Customer Reviews

Street Fighter Anniversary Collection Official Strategy Guide (Bradygames)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have a number of strategy guides in my possession, all of which were purchased for titles on the X-box. None, however, approach this particular guide in terms of detail, conciseness of useful information, and sheer depth. There's the usual mandatory official character art, just like many other guides on offer, and the presentation is crisp. The amount of info cramped into certain pages can be a little full-on, but once you're used to the format, the layout does make a lot of sense.

And boy is there a heap of information here. The strategy descriptions are printed in the smallest font I have seen in a guide, and with this being 200 pages strong, we're talking some great value. Of course, most of us will only ever use a handful of characters properly, and hence refer to limited sections - but you won't be dissappointed. The info is absolutely top quality and come from tournament experts. It's easy to see why this guide proves to be so good - the strategies have been crafted over years of competitive gameplay.

This is easily the best quality game guide that I have seen. Most guides are slapped together to make a quick buck. This one is more a labour of dedication from people who love the games.

First of all, one important thing. This review assumes you're actually someone willing to play Street Fighter more often than once a month casually at a friend's house. If that's the case with you, you shouldn't bother buying this book - it isn't for you. This book is for dedicated SF players. Now, that I've made this one thing clear, I can move on.

Probably everyone who plays SF knows that this is not a typical fighting genre game. Mashing will get you nowhere here and the game certainly isn't "user friendly". The guide follows this notion - it's very clearly written, explicitly describes all the techniques, but isn't a "for dummies" material because, let's face it, SF is not a game "for dummies".

That said, the strategy guide has it all. The basic techniques, their implementations, specials, combos, tactics, together with advanced tactics involving the more technically difficult aspects of SF3:TS such as kara techniques and red parrying. This isn't a guide to beat the comp, this a guide dedicated to people who want to play another person. It excells in that, both in the SF2 and SF3:TS section. The strategies are ones tested in real-life, not ones the authors thought up against a computer player.

If you want to learn to play SF2 or 3:TS for real, this is the book you'll want.

I got the guide in the mail today. Just upon flipping through it quickly, it is definetly a good guide. So before I criticize it at all: If you want to learn to play SF3: Third Strike, this is a great guide, and is the best way, [...]so it's worth it without a doubt.

Anyway, so when you actually use the guide, and try to use it to get better with a character, you may run into some problems. First off, there are definetly some mistakes. From looking at the Oro page, some of the descriptions don't match the actual move, as in just a typo, printing error..but still could confuse a newbie.

Also, the thing that REALLY annoys me about the guide is how it labels each move of a character. For an example of what I mean, everyone knows Ryu's special moves: Hadou-Ken, Shoryuken, and the whirlwind kick. But have you ever heard of...Sakotsu Wari? Me neither. But apparently, Sakotsu Wari is F+MP, Ryu's overhead punch. Now, that would be fine, but it is definetly NOT fine when the guide says to use Sakotsu Wari when the opponent is crouching, and I have no idea WTF Sakotsu Wari is, so I have to flip back to the moves index, only to find out that I would have understood them 100% if they had just said F+MP, which they said previously in the guide anyway. That applies to all of the characters.

My last beef is the so called "matchups". It seems for most characters, the matchups are total bull****. For example, Q's good matchup is...Twelve? Uh, okay. Twelve sucks. Everyone's good against Twelve. Let's look at Twelve matchups. Twelve's good matchup is...CHUN-LI? I don't think so. I think most scrub Chun-Li's would beat the [...] out of any Twelve. But the guide's reason for this is that Chun-Li has no standard anti-air...uh..so what? He's frickin Twelve. He sucks.

ANYWAY, those aside, this is a really awesome guide. What surprised me is that it even goes into advanced tactics like Makoto's Kara-Karakusa/her Abare Tosanami combos. With that said, some combos and tactics are noticeably missing, like Makoto's 100% stun combo, Kara-Oroshi/Fukiage, etc., but that's alright.

Overall, I'd say this is something that people who want to get into 3rd Strike should pick up, because it has up-to-date tactics, and most of the combos and info you're going to need when you want to learn a character, and an easy-to-read and easy-to-find page for each one. Plus, it comes with the 3rd Strike soundtrack. That alone is worth the 10 (LESS!) dollars that this'll cost you.

I grew up playing SFII and later versions in arcades and pizza shops, so I'm more old school. However, when I transitioned to SFIII, I started to enjoy the controls and gameplay. I bought the guide for playing Third Strike on my PS2. The illustrations are great in this guide. Practice makes for a better player.

It's really simple: if you own and actively play 3rd Strike, and have any will or drive to be a competitive player, then you really should own this. Frame data, matchup information -- all the good stuff that you should want and should expect to see in a GOOD fighting game strategy guide is included here. This is not your old-school, garbage Mortal Kombat guide that you bought on a whim while browsing the bookstore: this is real information provided by real, top competitive USA players of the game. Do yourself a favor and pick this up.

The Street Fighter Anniversary Collection Official Startegy Guide is a very good, it goes well with the game. Very well actually. There is alot of useful information is this guide about both of the games present in The Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. The guide list every character present in both Hyper Street Fighter and Street Fighter 3 Third Strike, plus it also lists every move in each mode in Hyper Street Fighter for each character and it also lists every move for each character in Third Strike with a brief description of each move and frame data of each move. It also lists some strategys for each character and bad match ups for each character. And as an extra treat it comes with the Third Strike soundtrack. This is definitly worth reading. FINAL ATOMIC BUSTER!!

The guide had great visuals and easy instructions on executing the moves/strategies of the characters. However, it worked far better with the Street Fighter 3rd Strike characters than the classic Street Figher characters.

Didn't tell me much that i didn't already know. It's not a bad reference though.