Street Fighter Alpha 3
1998 arcade video game

Street Fighter Alpha 3, released as Street Fighter Zero 3 in Japan, Asia, South America, and Oceania, is a 1998 fighting game developed and published by Capcom for arcades. It is the third and final installment in the Street Fighter Alpha series, and runs on the same CP System II hardware as previous Alpha games. Alpha 3 further expanded the playable fighter roster from Street Fighter Alpha 2 and added new features such as selectable fighting styles called "isms".
Alpha 3 has also been released on a variety of home platforms starting with the PlayStation version in 1998, which added an exclusive World Tour mode and brought back even more characters, with further versions on the Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable.
Gameplay
Street Fighter Alpha 3 discards the "Manual" and "Auto" modes from the previous Alpha games, and instead offers three different playing styles known as "isms" for the player to choose from. The standard playing style, A-ism (or Z-ism in Japan), is based on the previous Alpha games, in which the player has a three-level Super Combo gauge with access to several Super Combo moves. X-ism is a simple style based on Super Street Fighter II Turbo (the term "X-ism" being a reference to that game's Japanese title, Super Street Fighter II X), in which the player has a single-level Super Combo gauge and access to a single but powerful Super Combo move. The third style, V-ism (or "variable" style), is a unique style that allows the player to perform custom combos similar to the ones in Street Fighter Alpha 2, but cannot use Super Combos. In X-ism, the player cannot air-block nor perform Alpha Counters, and can only use one Super Combo move in its powerful Level 3 version. To activate V-ism's Custom Combo, the player must press both kick and punch buttons of the same strength.
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