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Why is SF Zero 3 upper has bad reputation?

HD Remix shouldn't be lumped in with this discussion imo. As much as I don't personally enjoy the game, I can't deny the impact it has on growing the SF2 scene. This was the first real online SF console game implemented well enough to be taken seriously and it came before SF4 was released. That was huge exposure to a lot of brand new console only players who never really played SF at all prior. Not the same level of irrelevance as these other console variants.

Back on the original topic, Alpha 3 is my favorite SF game ever. It helps that this was my first SF game competitively as a mature player so there's that level of nostalgia I suppose but even looking back now I just enjoy how that game operates way more than anything since. Only SF2 Hyper Fighting comes close as far as overall enjoyment is concerned. Both are phenomenal games all around. I enjoy Alpha 2 as well but there's plenty of warts in that game which a lot of people conveniently overlook while putting down Alpha 3 in the same breath.
 
BroadwayJose said:
I never really understood why so many complaints about infinites, etc still persist. Never made sense to me since they don't play at that level anyway.
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Just watch this year's Alpha 3 tournament at Evo. Plenty of CC infinites. Competitive players can do them, and they're boring to watch. That's my issue.

The "people don't play at that level" reasoning just doesn't work for me, because people do play at that level if you watch the game. And if Alpha 3 was more popular the skill level of players today is more than high enough to do CC infinites consistently once they practiced a bit. It's just a flaw to me, mostly because they're just slow and boring. Watching a CC loop puts me to sleep, it's not hype or interesting like say a Yun genei jin juggle, which is just as much bullshit, but at least fun to watch.

Edit: To be clear I like Alpha 3 and it's still fun to watch and play, but I understand the complaints.
 
Aurich said:
Just watch this year's Alpha 3 tournament at Evo. Plenty of CC infinites. Competitive players can do them, and they're boring to watch. That's my issue.

The "people don't play at that level" reasoning just doesn't work for me, because people do play at that level if you watch the game. And if Alpha 3 was more popular the skill level of players today is more than high enough to do CC infinites consistently once they practiced a bit. It's just a flaw to me, mostly because they're just slow and boring. Watching a CC loop puts me to sleep, it's not hype or interesting like say a Yun genei jin juggle, which is just as much bullshit, but at least fun to watch.

Edit: To be clear I like Alpha 3 and it's still fun to watch and play, but I understand the complaints.
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I totally understand the complaints (crouch cancel infinites are boring as shit to watch, that game's hitboxes are all over the place and the unblockable/really difficult to block-able V-ism setups with some characters are mad frustrating) but I think a lot of the people who bitch about that stuff are just theory fighters who never really played top-level A3 and certainly didn't play top-level A2. When A2 was the biggest game out there, that shit got old REAL fast once Valle CCs became prevalent. Unblockable 50+% Level 1 CCs, Rose c.mp x 1,000,000 and turtling Kens were not fun either to watch or play.
 
BroadwayJose said:
HD Remix shouldn't be lumped in with this discussion imo. As much as I don't personally enjoy the game, I can't deny the impact it has on growing the SF2 scene. This was the first real online SF console game implemented well enough to be taken seriously and it came before SF4 was released. That was huge exposure to a lot of brand new console only players who never really played SF at all prior. Not the same level of irrelevance as these other console variants.
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Gonna have to disagree on that one. There are zero HD Remix tournaments out there and a lot more high-level players who got in to ST over the last decade got there from GGPO/Fightcade, not HDR. The game's an evolutionary caldesac and while a lot of people played it on release (myself included) and it certainly built hype for SF4, it's dead as shit now while ST still consistently gets played online and in tournament.
 
@100Proof HDR is dead now, yes...because most/all of those top players went over to ST. There's a good chance they never would've tried SF in any flavor if HDR didn't exist.

@Aurich Sabre was the only western player pulling off infinites in that tournament. Whoever else was doing that, I'm certain they were not from here. As a whole we don't take this game seriously in the US. We never have, not since 2000. People generally watch too much Fightcade or jp game center stuff on YouTube and jump to conclusions from there.

That said, Choi still won the tournament with a character who doesn't even have a real infinite (Sakura). That's exactly how high level Alpha 3 tends to often go, funny enough.
 
BroadwayJose said:
@Aurich Sabre was the only western player pulling off infinites in that tournament. Whoever else was doing that, I'm certain they were not from here.
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Yeah Sabre was beasting.

https://twitter.com/aurich/status/1555710519675260928

But he's also one of the people who still takes A3 seriously in the US. My point really is that if A3 was actually popular here tons of players have the skills to pull them off these days. We're not seeing them in the West because few people play it hardcore, not because Western players aren't capable if they wanted to. Fire up a training mode ROM hack or 30th edition training and practice away.

It's so much faster and easier to learn that kind of stuff now, we have accelerated everything through tech. Training modes, hitbox viewers, frame data, video tutorials; it's all so much easier compared to having to go to the arcade, play with money against real people or the CPU if it was quiet, and get your tech passed down at school or rumors or having that one good player to watch.

Put $250k on the line for Alpha 3 Capcom Cup and watch the infinites come out lol.

Anyways, is what it is. I'm glad we at least get cool side tourneys, and that players like Bas come out to represent. Old games are rad, flaws and all.
 
Aurich said:
Got my sealed copy for $11! :D Also have to unlock Hyper mode or have a way to transfer a memory card save since it's not available as a mode out of the box. IIRC you have to beat all the arcade modes or something first.

But the true problem isn't "can I run this as a lark at a local some night?" because the answer is definitely yes with a little effort. The issue is it's too much effort for your average player to duplicate at home. And people are just reluctant to play something these days if they can't lab it at home. Without that the pickup rate is effectively zero. A collection anyone can run on their PlayStation or PC with a training mode would help.
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BroadwayJose said:
Hyper SF Alpha should be re-released, however. It was never fully explored and it's a shame that it remains in limbo these days only as an unlockable PS2 game.
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With the current excellent state of PCSX2 emulation, and FreeMC Boot, it seems like this would be significantly less of an issue?
 
Actually HDR honestly did respark ST, at least for in-person. At Evo when we played the 1st HDR tourney 2007, I really started to get involved W that scene, cos it brought out all these West Coast OGs I'd only heard of.

And we were all kinda like, yeah, HDR sucks. So that really sparked ST at live events and ppl figuring out how to run it again, getting boards, etc. Until then it was Dreamcast ST at a lot of events and really just as an also-ran.

And the 3/5 format really got ST going for live events as well.

I don't think GGPO was around for alpha 2 yet even when hdr came out, tho happy to be corrected
 
bagheera369 said:
With the current excellent state of PCSX2 emulation, and FreeMC Boot, it seems like this would be significantly less of an issue?
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If there isn't an easy way to do just do it people won't. Like, clearly it's possible to play the game, and this forum is full of people who could figure out 5 different methods across various hardware options. I have the disc and two PS2s myself lol. But it's so hard to convince people to really learn a new fighting game, you're competing against so many options, and it's often a chicken/egg problem, people want to play a game where there are already people to play. Any barrier to entry just magnifies the problem.

GhaleonUnlimited said:
Actually HDR honestly did respark ST, at least for in-person. At Evo when we played the 1st HDR tourney 2007, I really started to get involved W that scene, cos it brought out all these West Coast OGs I'd only heard of.
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HDR was 100% a big deal. Brought out a whole new generation, like Snake Eyez (won a little tournament called Evo). Yes, no one plays it now, because you can just hop on ST on Fightcade and tournaments are all CPS2 superguns or Mister now. But for the time when it came out there was a legit impact.

Again, it comes back to accessibility. HDR was new it was easy to hop on and play, and while the HD graphics are gonna give people mixed feelings they helped with new players who didn't see as much for them in old pixel art games. Especially at the time, when retro just wasn't as strong.
 
I saw a lot more Z2 cabs in Japan than Z3 (in 2016 and 2019). Maybe it's also the more casual favorite there? It's always been near the top of my favorite SF titles but part of that is probably nostalgia for the A2G port on PSX SF collection which was my first exposure to SF beyond the SFIIs. It really is great as a more casual SF game
 
BroadwayJose said:
@100Proof HDR is dead now, yes...because most/all of those top players went over to ST. There's a good chance they never would've tried SF in any flavor if HDR didn't exist.
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Aurich said:
If there isn't an easy way to do just do it people won't. Like, clearly it's possible to play the game, and this forum is full of people who could figure out 5 different methods across various hardware options. I have the disc and two PS2s myself lol. But it's so hard to convince people to really learn a new fighting game, you're competing against so many options, and it's often a chicken/egg problem, people want to play a game where there are already people to play. Any barrier to entry just magnifies the problem.


HDR was 100% a big deal. Brought out a whole new generation, like Snake Eyez (won a little tournament called Evo). Yes, no one plays it now, because you can just hop on ST on Fightcade and tournaments are all CPS2 superguns or Mister now. But for the time when it came out there was a legit impact.

Again, it comes back to accessibility. HDR was new it was easy to hop on and play, and while the HD graphics are gonna give people mixed feelings they helped with new players who didn't see as much for them in old pixel art games. Especially at the time, when retro just wasn't as strong.
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I mean that's cool if a bunch of people got in to ST through HDR (the more the merrier!) though that certainly hasn't been my experience... most of the new bloods I've seen came from GGPO/Fightcade but it still doesn't make it different from Z3U/A2G/etc. Still a dead game that people abandoned for the original game which is "the standard" which is kind of the point of the thread.

The Alpha 3 port on Playstation was super popular too and sold a ton of copies but no one's playing that garbage.
 
JoeAwesome said:
I’ve thought about a h2h setup with modded PSTVs running Adrenaline playing via adhoc, lmao
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I've been meaning to give this exact setup a try as well. There is an awesome little SF Alpha 3 community in Australia (that I'm only familiar with through YouTube), which has demonstrated how they play Max/Double Upper h2h. I think the 2 PSTV implementation would be a bit cleaner, but here's a video explanation of their setup:

View: https://youtu.be/p5rehe_Cs-Y


If you're at all interested in Alpha 3, definitely check out the rest of their videos as well. I mean, where else are you going to find X and A/Z-ism combo guides for Ingrid and relatively high level V-Maki playthroughs?

View: https://youtu.be/xENK4edUV4s


View: https://youtu.be/TBk0j3DhNXs
 
BroadwayJose said:
They don't/can't do the game breaking stuff, so I never really understood why so many complaints about infinites, etc still persist. Never made sense to me since they don't play at that level anyway.
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As someone who can't do the game breaking stuff, I agree. I always say it like this: Alpha 3 is the more fun game (at a casual level), but I recognize that Alpha 2 is a more well rounded game overall.
 
That's flipped for me, always felt like 2 was the goof off/fun casual one and 3 was the hardcore serious one, but this stuff is crazy subjective
 
They both have dumb broken shit so it's just whatever dumb broken shit you like better.
 
I enjoy both Zero 2 and 3, but I own a real board of 2, so I guess that settles which one I like a little bit better :P
 
For sure. That's part of why I could never care about Marvel 3. Dial-a-combos that are practically automatic and take forever.

Everyone wants to have an opinion so people def just read something someone said in fighting games and assume it's true. I've had randoms tell me the most wack shit over the years about games they don't even play. Usually when a new port comes out lol
 
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