If you must own a copy of Street Fighter III on your DC, this will suffice - but just barely.
The time sucks, as Street Fighter 3: Double Impact (SF3:DI) pales in comparison to both it's younger brothers, Street Fighter Alpha 3 (SFA3), and it's older brother, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike (SF3:TS).
Graphics: 8/10
Street Fighter 3 is running on Capcom's CPS3 board so it looks a helluva lot better than SFA3. The animation is smooth and resolution is decent. However there are some problems with the graphics.
First off, the environments: They’re kinda bland, so to speak, and are nothing compared to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 or SF3:TS. Also, at times, it seems the resolution is WAY to low. However, generally speaking the graphics are pretty good.
Sound: 9/10
Not much to be said here. One gets the general array of sounds he/she can expect: grunts, punches, kicks, and, of course, the names of the moves being thrown around in the heat of battle. There’s also the music of course, which is mostly forgettable as it’s composed of the same old-same old stuff one would expect from a fighting game: Fast techno beats and some crazy lyricless pop.
My only complaint with the sound is regarding the ''extra'' game packaged with Double Impact, it's younger brother Street Fighter 3: New Generation: The sound in NG is pretty bad. The sounds are hard to distinguish and the whole thing sounds like SF2 played on an emulator.
Gameplay: 7/10
Hmm, this is a pretty hard one. Street Fighter, as every other fighter out there, has the standard array of features including kicks, punches and combos, however, Street Fighters add more to this formula than most other fighters.
SF has 3 punches [medium (mp) light (lp) heavy (hp)] and 3 kicks [medium (mk) light (lk) heavy (hk)]. Now, to fully understand this category you have to understand how SF plays. Each character in this game gets to choose 3 ''Super Arts'' which are the equivalent of super moves (they may be combos or blasts), each fighter also has his or her signature moves (like Ryu's fireball, better know as Hadouken) and EX Moves (which are powered up signature moves). The EX and Super Art moves consume what is know as ''combo bars'', these are similar to the Ki Bars in most DBZ games. Each move requires a certain amount of a combo bar to do, for example: Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken requires two Combo Bars while his Shin Shoryuken requires only one. Each EX move requires part of a combo bar to complete, be it a tenth or a fourth.
The combo bar’s importance does not stop there. Each Super Art you chose may give you 1 bar, 2 bars or 3 bars. Believe it or not, this does not unbalance the game at all. It actually accommodates the fighting to the player’s particular style. If one prefers to rely on 3 less damaging SAs, instead of one that decimates your enemy, he/she can simply just pick a Super Art that gives them 3 bars.
And now that you understand the basics, let's get to the heart of the gameplay. First off the combo system is a little different from TS or SFA3: SA's are completely defined. What I mean by that is that Super Arts are more of a ''move'', not a start to a combo. You could connect combos after the SA, granted you have enough of you combo bar left, but don't expect the likes of a 40 hit super combo to be flashing on screen too many times, as a SA finishes when it's done, be it 5 or 12 hits.
As for the characters presented in this game, they lack the depth of the original and SF2's power houses. The only returning players are Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Shin Akuma (granted you can unlock him). Some of these characters have a changed appearance, some look just like they did in SF2 or SFA3. The rest of the cast includes your average Ryu-clones-with-a-few-modifications, and funky schoolgirls. Others are not very well defined, and come out like fillers. A crazy African chick and some 200-old antique they call “Oro” don’t make good characters.
This game is also lacking in the extra modes department. The only modes of play are arcade (there is no vs. against the CPU), versus, training and parrying attack.
However, the essence of this game are the characters, and the fact that we’re missing people from all the SFA's is kinda bothering me. Hell, I rarely fight as anyone except the classics when playing SF3:DI. The fighting system may also displease some SF fans, it's kinda... different and fights just don't get as furious as in the likes of TS and SFA3.
Another complaint is the inclusion of Street Fighter: New Generations as an ''extra''. By now some of you may be thinking “What, are you crazy? Free games, what’s wrong with that?”, however this extra game is better used as a reference than contender to the ''SF Hall of Fame'': It lacks even more characters, it has poor sound and even the parrying attack mode from SF3:DI is also absent. Frankly, it's just a waste of space on the GD-ROM.
The control, as you would expect, is also pretty crappy with the default DC controller. The L and R buttons have A HUGE delay at times making perfect KOing shots inexistent.
Multiplayer: 8/10
Multiplayer is nothing more than the standard of the fighting genre's multiplayer. You get versus mode and that's it. Fun as it may be, I really want more then just versus.
Overall: 7/10
SF3:DI is a nice game. It's a whole lot better then many other games out there, but it's not gonna turn heads. However anyone seeking a good fighter with a decent array of fighters and a good fighting system should give this game a try, after all, most GameStops sell it for $17.99 or less.