PortBoy Advance owners are already well aware that their kawaii little handheld console has become a surrogate home for a dizzying number of Super NES games. With a strikingly similar architecture, it has been relatively easy to faithfully recreate SNES titles on the GBA hardware. But what about games from other systems, how do they fare? Crawfish Interactive hopes to answer that question as they bring the classic one-on-one brawling action of the Street Fighter series to the GameBoy Advance. In the hopper for almost two years, Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Alpha 3 Upper, if you want to get technical) is a port of the popular arcade game of the same name, though in reality it shares more similarities with the PlayStation and Dreamcast incarnations of the game.

Condensing a complex fighting game like Alpha 3 into an eight megabit handheld cartridge is certainly no small feat, and Crawfish Interactive has generally done a noteworthy job with the conversion. There are two schools of thought when analyzing the results of their efforts. One the one hand, the game lags behind the arcade and PSX/DC versions in terms of interface, sprite size, background diversity, sound quality, playability and available play modes. Those are some very hefty drawbacks, but on the other hand Alpha 3 has turned out to be a fun and fairly playable GameBoy Advance title that compares very favorably with other fighting games on the system. It's definitely not a replacement for its bigger console brothers, but I think there's enough here to provide a lot of fun for fighting fans on the go.

Street Fighter is one of the most popular and successful game franchises of all time and certainly needs no introduction, but Alpha 3 is one of the lesser known renditions of the series. Street Fighter Alpha 3 is the last in the line of Alpha offshoot games, which feature a large roster of familiar characters with a decidedly anime influence. In stark contrast with Capcom's "Versus" titles, which foster bouts of zany, 50-hit super moves, Alpha 3 encourages tactical play, wise use of counter moves and thorough knowledge of the various "ism" fighting styles. Each of the games' 30+ characters can switch between any of three distinct isms (X-ism, A-ism and V-ism) which provide various tactical advantages and drawbacks, as well as their own super-move requirements.

Like all Capcom fighting games, Street Fighter Alpha 3 uses six attack buttons in conjunction with the directional pad as its primary play mechanic. Of course the GameBoy Advance only has four buttons, so some modifications are necessary in order to play Alpha 3. You can assign punches and kicks to the four buttons, but the last two attacks are triggered by pressing two buttons together. In the heat of battle it is often difficult to use these two-button moves, especially when you're trying to work them into a combo. This effectively hampers your fighting style and limits the type of attacks and combos you can use, a fact that hardcore fighting game fans definitely won't like. Aside from that the game plays surprisingly well on the GBA and most moves are easy enough to execute.

The GameBoy version of Alpha 3 contains a variety of play modes, starting off with the Single Mode. This is a standard single-player tournament that pits the character of your choice against a gauntlet of ten street fighting professionals, culminating in the ultimate showdown with M. Bison. Finishing this mode will unlock even more modes of play as well as extra fighters. Single Mode works very well on the GBA, and the super-fast load times are a definite improvement over the laggy PlayStation rendition of the game. Alpha 3 also supports two players in the Versus Mode, which, as you might suspect, requires a pair of game paks to activate. The CPU characters may offer stiff competition, but it's always more fun to go head-to-head with a friend.

Alpha 3 includes the popular Dramatic Mode, which throws you and a computer-controlled ally into the fray against the games' boss fighters. What's cool about this mode is that arch rivals are paired together, like Ken and Ryu or Sakura and Karin. Not every pair works that well, but a two-on-one match is always a lot of fun. There is also a pretty comprehensive Survival Mode that offers a wide variety of options, like Single, Boss and Dramatics survival in addition to 10, 30 and 50 character survival sessions. Boss Survival is very challenging, especially when fighting against Juni and Juli right before M. Bison. Final Boss Mode allows you to duke it out against the games' end boss in order to earn even more prizes.

All of the play modes in Alpha 3 work remarkably well on the GameBoy Advance, but the most inventive and fun mode from the home versions of the game didn't make it to the GBA. World Tour Mode was a pseudo-RPG tournament that let you build up a character in the three fighting styles through a variety of challenge-oriented battles. For instance, some opponents could only be damaged with custom combos, forcing you to fight in the V-ism style. World Tour mode was a fantastic evolution of the standard tournament mode and proved to be the most fun I'd ever had with a fighting game. I'm extremely disappointed that Crawfish did not include it in the GameBoy Advance version of Alpha 3, and the game loses a ton of points because of it.

Aside from World Tour, Alpha 3 is also missing a host of audiovisual features compared to the console versions. As you might expect, character voices are heavily compressed and are difficult to understand much of the time. Most characters are voiced with only a handful of audio samples, and the announcer has been completely removed (including the famous "Round 1, Fight!" phrase). There are fewer musical tracks on the cartridge and the few that remain have suffered a reduction in sound quality that is typical of many GBA ports. The game doesn't sound bad, mind you, but it's still firmly in the middle of the pack even when compared with other GameBoy Advance titles.

The characters in Alpha 3 are also much smaller and less detailed than the gigantic sprites from the arcade and console games. The animation in the GBA version is surprisingly robust however, and the game doesn't seem to drop any frames even in 3-character battles, a definite improvement over the relatively choppy PlayStation incarnation of Alpha 3. Most of the visual effects have been faithfully recreated, from fireballs and flaming uppercuts to the colorful explosions that accompany a super-combo finish. The backgrounds look pretty good on the GBA screen, though they feature less animation and there are far fewer of them. This is probably the biggest visual drawback, as you'll find yourself fighting in the same ten or so arenas over and over again.

Though the list of missing features and deficiencies is fairly extensive, Street Fighter Alpha 3 is still a fun portable game and is the best one-on-one fighter you can get for the GameBoy Advance. Crawfish Interactive has done an admirable job in translating this complex game into handheld form, and the game is still loads of fun and surprisingly playable. Fighting game purists might scoff at playing this type of game on a handheld console, especially in light of its drawbacks, but casual fighting gamers (myself included) will likely find a lot to enjoy in this cartridge. Though I'll still hang onto my PlayStation disc for home use, Street Fighter Alpha 3 will provide lots of fast fighting action when I'm on the road.