Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition (3DS) review "Street Fighter IV has received its second update with Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition for the Nintendo 3DS. The small portable cart packs quite a punch with every feature from Super Street Fighter IV for Xbox 360 and PS3 along with new features including figure collecting, wireless figure battling, and of course, 3D graphics. "

Street Fighter IV has received its second update with Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition for the Nintendo 3DS. The small portable cart packs quite a punch with every feature from Super Street Fighter IV for Xbox 360 and PS3 along with new features including figure collecting, wireless figure battling, and of course, 3D graphics.

The game looks almost exactly the same as the console versions of Super Street Fighter IV except for lower resolution graphics and static background characters which doesn’t make much sense to me as Samurai Warriors Chronicles has a decent number of animated characters on the screen at once and is also a 3DS launch title.

Still, despite the lower resolution and static characters, the game still looks gorgeous for a handheld title, and is the best looking handheld Street Fighter game ever released, narrowly beating out Street Fighter IV for the iPod Touch.

One reason this game is attractive is the 3D feature which all 3DS cart based games will supposedly have. The Nintendo 3DS doesn’t deliver true eye-popping visuals, but does deliver the same sense of depth a ViewMaster delivers, only with true three dimensional graphics. The characters seem to stand in front of a background which stretches back into the unit screen itself while in 3D mode, the 3D is even more spectacular as the characters are placed on a diagonal plane which gives the characters themselves some depth. The most believable 3D is when the characters rant after a fight.

As many gamers still play some form of Street Fighter II to this day, graphics are definitely one thing Street Fighter fans’ do not put on the top of their list when it comes to Street Fighter appreciation. It has always been the control scheme that won gamers over.

Until the PSP, gamers could not play Street Fighter with the proper controls as 6 buttons were always required to enjoy the game fully. As the Nintendo 3DS has 6 buttons, it should be the first time Nintendo handheld gamers get to enjoy a true Street Fighter experience on a handheld, but unfortunately, that is not the case as the Street Fighter IV series utilizes an 8 button control scheme which cannot be properly replicated on the Nintendo 3DS.

To make up for this, the game takes advantage of the touch screen so gamers can map 4 buttons to it. I personally choose to map button combos such as LP + MP + HP and LK + MK +HK as well as my taunt and Focus Attack.

As far as the standard buttons go on the 3DS, I find them difficult to use. The directional pad has no grip to it and is stiff as are the buttons. The soft touch of the GB Micro and DS Lite pads is gone and gone is the grip of the GBA, GBA SP, and DS. It does feature a clicky d-pad which is perfect for precise straight direction movements, but not so much for smooth, rotation combinational controls. I find the d-pad is too slow to operate at an efficient enough speed because of its stiffness.

You would think the ultra smooth analog slider pad would make up for it, but its actually too loose and I was often pulling off Dragon Punches instead of Fireballs because the pad would rotate too far upward far too easily.

For those of you are new to Street Fighter and can’t stand the control scheme for the 3DS edition, you can map specials to the touch screen using the Lite control scheme so you can take an opponent a little bit faster and easier.

As I said earlier, the gameplay remains to the same as in the console versions, but with the addition of figure collecting which you can purchase with in-game coins or via codes sent to you via SpotPass. These figures can be used in StreetPass mode even without the cartridge nestled inside your 3DS as one of your figures will automatically duke it out against a fellow 3DS user’s figures as long as you both have SSFIV 3D Edition data saved on your system.

When you don’t feel like beating up on a street fighter, you can beat up the car or barrels from the bonus stages or you can train to become a better warrior in Challenge Mode.

If you grow weary of fighting CPU opponents, you can take the battle outside against a friend (or your worst enemy) or take the battle online via a WiFi connection. I had a few battles myself (that ended in a tie) and there was no lag whatsoever when I played, but I have a 20MPS connection, so make note of that. Your online gameplay speed may differ than mine.

If you have don’t have Super Street Fighter IV, I highly recommend it, but only for the 3DS if you do not have a 360 or PS3 to play it on or if you are hardcore fan like me who has purchased SFIV on 360, SSFIV on PS3, and SSFIV 3D on 3DS and every other SF game ever released just because a game console without Street Fighter just isn’t right.

Community review by japanaman (May 21, 2011) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.