The KO #70 - I thought I would fix Alpha 3 but actually broke it
3I removed V-ism. ]_]
I had been trying to watch Street Fighter Alpha 3 tournaments on YouTube, but found they were almost entirely dominated by players doing or trying to do long, usually highly repetitive V-ism combos, and only picking the characters thought to be most likely to pull them off. Even if the combo didn't land, you'd have to sit through one character turtling for a while while the other flailed away at them at super speed. This seemed pretty lame from a spectator's point of view. Alpha 2 tournaments seemed to have a little bit of the same problem--players picking Rolento, for instance, because he has a really high-damage custom combo. Maybe this is why there aren't very many Alpha series tournaments on YouTube. : P (Alpha 1 does seem fairly competitive from what little I was able to find; I suppose it's hurt mostly by the small roster size.)
So I thought hey in the hidden Vs. CPU mode in the games in the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, you can selectively turn modes off, so I'll just turn V-ism off and it'll be the perfect game! : D So that's what I did for this video, in the Anthology's Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper.
In the end, I don't think it worked very well; it started to feel dry. Antiseptic. I think maybe Alpha needs that V-ism broken craziness in the mix to bring it to life.
I think next time I'm just gonna play regular Vs. Mode with COM opponent on, and using the [?] random character selection, as worked so well when I played the Vampire Darkstalkers Collection.
It will also fix a somewhat significant problem--at least for longevity--that the hidden Vs. CPU mode has, which is that while the characters and modes are mostly random-ish, the stages appear in a fixed order: it's always that way-too-high contrast Ken fountain stage first, then the really boring brown cave, etc. In the regular Versus mode, on the other hand, you can hold Select to highlight a random stage, then, if you don't like it, just hit it again to find another one; think I'll be skipping Akuma, Ryu, and Bison's stages. : PP (Alpha 2 and 3 seem to have this problem, where most of the stages are gorgeous, packed with life and really amazing, but a handful are absurdly dreary, dull, and boring.)
Recording: PS2 to Framemeister to Elgato HD60.