Street Fighter Alpha 3

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is the game that let you choose your own rules. It has the largest roster Capcom had assembled - thirty-two characters - and it adds a system that nothing in the series had attempted: three selectable fighting styles per character.

That system is the ISM. Choosing A-ism (Alpha) gives you a custom combo gauge that lets you chain moves freely for a short window; V-ism gives you variable-style chains and faster recovery; and X-ism returns to the strict Super Turbo rules with one powerful super but no custom combos. The same character plays three genuinely different games depending on the choice, which means a match starts before the first round does. On top of that, the roster pulls from Street Fighter II, Final Fight and the Alpha series, and includes characters like Karin, Rainbow Mika and Sakura who had never been playable in a mainline game. It ran on CPS-2, was ported to the PlayStation the following year with extra modes, and is widely held to be the peak of the Alpha sub-series.

• ▸Thirty-two playable characters - Capcom's largest roster at the time
• ▸Three selectable ISM styles that change how a character plays
• ▸Custom Combo system unique to the Alpha sub-series
• ▸A roster pulling from Street Fighter II, Final Fight and Alpha