Street Fighter III/Gameplay

Controls
One player may compete against the computer, or two players may simultaneousy compete against each other. Each player has an 8-way joystick and 6 buttons.

Buttons
The buttons on the arcade are typically laid out in the following fashion: The L, M, and H stands for light, medium, and hard respectively. In general, light attacks are less powerful and faster, and hard attacks are more powerful but slower, with medium attacks in between.

Joystick
The joystick works intuitively in that pressnig left will generally move your character left, and pressing right will generally move your character right. But it is more important to think in terms of relative direction. For this reason, all instructions are given with respect to forward and backward since the left and right directions change purpose when your character switches directions.
 * If your character is facing to the right, then pressing left on the joystick means backward, and pressing right on the joystick means forward.
 * If your character is facing to the left, then pressing left on the joystick means forward, and pressing right on the joystick means backward.

The following directions assume that your character is facing right, the starting direction of every fight for player one, who begins on the left side:

Rules
Each battle consists of best-of-three round match between you and your opponent. At the start of each round, both player's life or health bars are full. The first player to drive the other player's health bar to zero wins the round. The first player to win two total rounds wins the match and moves on to the next opponent. If a single player loses to the computer, the game is over and the player must continue to rematch the recent opponent. If two players knock each other out at the same time, a double K.O. occurs and both players are awarded a win. If both players lost one round before, they will fight another round.

While a fight is in progress, a timer counts down from 99 to 0 (roughly one minute in duration). If the timer runs out, the player with the most life is awarded the win. If both players have the same amount of health, a "Judgement" occurs. The CPU will pick the winner using three judges chosen at radom. Your win will be indicated by a particular icon, depending on how it was awarded.

Blocking and Parrying
To block an attack, you must hold the joystick in the opposite direction that you are facing. You must press backward and down to block low attacks. Normally, you won't take any damage when blocking an attack, but if the attack is a special move, or a Super Art, you take a small amount of damage (roughly one pixel of health per hit) known as block damage. Some attacks are unblockable, and you cannot block any attacks in mid-air.

New to the Street Fighter III series, you can choose to parry instead of block. To parry, you must press forward (in the direction you are facing) at the moment when you are attacked. Tap down to parry a low attack. If you perform a parry correctly, you will flash blue. Unlike blocking, you can parry in mid-air. If you tap forward in mid-air to parry, you will fall backwards, and if you tap down, you will fall forwards.

Some attacks which cannot be blocked can still be parried. However, in order to parry successfully, you must tap the joystick a split second prior to the oncoming attack. If you're too late or too early, your parry attempt will fail. When you do succeed in parrying, you will have no stun period and you can counter attack quicker than when blocking. However, you'll have to continue parrying multiple hits until a combo is finished.

Super Arts
In Street Fighter III, super moves are known as Super Arts. Unlike before, you do not have access to every Super Art that the character knows. Instead, you choose one of the three Super Arts to use for the entire game. Super Arts cannot be executed until the player has at least one full gauge.

Each Super Art has a different length gauge, and a different number of full gauge stocks that the player can store. More powerful moves tend to have longer gauges, and fewer stocks. Multiple stocks allow you continue building power even after you have one full gauge, and gives players an advantage over characters with Super Arts that only allow one gauge.

The amount of power stored up in your Super Arts gauge carries over from one round to the next. However, it does not carry over to fights against a new competitor.

EX Moves
EX Moves are not available in the first version of Street Fighter III. They are only available in 2nd Impact and 3rd Strike. Similar in nature to a concept introduced in the Darkstalkers series, some moves can be powered up, at the cost of a small amount of your Super Arts gauge, by pressing two buttons when executing a move instead of just one.

For example, if you perform the EX version of Ryu's Hadouken by pressing two punch buttons, it will come out like the Shakunetsu Hadouken (the flame fireball), hit twice, and light people on fire if it connects. Ryu will be followed by yellow trails, and small portion of his Super Arts gauge will be consumed.

Some EX moves consumer more Super Arts gauge than others. And the shorter your Super Art gauge is, or the fewer number of stocks you can store, the less you can use EX moves without refilling the gauge. Gill and Akuma are the only characters that have no EX-able moves.

Super Canceling
Super canceling is the ability to cancel special moves into Super Arts. Even some EX moves can be canceled into a Super Art, as long as you have enough power. Canceling means that in the middle of executing one move, you interrupt the move and immediately begin executing the Super Art. However, the Super Art that you canceled into will do less damage than if you performed the Super Art alone. Some moves cannot super cancel, as well as some EX moves.