Video game review by ERIK LEIJON

Fighting games don’t get the respect they used to. Not to sound bitter, crusty and anachronistic, but the dearth in quality fighting games in recent years is disappointing, and I place the blame squarely on today’s youth. Granted, in the eyes of skeptics, the fighting game has seen only minimal growth since the Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat wars of the early ’90s, but fighters are more than just two cartoon characters beating the shit out of each other.

Why all the fuzzy feelings of nostalgia and sudden distaste for today’s gamers? Street Fighter Alpha 3 is the Zeus in the pantheon of fighters, and is now available on the PS2 in Street Fighter Alpha Anthology (PS2/Capcom, Capcom). I’ve broken more controllers and flunked more exams than I can recall playing SF over the years, but when it came time to give these old games a spin, I couldn’t resist.

Well, games is a bit of a stretch, even though five are included (as well as a few other hidden ones): Street Fighter Alpha 1 through 3, SFA2 Gold and Gem Fighter. They are all quality games (except Gem Fighter) and are faithfully reproduced for the PS2, but since the Alpha series got incrementally better with each game, there isn’t really much reason to play anything other than Street Fighter Alpha 3.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 originally came out in 1998. There was a PS1 version that was saddled with excruciating load times and a Sega Dreamcast version suitable for presentation alongside the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa. At its core, it was the same Street Fighter you knew and probably were sick of, but the mind-numbing depth to the combat required countless hours of training. Alpha 3 is also one of the very few fighters to have near perfect character balance, and featured all the combatants from the other Street Fighter games.

Although the graphics would also be upstaged by the tragically unloved Street Fighter 3, Alpha 3 had a rich, colourful palette, clean presentation and a thumping techno soundtrack you’d expect from a great arcade game. Having played the Dreamcast version inside and out, the lack of a World Tour mode in the Anthology is disappointing. Playing them side-by-side, the sound is also much crisper on the PS2 version.

Capcom also made no improvements to the graphics and sound, so it looks like a bunch of games from a decade ago, which is understandable. But I’m now curious to see if Capcom has any plans to bring the Street Fighter franchise to next-gen to compete with Tekken, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive and Virtua Fighter.

Overall the package is fairly barebones. There’s no online play, and there’s no history or museum mode chronicling the creation of these games. It would have been nice to get some extras, but Street Fighter Alpha 3 alone will consume all your time.

If you’ve played the Alpha series before, then take the opportunity to get reacquainted with these classics. If you’ve never played them before, and especially Street Fighter Alpha 3, then you owe it to yourself to play one of the most complete and challenging games ever.

Summertime Blues

Summer is a great time to play all the games I missed earlier in the year, but it’s usually light on news.

All I could muster is William Shatner, who will be hosting the first-ever Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts (CAEAA) show this September in Vancouver.

There are 15 animation categories, 13 student categories and 17 gaming categories. Deadline for submissions is July 14—check out www.caeaa.com for details.