12. Street Fighter III 2nd Impact: Giant Attack (1997)
A mere seven months after Street Fighter III: New Generation finally hit, Street Fighter III 2nd Impact: Giant Attack added four new playable characters (the headliners were the giant wrestler Hugo, and the underwear-clad Urien, both freaks in the fine tradition of New Generation), threw in fetching new stages, and rebalanced the cast. It was still gorgeous, still pretty fun, still kind of an infinite-laden cheesefest, and still failed to attract a larger following.
Players lucky enough to encounter 2nd Impact found an enjoyable if still small-feeling game that was still in flux. Among the changes was an unusual down, down, P / K input that activated a new universal overhead attack. More importantly, 2nd Impact introduced Darkstalkers-style EX moves to Street Fighter, whereby you could press two buttons while doing a special move to spend meter and perform an enhanced version of it. Today they’re a mainstay of the series.
Curiously, 2nd Impact has a good claim to being the most beautiful fighting game Capcom ever produced. All editions of Street Fighter III enjoyed silky-smooth animations, but New Generation and especially 2nd Impact featured sumptuous, hand-pixeled backgrounds that were a cut above the comparatively uninspired stages in 1999’s Third Strike, which often relied on pre-rendered elements and generally looked drab.
2nd Impact remains a wonderful showcase of the talent of Capcom’s artists and a great low-res CRT demonstration piece. It’s also the only game in which, bless his heart, Sean got to be high tier. 2nd Impact is an interesting stepping stone on the path to Third Strike, but more a curiosity than a destination. — Alexandra Hall
Mystery of the widescreen mode
Strangely, the arcade version of 2nd Impact had a 16:9 widescreen mode, pretty unheard of for standard-definition 2D games. You could enable it in the dip switch menus, and the above screenshot shows it in action. Looks great, huh?
But 2nd Impact is the only game that supports this. And there were no widescreen 2nd Impact arcade cabs, so no one really knows why this option existed, then disappeared. Fans, though, are pretty far along in unofficially hacking widescreen into Third Strike
Correction 07/22/2023 7:55 p.m. ET: Updated to note that EX moves originated in Darkstalkers
