Retro Gaming- Street Fighter EX : (1996)

The Street Fighter series was fun to play during the 1990’s in arcades around the world along with various home consoles.  The 2D gaming experience involving the Street Fighter series was unforgettable especially with the Alpha titles which was among the best as far as gameplay was concerned.  After the Street Fighter II & Alpha series became very popular Capcom had decided to make the transition from 2D to 3D gaming with the development of Street Fighter EX which was originally released in arcades during the later part of 1996.  This game was so exciting because many people got to see some of the most popular characters from the Street Fighter II series in 3D.  This game is considered to be legendary by many people mainly because it was the first three dimensional Street Fighter game ever in the series.  Street Fighter EX had featured some familiar characters including Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Zangief and Sakura Kasugano (only available in the PlayStation version).

Shortly after the arcade version of this game was released Street Fighter EX was ported to the Sony PlayStation prior and was made available in 1997.   When the game was released 1997 it was known as “Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha”.  When the first EX game was ported to PlayStation many people were excited about it.  In terms of various modes including arcade, versus, team battle, time attack, survival, practice and even Watch.  Along with the gameplay & graphics Street Fighter EX was pretty cool because it featured more offline content then some of the modern Street Fighter games. The arcade mode for this game what pretty long and featured ten stages with either M. Bison or Akuma as the final opponent depending on how one performed in the game.  Along with returning characters there were also some new characters in this game including Allen Snider, Hokuto, Kairi, Cracker Jack and Dame.  The ability to perform super combos & super moves which was included in the Alpha series is one of the many things that made this game very exciting to play.

The soundtrack for this game was pretty good but some people would argue that it was not quite as good as the Alpha or II series.   In terms of soundtracks there were some hidden gems in this game including “Precious Heart”, “Spinning Bird”, “Strange Sunset” and “Sakura Mankai”.  Some would agree that Street Fighter EX does not get the type of recognition that it deserves mostly because it doesn’t get talked about as much as the II series.  But the truth is the Street Fighter EX was a very fun 3D title to play during the late 90’s and would arguably provide more excitement than Street Fighter V.  Street Fighter EX is seen by some as a groundbreaking title that was developed by Arika and published by Capcom during a time period where the gaming industry was evolving.  A lot of emphasis was placed into three dimensional design for many games from the mid to late 90’s.   Street Fighter EX was one of those games that allowed Capcom to showcase how great the series could be in 3D. Not only did the first EX game exceed the expectations of many fans duirng the late 90’s but its also seen as a instant classic or even a hidden gem.

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Is the Street Fighter EX series Underrated?

As cool as the Street Fighter EX series was it didn’t quite reach the same level of popularity as the some of the games in the main series including the Alpha titles.  The Street Fighter EX series does deserve some credit though because it featured the first set of games that included both three dimensional gameplay & graphics.  The series also introduced a whole new set of characters such as: Skullomania, Doctrine Dark, Hokuto, Kairi, Pullam Puma and many more.  Along with including a new set of characters the Ex series had featured more offline game modes that would keep players busy for weeks.  One of the few things that the EX series had in common with the Alpha games included the amount of game modes that were featured offline.   The offline gameplay was especially exciting in Street Fight EX 3 & Alpha 3 because people were allowed to participate in both dramatic along with team battles.

The 90’s was a great time to be a fan of the Street Fighter series because Capcom during that decade Capcom had produced some of its best work.  The most popular game was obviously the Street Fighter II series but aside from that there were also many great titles released afterwards that were even better in terms of visual presentation and gameplay. The only difference was the Street Fighter II series is generally more popular because it was one of the main titles that started a revolution in the fighting genre of gaming during the 1990’s.  Even though most of the Street Fighter games were awesome throughout the entire decade some started to lose interest in the series over time due to the emergence of other fighting titles such as Tekken, Soul Calibur along with the increasing popularity of the Mortal Kombat series.  Even though, the Street Fighter games in the EX series are generally overlooked by casual gamers some people who are hardcore fans of the series would probably tell you that it has a higher replay value than Street Fighter V.