Portables have come a
long way....
My first portable system was a Gameboy Color, and ever since I've been very
fond of portable gaming, probably having a lot to do with me liking 2D games. Regardless, back then we got portable games that shared the name of a console game, but were
nothing alike. Turok 2, for example, was a great FPS on the N64, yet it was an action-adventure side-scroller on the Gameboy Color. By the time the Gameboy Advance rolled in, the trend was still going on. One of my favorite GBA games is Street Fighter Alpha 3: Upper. A lot of
sacrifices had to be made, it only had 4 buttons for example, but I liked the end product. Where am I going with all this? Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is as
faithful as it gets.
As with Street Fighter IV, I won't describe the whole game, but I will mention what makes this port so good without delving into the finer linings of it's mechanics. For starters, keep in mind that this is chocolate SFIV, just the first update. This is before Arcade Edition(No Yun, Yang, Oni or Evil Ryu) and therefore, before Arcade Edition 2012, and with Ultra Street Fighter IV on the horizon, this is a very
outdated version of the game.
Every mode, Arcade, Versus, Training, Online(With less features though), Challenge, Car destruction and Barrel destruction made it in. The challenges where
simplified, which makes sense since the 3DS is not the best tool when it comes to fighting games. There's also a new figure collecting mode, where you use points earned through normal gameplay on Slots. These figures are also part of the
Spot Pass features, which I totally couldn't use(Welcome to my world), so I can't comment too much on them. There's a new optional camera angle that makes the most of the 3D features, but it's just a
novelty. The game is also as complete as it gets, it has every cutscene, ending, intro and rival movies intact, plus, every character gets every costume that was
available at the time(1 for the newcomers, 2 for the vanilla cast). However, one thing that it's missing is the dual audio option, you only get English dubs and that's it, it's not too bad, but voices aren't
synched to the models, so it might look a bit odd.
The first time I launched the game, it felt
slower or something. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but the movement fell odd. Turns out you can't run the game at 60 FPS unless you
completely turn off the 3D option at the main menu. While the 3D is alright and is one feature the console version doesn't have, I'd rather have the game at 60 FPS. Graphically, the stages were the most affected. There's no animations whatsoever, crowds are static, which at first is a bit
off-putting, but it wears off pretty soon. A lot of background objects are now flat, it hardly affects gameplay, but it's easy to notice when the camera moves around during intros and winposes, hardly a dealbreaker. Models, however, look fantastic, while there's a lot of clipping through clothes(Figure the 3DS can't handle their phyrics), it's not too bad, as the models themselves look very
detailed.
The 3DS was
not made for fighters. The game tries to remedy that by offering four shortcuts on the bottom screen. It actually works pretty well, and offers some
advantages to charge characters, as it means not having to charge that Sonic Boom. Keep in mind that you will have to set up the controls for every character indivually, which is
annoying when you want Hard Punch to be R and Roundhouse to be L. There's 35 characters after all.
As a whole, it's a fantastic package. They even managed to fit trophies/achievements in, and while they are even more useless than their console counterparts, they are still here. While
I prefer Tekken's gameplay, as a package, there's no going wrong with Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, you get an almost console-perfect port, whose only real fault is the graphics, on the go.
9 out of 10.
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