My Favorite Thing of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (Also: SF4 Akuma Hands-On)

I'll be honest, my favorite thing about Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is actually the BGM, Jazzy NYC 99 "Rearranged" (for Alex and Ken's stage). This is probably the best BGM for a fighting game since its so catchy and memorable. Of course, I'm not that great at 3rd Strike because I'm not a parry master (3S is all about parrying). I could see why this Street Fighter is still amazing and why tournament players play it to this day with Street Fighter IV already out in some arcades. Since I don't have my XBOX version of SF Anniversary Collection, I won't mind a XBOX Originals release and it will be worth it since the online still works well and there are people still on that thing. (Also MvC2 fixed please - but that won't happen).

Last night before live blogging my viewing of the VMAs, I stopped by Super again to play Street Fighter IV (No crowds!!!!) and surprisingly Akuma is already playable on the machine (I didn't think it would happen). So I decided to mess with him with single player and his low stamina makes him a crappy character if you keep getting caught. Other than that, he plays like the Akuma you know and love with his air fireballs and whatnot. His Raging Demon is his super and ultra doing the infamous combination (Forward for the Super and Back for the Ultra), but you can't just randomly do it against serious competition as they will avoid it or counter it with something devastating. It is best used to surprise someone out of nowhere. Despite my crappy time with Akuma, I won't mind learning more of him if no one else uses him, but his low stamina will be a problem.