"Make your first move, what's it gonna be? / You're trapped in the new world of Street Fighter III." Monochrome character art floats by as the machine starts rapping. It’s a concise introduction: The game is about choosing which move to do under pressure, and the name of the game is Street Fighter III. A different track breaks in on the character select menu to remind you to “pick the best one.” Dueling announcers shout after every screen change and button press. The machine makes such a ruckus that nearby cabinets can't pull your attention away; it builds a wall of sound around the new world of Street Fighter III. Once you're locked into a match, it pipes in drum and bass stage themes, flow state rhythms and jagged samples rolling under hypnotically fluid animations and splashes of pixels on hit. People like to say that hand-drawn fighting games were "made with love": It’s in Morrigan's jazz hands, in the googly eyes that bug out after a Capcom character takes a big hit, in the gold shimmer over the water on Ibuki’s Kyoto stage. The odd thing about 3rd Strike, though, is that it was also made with taste.
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