learning the individual strengths and weaknesses of the characters. This is no button masher. In fact even on the lower level of difficulty, button mashing will only get you through a couple of fights in Arcade Mode before you end up on the wrong end of the big K.O.

And here’s where things get difficult, both in game play and in recommending the game. If you’re one of the hard-core Street Fighter faithful, you would have been thrilled to discover one of the best received Street Fighter games ever had been faithfully ported to the PSP. But chances are you’ll be less than thrilled with the hardware the game is on. Give it an hour and your thumb will ache regardless of whether you persevere with the D pad or the analogue nub. I’ve been told that if you play through the pain, you’ll eventually come battle hardened and oblivious, but one week in, my thumb still feels like it’s been recently dislocated.

You might think the control problems may go some way to providing a bit of a leveller between the hardcore gamer and those new to the scene, but while the pain may be felt equally, and the experienced player may find some of the moves a little harder to pull off than in years gone by, the rest of us are going to be dealing with not just the pain and an awkward control system, but also a ruthless AI that takes no prisoners.

Visually, for the most part the game looks great. The front end looks a little rougher than you might expect had you never played the 8-year old original Arcade version, but those who loved the original will be glad to see an exact replica on their PSP screens. Purists may choose to play the game in its original 4 x 3 mode, with customisable borders on the left and right of the screen, or you can play it in full, widescreen mode. In-game screens are detailed and vivid. Some will swear that Street Fighter has never looked so good. The audio is ok. The music isn’t something you’d necessarily want to rip to your mp3 player and listen to, but again, everything has made it across from the arcade version.

In theory, loading times, the bane of many a PSP release shouldn’t be problem here. Surely, a 2D beat-em-up should be the perfect pick-up and play portable game. Sadly, the loading times, both between rounds and between fights, are too long. From the selection of your character in Arcade Mode, through to the commencement of the fight, you are facing a 30 second wait.

Too much time spent watching loading screens and not enough time spent playing.

Then there’s the question of whether a fighting game even belongs on a handheld like the PSP. Six months on from launch, I no longer handle the PSP with kid gloves or look at it in awe. Even so, in the last seven days playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, the handheld has taken a greater pounding than in the previous 25 weeks put together. Is the PSP even built for this kind of punishment?

One last thing; there’s nothing new here that we haven’t all seen before. If Street Fighter was a singer and not a game franchise it would have retired to Vegas a long time ago, where it could perform the same routine seven nights a week to its loyal fans. Even if you think your hands can take the punishment, I’d still recommend you rent this one before buying. If you’re a hard-core Street Fighter fan, and can put up with the PSP’s shortcomings, then you’ll surely enjoy Street Fighter 3 Alpha Max.

This month, Capcom’s Blog ran a Street Fighter promotion; the prize up for grabs, the dubious opportunity to get your pixilated mug shot transposed onto the body of a bystander in the up-coming Street Fighter IV video game. Lame. Where’s the glamour, the excitement, the money. Capcom made ¥74.542 billion in 2006. Surely there’s enough small change under the couch cushions to spring for a more exciting prize. Make me a fully animated fighter who talks like me. Fly me to the game launch in Tokyo. Don’t make me a inanimate background character that I’ll never notice ’cause I’m too busy mashing buttons. To be fair, Capcom is not the first video gaming giant with a stingy or unimaginative promotions department.

A while back, the Stars and Stripes (a daily newspaper published for the US military and their families) reported details of Sony’s promotion of the then new turn-based combat, PSP game, Field Commander. Sony ran a competition with copies of Field Commander on offer. If you think coming up with twenty five words or less why you love product X is a bitch, try this contest on for size. Just to be in the running to win a copy of Field Commander you needed to be serving overseas in the US military. And if the chances of being stuck in a war zone, or at best, a very unfriendly neighbourhood weren’t bad enough, instead of twenty five words, Sony wants an essay of up to five hundred words. I don’t mean to be unkind but if you could churn out a decent prize-winning five hundred word essay, you would probably not have enlisted in the first place and opted instead for a safe desk job back home in the States!

Frankly I think it would be a lot less trouble just to rent the sucker. I didn’t think anyone would actually be bothered going to the trouble of entering the competition, but a former colleague of mine, First Corporal Hector de la Garza, a US Marine currently serving in Iraq, sent me a copy of his entry, which I’ve printed below.

Dear Sony,

I know I’m meant to be writing about my video game experiences whilst serving overseas in the US military, but I thought I’d use the opportunity to raise a number of concerns I have about my military experiences, and how they are falling far short of my experiences playing SOCOM and a number of other military themed shooters. Now I know Sony isn’t directly responsible for the production of all games, so if you could pass on my comments to the relevant people I’d be much obliged.

There’s no theme music. Not sure if your developers messed up, or someone higher up in my chain of command forgot to book the military band, but not once while in the field have I heard the rising crescendo of a rousing and appropriate battle themed music. No haunting Middle Eastern dirge either. Nothing. It’s eerie. I’ve tried taking my iPod out on patrol but my CO is a real stickler about regulations. He yelled at me, and told me if he ever saw me wearing a pair of iPod ear buds while on duty he’d ‘fry my bass’…which on reflection seems a little strange cause we can’t get fresh seafood here for love or money, but it was a bit hard to hear exactly what he was saying with the iPod pumping out of the orchestral soundtrack and all.

These terrorists just don’t play fair either. Not once have they stepped out from behind cover, and as for just walking up to them, stamping my feet and making all kinds of noise, without them noticing, well that never happens, although to be honest I’ve only tried that twice. How the hell I’m meant to kill them is beyond me. Again, I’m not sure whether your boys back in the studio messed up, or whether these particular terrorists are just bad ass and very clever, but seriously, something’s not right.

Not playing fair

Either the campaign length here is way way too long or your studios have been skimping on gameplay. Hell, the other night our convoy was ambushed and we were stuck out in the desert for three days. I’m sorry but that’s just rude. There was no pausing the firefight, and you can forget sleep mode. We were awake for 72 hours straight. Again, if the fault lies with the General’s higher up the food chain I’ll put in a formal complaint to my CO and see what can be done, but if not, you make have to rethink your policy of scattering your levels with save points. I’ve tried just wandering off mid-battle for a toilet break, but trust me, the other soldiers tend to get real pissed, especially if it’s number two’s and you’re gone for more than a few minutes.

I don’t mean to be too negative but I’ve been here going on 12 months now, and the gameplay variety is just not there. It’s the same patrol day in day out, and no matter how well we do, we’re just not opening up any other levels. Again, I apologise if the US Army mucked up the mission rotation, but on the chance that your games have got it a bit wrong, could you please look into it. As for do overs, don’t even get me started. Charlie copped a bullet in the head a few weeks back and I’m beginning to think he’s never coming back.

On a positive note, my CO just gave me the results of my performance review. My rating’s about as poor as it was playing the SOCOM 3 single player campaign, so it looks like you at least nailed that one.

Yours sincerely,

Hector de la Garza