Despite almost sharing its subtitle (”Fight For The Future”) with the 1998 “X-Files” film — you can rest assured that there are no killer bees, alien viruses or needlessly exploding secret Antarctic labs, just (as promised in the “true” ending of 2nd Impact), the third and final instalment of an incredibly polished and well-crafted series.

If you didn’t like the other two, then stop reading right now and go and do something else, because despite the additions, it’s still very much a SF3 game, complete with parrying and cancelling and all the other things that make this series great/awful. [Print out and delete as applicable]

As you’d expect, it’s pretty much your standard Capcom upgrade. New characters are added, existing characters get new moves/tweaks, a new gameplay feature or two is added, along with new art, new music and so on. Certainly not enough to convert a non-fan….but plenty for the already-converted.

For my part, as if you hadn’t guessed, I love the “III” series (flames go here ) and eagerly awaited the latest instalment, both on its arcade debut, and here on the DC. And I haven’t been let down, on either occasion. What’s more, is that it isn’t just “more of the same.”

You see, “3rd Strike” is very much an evolution of the previous games in the series. The original “New Generation” was traditional in all senses; it had typical Capcom artwork, music….everything. “2nd Impact” branched out a little, predominantly in terms of music and presentation, and now 3rd Strike has taken this development even further.

Let’s take the music. The original had standard Capcom tunes, 2i explored a little, with some mild drum & bass stuff and a more upbeat, modern sound, and 3rd Strike totally breaks away from the norm with heavy rap and techno influences, with plenty of sampling. From the wonderful opening song (with one of my all-time favourite riffs in the background) to the vocals-dominant select screen music, to Gouki’s mad D&B stage - the music is consistently outstanding, and is one of the few game music CDs I own that doesn’t *need* an arranged version.

However if you object to a Canadian rapper, rap in general or indeed Canadians, you might not be as gleeful as I am, however.

The game announcer adds to the games’ “cold steel” feel, replacing the deep-throated voice of the previous games, with something that sounds like a cyber-version of the Alpha 3 guy, fights are no longer begun with the traditional “Round 1: Fight!” - but with echoing phrases like “Prepare to strike: Now!” and “Fighters ready: Engage!” It’s good stuff, I find myself talking along with the guy (only when no-one else is watching.)

There is a far more futuristic feel to the visual side of things too, lots and lots of metallic surfaces, graphs and curves everywhere. Things basically look a lot less fruity than the previous two games did.

The in-game art however remains fairly consistent in tone and style with the older games, though several of the stages (Dudley and Remy’s spring to mind) have a more “watercolour” look than the rest. The stages vary in quality, mostly of high quality, though there are a fair few stages that appear more than once (namely Twelve/Necro, Yun/Yang, Ken/Alex and Necro/Dudley, albeit with different lighting and new elements.) Dudley’s is yet another of Capcom’s hilarious “British” efforts….

A few, such as Elena’s, are pretty dull, but there are some atmospheric locations in there too, and special mention goes to Hugo’s stage, which is a slightly disturbing look inside the mind of the Teutonic Terror.

The actual characters themselves are as exquisitely drawn and animated as ever, and the new characters fit in nicely with the old ones. Some of Chun Li and Q’s win poses are obscenely well animated. Most existing characters have received either new moves or new animations. There are a few more (but not many) character vs. character special intros (Hugo and Alex’s is cool…but that’s about it.)

The new characters I mentioned…..An older, cooler Chun Li, with a one handed fireball, a super fast Spinning Bird Kick, a brand new Super Art, and an extremely unorthodox way of fighting. Remy, a goth-y, blue haired skinny guy (Guile and Iori’s love-child raised by Sagat), with a flash kick and high/low sonic booms. Makato, a punch-based, female Karateka, with a Daimon-like ground-pound move. Q, a slow, burping robot/masked man in a trenchcoat, and Twelve, an amorphous, screeching, shape-changing blob - the final version of the killing machine which Necro is the prototype of.

The final two there continue the tradition of the more uh unusual character design that has been a trademark of the SF3 series - Inspector Gadget and the T-1000 if you will. I have no problems with this trend, the less shotos and fat grapplers the better.

As I mentioned before, gameplay has been tweaked in minor ways, Super Cancels have a smaller window of activation, parries require more accurate timing, throws are done with Jab + Short (complete with whiff animation), the universal overhead is now Strong + Forward and your ‘Personal Action’ is Fierce + Roundhouse. There are also changes to the juggle engine, and the hallucinogenic backgrounds that appeared previously when you activated a Super Art have gone - meaning that you no longer lose sight of your location during one.

There are also red, “block-stun parries” - which involve parrying while you are blocking a multi-hit attack.

In one-player mode, you get a choice of two opponents after every fight, useful to avoid those tough-at-later-stages characters (the number of people I have seen crushed by Hugo….) plus a bit of dialogue with a sub-boss character, in the fight before Gill. Gill himself has had a bit of a make-over - he now glows brightly, has a new voice (deeeeep) and an awesome 3rd Super Art. Like he wasn’t strong enough…

Actually, quite a few of the cast have new voices. Dudley sounds more “English”, Hugo sounds more like a big monster (which is good), Necro has gone up a few octaves…my only real dislike is Alex’s. Gone is his “speak softly, but do a mean backdrop” whisper from the first two games and in it’s place is a stereotypical growly voice. A shame.

Long-time SF-ers will also recognise the car bonus stage, from SF2-SSF2, though this time, you pummel a huge rendered pick-up truck. Sean’s parrying bonus stage from 2nd Impact is back too, though in it’s own stage.

SF3:3s actually grades your progress as you fight, giving you a letter grade after each match. The grading system used here seems much more complicated than, say, Mark of the Wolves or Fatal Fury 3: where “perfect = SSS ranking”. Oh no, here, the number of attacks count, the hit:miss ratio of attacks count, the number of throws, parrys, super cancels…it’s quite interesting, if a little demoralising to see “G” ratings - especially as the AI is better than ever — the last pre-boss fight is usually really tough, even on 4-star difficulty.

Unlike the previous Dreamcast SF3 game, Double Impact, this time there is only one game on the disk. Meaning there’s more space free for extras. Er…oops. There are some, but not many.

The best new feature of the Dreamcast 3rd Strike is the “Recording” training mode, where you can pick two characters, and being training by controlling the second, doing whatever you want with them. You then stop “recording” and the game will resume, with you controlling the first character, while your opponent replays your pre-recorded actions. Sounds a bit lame, but the scope for application is immense. Say I want to learn how to parry something ridiculous, like a ShinRyuKen: I just pick Ken as the 2nd character, do the super, then switch over to the first character and try and parry it. It’s great!

Another new option is the “System Direction” menu, where, it appears, the game mechanics can be customised to a certain degree. My Japanese is nonexistent, so I have no idea what many of these options are. There are obvious ones that use English letters, like “EX” or “SA” and turning these off disables EX moves of Super Arts respectively.

There are seven pages worth of options to mess about with, but many of them seem not to do anything obvious. As I write this, it’s too early for any FAQs to exist - but they will soon.

When I started the game up, one thing I noticed straight away is the music. I always assumed the soundtrack CD was a direct rip from the game, but it doesn’t appear to be the case - several songs sound very different from the CD version. It could be my screwed up sound system (possible) but some of the tunes sound very strange to someone who’s really used to the CD.

Another musical oddity is the way the music stops when the round ends, and begins a different part of the song at the start of the next round. Part of me doesn’t like it (it feels disjointed) but part of me likes having up to 3 arrangements of one tune per fight. It’s like KOF’96. Ooh-hah!

There’s always been complaints about the strange (low) resolution Capcoms’ DC games run in. And it’s the same here, while it’s virtually unnoticeable in the actual game, the character portraits and other artwork look like they’ve been resized in Paint Shop. Tsk.

Other than these questionable differences, the conversion is, of course, perfection itself. Are the characters a tiny bit smaller than the arcades? I can’t say. The loading is invisible, the animation is gorgeous…even the presentation is great to look at, slick and sharp.

As great as it is, I can’t help but feel a tiny bit disappointed with 3rd Strike. I don’t know why, but the orgasmic ecstasy I felt when I first played Double Impact six months ago just isn’t here. The lack of extras doesn’t help, though the Recording mode is a stroke of genius.

But what the hell, this is more Streetfighter - so I love it regardless, and although that’s an extremely unprofessional and uncritical thing to say - I feel it’s true. Sue me. It plays brilliantly, looks and sounds gorgeous, sustains a consistent mood and is just overall just yummy.

I doubt it will convert haters of the “3″ series, but those of us who liked the previous versions will surely lap it up. Slurp.

• Publisher/Developer: Capcom
• Score: 90%