Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX [PSP(emulation), 2006]: Ingrid Arcade Run (A-ISM, 6/8 Star Difficulty)
8Y'know, I haven't really talked much about the PSP on this channel, but since it's emulation scene is so good these days, it seemed like a nice idea to check it out personally for channel content. I used to own one of these things waaaaay back in the day when it was new, and it was actually a really darn good handheld for all the offerings it had, fighting and racing games especially. Fighting game wise, Capcom really pimped it out with definitive versions of a lot of its fighters at the time, some being: Darkstalkers (The Chaos Tower), Power Stone (PS Collection), and of course, Street Fighter Alpha 3. SFA3 is obviously, even at the time of MAX's release, a pretty old game, being released first in arcades back in 1998 and had been on home ports like the original PlayStation already, but as this was after both Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Capcom Fighting Jam, for this release Capcom really went out their way to give this game a whole lot of value by adding characters that were exclusive to those games into this one (USF4 sounding familiar yet?), as well as a variety of game modes and even wireless local online. SFA3MAX is basically a massively pimped out version of the Game Boy Advance version, SFA3 Upper, with these refinements (even being called SFA3 Double Upper in Japan), but without ANY of the performance compromises, basically being similar to the Sega Dreamcast release. It's arguably the biggest fighting game package Capcom has released with the Street Fighter name to it until Ultra Street Fighter IV came out in 2014.
The focus of this video run, is of course, the character that came from CFJ/CFE, the ever mysterious (and "controversial") Ingrid. Around this time, Capcom was really trying to get this girl some love (perhaps a bit too much). Most people by now know about her origins: she was the only unique character that survived the nuking of her original game project: Capcom Fighting All-Stars, and was the focal point of Capcom's MUGEN proj----er--- side project: Capcom Fighting Jam/Evolution, a couple of years prior. With the release of MAX, Capcom decided to throw her in along with the CVS2 refugees: Maki, Yun & Eagle. While fans of SF at the time were really divided on her "Mary Sue" tendencies when in this game (to the point where Capcom would go the longest time not acknowledging her existence until the prequel comic of SFxT [and in SF5 as a Karin costume]), I personally liked everything else about her design. She was basically Capcom's Athena Asamiya from SNK, and I'd argue with a tiny bit of tweaking about her role in the series, she wouldn't really be all that bad. Would be really funny if she wound up in SF6 as DLC down the line...
Anyways, enjoy this trip down another memory lane on this classic Capcom fighter. I also have a Maki run coming up immediately after this, so that's another thing to check out.