Anniversary: Of A Shoryuken!

[nakamura]

You wash your mouth out! Hugo is far from rubbish and charmless!

Ok then, he has that stupid idiot looking charm that Capcom smeared over every character with SF4.

That said, 3rd Strike is a brilliant game in terms of gameplay, I just don't gel with it that well.

[Geoff D]

For me SF was all about being in the right place at the right time. I was right in the middle of SF2 taking over the entire world. There has been no other game like that, and there probably never will be. Everywhere you went there was a cabinet running the game. Sweet shops, chip shops, cab offices, cinemas, bowling alleys... You name it, they had a cab.

I love part IV, but Joe nails it with this - as a moment in time SF2 is near unbeatable; the excitement & vibe it brought with it was intense.

I remember EGM had a guide to arcade SF2 sometime back in 1991/2 & I remember reading it over and over and over and over; studying those Guile combos then being desperate to get to the local video shop where the nearest cab was & trying them out - failing miserably, then pumping more money in & doing it all over again.

[fuse]

No argument at all as to which one was the biggest phenomenon, had the most excitement about it etc - SFII's explosion was one of those things that was just incredible and will never happen again. Just for me, 3S plays a better game - hell, it's probably my favourite game of all time. That's what I was voting on, anyway.

I used to think the characters in SF3 were crap too, until I actually started to play the game properly. If you set aside nostalgia, the quality of the game, and start breaking it down too, a lot of SF2's characters aren't such wonderful designs either.

[Dogg Thang]

I love SF3 and especially Third Strike. The animation is gorgeous, the music is fantastic and it plays so well. But I'm also one who was never a huge fan of many of the characters. Well, I like them and enjoy watching them but SF3 is the SF game where I would tend most to stick to the old (and, for some, dull) favourites like Ryu and Ken. Ibuki and Elena I enjoy and, to a lesser extent, Yun and Yang but I would very, very rarely play as any of the others. Although I always wanted to learn Makoto, but she requires real commitment - a dangerous character but I found her really tough to learn.

[Goemon]

This is an interesting one because you're not talking about individual games you talk about series'.

I think 3rd Strike is an excellent game but I consider SF3 to be pretty poor and 2nd Impact was okay, but still not amazing. So as a series I don't particularly rate it.

SF2 has the phenomenon, which in another thread I marked under greatest game experiences of all time. Still, as a game I see it's limitations and although I look on it fondly it would never be my game of choice if I had to fire up a SF.

Alpha series, is well regarded but even more unusually I prefer Alpha 1 to to fabled Alpha 2 and couldn't get past the changes they made in the later versions.

SF4 series...I have to say, I've had a ball with the whole thing. All the updates, the balance changes chatter, the new top players, the tournement shocks, etc. I consider this series very underrated for what it did in - bringing fighting games back! It really is a great time to be into the genre.

Also it blows my mind that I now get my ass kicked by guys who weren't even born with SF2 came out!!