Gameplay Today - Because You're Always Gaming

As the title suggests, here is yet another Street Fighter IV update. But this version is both in 3D and exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS. This is perfect for all you Street Fighter lovers if you want your daily Street Fighter wherever you go. It is also a perfect launch title for the 3D; surprisingly this stole the spotlight as what is easily the best launch title on the platform.

The 3DS can handle Super Street Fighter IV, but not exactly to its fullest. As much as playing this game is a bit nice to play in 3D, it causes the frame rate of the game to slow down. Turning off the 3D in the options causes the frame rate to go up and the game plays smoother. 3D Edition’s exclusive Dynamic View lets you fight with a third person perspective which adds more of a 3D effect when seeing your opponent coming right at you or when projectiles are about to strike. Animation for the stages isn’t in this version. If you pay attention to the background when fighting you’ll notice that it’s just one big picture. In the Africa stage, animals don’t move and are completely still; in the Construction Site people are immobile.

No other sound effects or songs were added to this version, all tracks are identical to the console counterpart. Changing the languages of specific characters is completely gone. Usually when you do this in the console versions they would trigger different tracks when you play with certain characters.

The 3DS’s touch screen gives you four more buttons to use, with these you can set moves so you don’t have to input the combination for them. This makes the combo trials a bit easier to get through. This makes it easier for people who are new to Street Fighter to be able to actually put up a fight against someone who already knows how to play. Even though you can easily perform moves now there is still the strategic factor in when to actually perform these moves in certain combos and situations.

3D Edition is basically the same thing as Super Street Fighter IV. The only exception is that 3D Edition brought some of the costumes that you normally have to pay for on the 360 and PS3 versions. It being on the 3DS, it has a few more things to offer with it being portable and using the 3DS feature Street Pass. Street Pass offers a social system where you can meet other people’s 3DS when you pass near or by them. 3D Edition uses the Street Pass by letting you fight others with a type of RPG fighting style. You assemble a team of five in order to fight others when meeting them through Street Pass. You get to change the attributes of the character you've chosen. You get 300 points to spend on the character stats (Power, Defense and Speed) and you can also take the base 100 points off a stat and add them to another. Instead of doing the traditional fighting you would do online you’ll have yours and the other person’s figures fight against each other; the figure with the best stats wins. Throughout fighting people with the Street Pass, your characters will level up and get stronger. The sad part off all this is that you can only use this through Street Pass.

The online multiplayer is traditional fighting against other players, gaining PP (Player Points) and ranking up the character you use just like with the 360 and PS3 versions. Street Pass lets players trade figures with each other as well. Street Pass has coins the let you buy stuff varying on what game you’re playing. In 3D Edition you can exchange your coins for figure points to be able to buy more figures to use and add to your collection. For local play, you’re allowed to play with someone else via download if they don’t have the game. People can also interrupt your arcade game if they’re near by. Thankfully, you have the choice to turn that off if you wish to not to be disturbed. Another thing that’s on this version are medals that are exactly the same as achievements and trophies. You unlock them the same way as you would in the 360 or PS3: "Beat Arcade mode on Hard!" for example.

Porting a 360/PS3 fighting game to a portable comes with a cost. Some changes actually improve the experience. The addition of the touch controls will open up Street Fighter to a whole new audience. Plus being able to execute fireballs with one button is a lot of fun. In other cases, these changes are for the worse – once you notice the static backgrounds, you’ll have trouble looking away. But all in all, this is a great game. It’s not only the best launch game for the Nintendo 3DS, but will certainly be regarded as one of the best games to ever grace the console.