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Why is SF Zero 3 upper has bad reputation?

sugar4salt

sugar4salt

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Just out of curiosity, why is SF zero 3 upper for Naomi has bad reputation?
I thought it has more characters and merits over the Zero 3 but, not great preference.
Is there any special reasons?
 
I can't speak for others, but personally Alpha/Zero 3 was originally on CPS2.
Yea its just that simple for me, CPS2 was the first release so that's the only one I'll play.

The rule applies heavily to console gaming...
For example I won't play stuff like the Last of US Remastered on PS4 because its original system was PS3.
Pretty much bars me from all Remasters/Redux games with a few exceptions, like Zelda Link's Awaking on Switch.
Its so much more than a remaster, the entire thing was overhauled and given many quality of play improvements.
Another title that comes to mind is Dracula X Chronicles on PSP, its no simple PC Engine remaster, so I can enjoy it for what it is.
 
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sugar4salt said:
Just out of curiosity, why is SF zero 3 upper for Naomi has bad reputation?
I thought it has more characters and merits over the Zero 3 but, not great preference.
Is there any special reasons?
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From what I remember hearing, quality wise it actually looked worse(?) compared to the CPS2 version.

But from what I know, they took out all of the V-ISM infinite combos, Karin & Vega (Claw) Mazi style glitches, and changed the overall balance of the game.
 
^ This. A lot of characters were re-balanced and glitches were fixed, which affected the game and competitive players didn't like it. It's similar to how people don't play the revision of 3rd Strike.

On top of that, SFZ3 Upper had noticeably more input lag compared to CPS2. I vaguely recall that Melty Blood AA also had some input lag issues on Naomi.
 
dos said:
same question but Zero 2 Alpha/Alpha 2 Gold
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Similar to Zero3Upper:

A2Gold fixes some things that are a bit silly but competitive players like.

ACs take a bar and a half instead of one bar, that's the most obvious change. Alpha Counters are so strong in 2 that it totally changes the game.

It prob nerfs CCs or some specific combos in some way.

I'm sure there is a log of changes somewhere.

I only played A2G on Saturn in the late '90s (and barely) so can't tell you more. Basically if you play Alpha 2 in any serious way, you won't find takers for A2G. If you are a casual player it's still great.

It's also uglier, with changes like blue-for-damage lifebars instead of red.
 
GhaleonUnlimited said:
things that are a bit silly but competitive players like
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This is the honestly the best summary of almost any question like this imo.

Fighting games in general have a spike of general interest, and then settle down to be kept alive by the more hardcore. And once that more hardcore group adjusted to a version they were particularly reluctant to re-learn a new one. (This has changed in modern patch culture, but people have no real choice anymore. Plenty of bellyaching about it though!)

Zepherino said:
It's similar to how people don't play the revision of 3rd Strike.
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Perfect example. Unblockables are, on the face of it, a game breaking bug you'd think people would want out. They also are what makes Urien a competitive character, without them he's just not good enough. But this only really applies at a high enough level to learn aegis setups. It's the hardcore driving this kind of decision because the casual players just don't exist in any real numbers to have a say.

Zero 3 Upper is also a bit weird for a few extra reasons:

1) It came out quite a while after the original, which really exacerbated the established player base vs change problem, people had been playing a certain way for years at that point, why re-learn characters and strategy? Ask Arturo what he thinks about Sim getting nerfed lol.

2) As a Naomi release instead of CPS2 it was going to feel different in various ways. I don't know if the input lag is worse or not, be interesting to test that, but it's going to look different since it's probably running on 31khz monitors for instance. It wasn't a true drop in replacement for the old game.

3) There's only Zero 3 Upper, no Alpha 3 Upper, the West never got it at all. I know players who think of it as a "console" game because of that, it wasn't ever seen as an arcade release in the US or taken seriously because of that. (Again, sign of the times, in that era arcade still ruled and console was seen as inferior, now games barely get arcade releases and almost no one cares.)

I personally find crouch cancel infinites deathly boring to watch. It's too bad it never took off, I'd be curious to see a competitive scene that was serious about it. But the difficulty of running it, both in a tournament setting and at home for players to practice, really hurts that too, even looking past the arcade era problems.
 
Most likely by the time zero 3 upper was released it was a case of too little too late and the changes that were implemented as mentioned previously further weakened the majority of lower tier characters who really depended on the CC game thus creating further imbalance of the overall cast.

Also, the established vanilla z3 regulars to name a few Crusher, Ver, Nekonohi, Bas, Harid, Gary, Damien, 1up never made the jump to upper so that didn't help matters as the game didn't see much play at a competitive level.

Even if it was an upgrade to the original ROM set on CPS2 hardware it would have still struggled as it didn't bring any welcomed changes or upgrades. Additionally, CvS2 was released in 2001 which gained far more attention.

For me though the original z3 sits alongside IIX as Capcom's finest Street Fighter iteration.
 
mdk said:
For me though the original z3 sits alongside IIX as Capcom's finest Street Fighter iteration.
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That's a somewhat rare sentiment in the US. Here Alpha 2 > Alpha 3 in popular opinion and level of support for still playing. It seems to be pretty much the opposite in Japan. Daigo has said many times Zero 3 is his favorite, but he also admits Z-ISM somewhat ruins the game. There are still A-ISM only tournaments in Japan sometimes.

It's too bad there are no easily accessible ways to play Zero 3 Upper, or Hyper Alpha 3, it would be cool to see them in a Capcom fighting collection kind of release. I doubt they'd get widespread support, but a package with training mode and online play with rollback would be pretty sweet still, and might attract enough attention to at least be a fun side tournament novelty.

Fair or not crouch cancel infinites turn a lot of people off from trying Alpha 3.
 
Hyper Alpha 3 is somewhat accessible for local play since it was a PS2 release as Alpha Anthology, and you can buy new sealed copies of that game for like $20. Hook up some Brook converters for modern controllers/sticks, and away you go.

Getting SFA3 Upper is a bit more difficult... It's under the weird situation where the definitive home version of the title was released as Alpha 3 Max as a PSP title. It even had some extra characters (Ingrid and Yun I think it was). Looking back, the Alpha/Zero series was given excellent treatment as portable games. Alpha 1 has a decent GBC game, Alpha 3 has excellent GBA game, and the PSP Alpha 3 is probably the most "complete" version of the game if you don't consider it's mechanics and viability as a competitive title.
 
Absolutely, judging by some of the old tournament footage Alpha 2 was much loved with a strong foundation in the US and certainly had that familiar SF2 feel where as Alpha 3 felt completely different. The CC's are a pain but you were forced to learn the setups in order to avoid the standard traps but saying that there are some hilarious punishes, a misplaced 3/4 screen fireball and Sodom will bust through it and make you eat a full VC bar with CC's for desert. Karin is dirty like that too.

I probably have more of a bias towards a3 as that is what I played the most early on and it's the game that helped me break my tunnel vision mentality when playing fighters rather than having a set menu play style. The game has a steep learning curve and that can put a lot of new players off but at its height the game was very popular in the UK, even Diago made a trip over to play at Absolution 2004 and Kiyo also turned up (highest ranked Guy in Japan at the time).

It would be nice to see Upper / Hyper released again on the newer platforms as I liked the ps2 Anthology release which had a mixed reception but it included upper as a bonus which was cool. You can trust Capcom to make us pay for these games again, that is something they do very well!
 
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Zepherino said:
Hyper Alpha 3 is somewhat accessible for local play since it was a PS2 release as Alpha Anthology, and you can buy new sealed copies of that game for like $20. Hook up some Brook converters for modern controllers/sticks, and away you go.
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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.

Zepherino said:
It's under the weird situation where the definitive home version of the title was released as Alpha 3 Max as a PSP title. It even had some extra characters (Ingrid and Yun I think it was).
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Also Maki and Eagle. It was really a heck of a release. You can emulate it, but no 2 player mode. :(

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Z3 Upper suffers from two unforgivable sins on this side of the world:

  • Additional input lag baked into the game itself
  • Unavailable in the west in an official release

Can rightly point out that rebalancing decisions turned players off but I don't really buy that because the western SF scene always flocks to the latest revision as a default regardless of the changes involved. Maybe interest would die off eventually but in this case we weren't given a chance since we didn't get a widespread western release for this game.

fwiw Japan doesn't really play z3 upper either. They still play vanilla z3, warts and all.

As far as the US preference to play Alpha 2 over Alpha 3, that's a more recent phenomenon. When Alpha 3 originally released, that was definitely the main SF game competitively until Capcom vs SNK 1 released. Soon as Capcom vs SNK 2 came out, Alpha 3 was effectively forgotten and no one was playing Alpha 2 either at most fg events. In more current times, my opinion is that because Alpha 2 is so much easier to approach as a new player than Alpha 3 is, that's why it's more popular now. It's going to take a long time to not suck competitively at Alpha 3 and the hard truth is that most of the west is generally bad at this game. 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.
 
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.
 
BroadwayJose said:
In more current times, my opinion is that because Alpha 2 is so much easier to approach as a new player than Alpha 3 is, that's why it's more popular now. It's going to take a long time to not suck competitively at Alpha 3 and the hard truth is that most of the west is generally bad at this game. 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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This.

Some years ago, I happen to go to an event that had Alpha 3 playable and people were enjoying the game. Once I got on, and picked V-Akuma, everyone was complaining and left to play something else lol.

The game at the highest level is all types of stupid. But it's fun.
 
Yeah, this has already been answered pretty thoroughly but it largely comes down to who was playing these games at the time of their release, which version was readily available and which version became the tournament standard. Tournament standards were generally based on arcade releases back then (as console ports ALWAYS had issues) and if a game was out in the wild for a year and then the "new" version was more or less a balance patch, it would get ignored (see Zero 2 Alpha, Vamp Savior/Hunter 2, etc.).

- Zero 3 Upper is not a good game to begin with so even if it was readily available in arcades in the west, it would've never caught on.
- Hyper SF2 came out a full 10 years after Super Turbo so no one was interested in re-learning that game. Same reason no one cares about HD Remix/Ultra SF2.
- CvS2 EO removed roll cancelling but was console-only so no one cared.

There's been a small group of Alpha 2 diehards dating back to the late 90s that just kind of outlasted the haters. Kind of like what happened with 3rd Strike except A2 didn't have the big second wind that 3S got from Japan showing up to exhibitions. I've always thought A2 was overrated (I'll gladly deal with the .1% of people that can do crouch cancel infinites over having to play an army of Chuns and turtling Kens in A2) but I acknowledge that's just personal preference.

Edit: What it really comes down to is that the communities for most of these games are small to begin with so people generally stick with "the original" so they don't further fracture the community even if, in some cases, the new game might technically be "better".
 
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