Guest Feature: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

This column is a guest author feature, written by a friend of the site whose work I am thrilled to host at Retro XP. This entry is from Ashley Schofield, author of VA-11 Hall-A: Design Works. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

I'm going to spend the process of drafting this piece seeing how long I can go before talking about EVO Moment 37. Let’s find out together.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is not the greatest fighting game ever made, nor a perfect one. It’s flawed in the ways any game can be. A fair few characters are worlds away from being competitively viable. I’m aware when I pick Q that I am actively making my life much harder for the sake of love; Chun-Li and Yun are absolute monsters, the best characters in the game without question — though others like Ken, Akuma and Makoto don’t trail far behind. There are several completely real unblockable setups that you kinda just have to know about and practice defending against. But I do think there is one aspect of 3rd Strike that is pretty much perfect from concept to execution: the parry.

Parrying in 3rd Strike is simple. While holding back blocks an attack as normal, you can also tap the stick forward when it connects to parry it and avoid chip damage and blockstun entirely. A freeze-frame animation occurs alongside the most satisfying sound effect in any fighting game, and you’re suddenly at an advantage, free to punish your opponent while they recover from their (now foolish) attempt to hit you. It’s built on a very simple foundation: risk and reward. In order to parry and gain the boons it grants — no chip damage, no blockstun, advantage frames, additional super meter — you have to stop blocking and open yourself up to being hit. If you miss the short parry window — 10 frames grounded, five frames as an anti-air, and seven frames for an air-to-air — or parry in the wrong direction (low attacks must be parried by tapping down, rather than forward), you eat shit. 

It’s not complex, at least in concept, and it’s not intended to be. The game’s director Tomoshi Sadamoto stated in an interview with Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama that the team designed parries not as an additional system — as opposed to Street Fighter 6 which makes parrying a choice within Drive gauge management — but an addition to the existing fighting system alongside blocking, attacking and throwing. Its inspiration lay in real martial arts as much as movies: “kung-fu, or Jackie Chan fights, someone receiving the attack, right?”; redirecting the momentum of an attack, flowing like water, rather than outright blocking it. This wasn’t always the case: parry was originally inputted by tapping back, which the designers quickly found meant “there was no risk involved”, as a mistimed parry would result in a standard block anyway. Considering the existence of red parry, a type of parry that can be triggered by carefully timing a parry while already in blockstun from a multi-hit move (with a window of just two frames!), some warped version of Sadamoto’s original intent arguably still bled through. What a different game 3rd Strike would have been if that idea had stuck.

Parries define the neutral, offense, and defense of 3rd Strike. Projectiles can be parried, granting super meter and allowing you to keep closing the gap without being slowed down. Advancing moves like Dudley or Q’s dash punches can be parried on reaction, making them considerably more of a risk to throw out in neutral; even moves that are usually safe thanks to their blockstun become dangerous due to parry’s existence. If you’re too late to react to a jump-in with a dedicated anti-air, a parry is still on the table as a panic option. Even multi-hit supers like Ryu’s Shinku Hadoken and Chun-Li’s Houyoku-Sen (I’ll get there, knowing reader, don’t worry) can be parried with practiced hands and a calm mind. On wakeup, a guess-parry, either mid or low depending on the attack you expect, alongside a buffered reversal or super, can turn the tides of a corner situation instantly — something the team intended, as “we wanted to do something about people just getting relentlessly pressured offensively.” Parries were designed to increase the power of defense across the board, which is why they don’t cost any sort of resource to use . The risk of guessing wrong or an incorrect input is still there, but parries are undeniably strong.

So, as posited by Reddit user guitararvin in a legendary, much-screenshotted post: “What’s the point of attacking if they can just parry?” The simple answer is to throw, using both normal throws and command grabs. Throws cannot be parried or blocked, only teched with your own throw input — command grabs can’t be teched at all; throws have always been the option to beat blocking, and parries are no different. Of course, there are option selects to cover both parry and throw tech simultaneously, but to say that invalidates parries would be as silly as saying the existence of throwing invalidates blocking. No, the real answer to “why attack?” is that your opponent can’t always be right, and even if they are, you can read their response before they even input it. This is how the mind game introduced by parry begins to bloom.

Say your opponent jumps at you and is close enough for an aerial attack to land. You could block, but they’re still plus afterwards and are now next to you, ready for a strike/throw mix up. You could try to anti-air with a dedicated reversal, but they can parry it on the way down and invalidate your attempt. You could try to parry, but they can read your own parry attempt and not attack at all, leaving you open to a throw when they land. 

This constant, complex game of ‘will they, won’t they’ is what makes 3rd Strike so special to me. Other Street Fighter games have mechanics like this, such as 6’s aforementioned Drive Parry and the Punish Counter consequences of having a parry attempt predicted and thrown, but they don’t match the breakneck pace of decisions in 3rd Strike. Fighting games are a conversation, and 3rd Strike adds a unique layer of basically-mind-reading to that conversation by making parry as universal as blocking and increasing the risk reward tenfold for keeping track of your opponent’s habits and anticipating their choices. If your opponent tries to poke with a crouching medium kick repeatedly, you might start to adapt by guess-parrying low when they get within range. They can adapt, instead dashing in when you expect the low kick, surprising you with a throw. You adapt back, and so on, and so on, and eventually you have layers upon layers of decisions defined by whether you or your opponent choose to tap forward or hold back. Parry habits become as central to understanding your opponent and succeeding in the matchup as their character choice. I fucking love 3rd Strike.

And look, it’s impossible to discuss parries without gushing about EVO Moment #37 in 2004 and, in the halls of legend as of a few years ago, EVO Moment #38 in 2024. You’ve seen the former before. Daigo Umehara, on a pixel of health, parries all 15 hits of Justin Wong’s Houyoku-Sen super (see, we got there) when blocking or missing a single parry would kill him, before closing out the match with a combo that only just kills. There are details to note here: Daigo only having a two-frame window to hit the first parry after the super’s screen-freeze; Justin mashing his stick as loudly and randomly as possible to throw off Daigo’s concentration, and the fact that Daigo didn’t end up winning EVO that year, even after that incredible display. But none of that matters. He just hit 15 parries, 15 perfect 10-frame inputs in a row where any mistake would have cost his life, amidst suffocating tournament pressure. And to risk beating a dead horse, it’s the lack of leniency in 3rd Strike’s parry window and inherent risk that makes it uniquely impressive, as demonstrated by how the feat doesn’t stack up when replicated within the parry systems of Street Fighter V — due to a much more forgiving parry window — or Street Fighter 6 and its intense screen freeze on each parry, lessening the impact of the tight timing requirement. It’s the most famous fighting game clip for a reason: it’s a 56-second distillation of how parry makes 3rd Strike what it is, and how mastery of a relatively simple mechanic can make history. “Unbelievable”, commentator Seth Killian yells out, and he’s right. “It’s unadulterated madness!”

The latter is less discussed but, to me, just as incredible. Hayao, notably playing one of the worst characters in the game, Hugo, up against FrankieBFG’s white gi-clad Ken, an ironic visage of the previous moment. As before, just a pixel remains on Hayao’s health bar. Frankie plays as safe as he can, hoping to chip Hayao out without risking getting close to Hugo and being welcomed into the warm grasp of a command grab. Both players jump forward. Frankie activates Ken’s EX Tatsu, a safe, multi-hitting move that will almost guarantee a kill. But you know where this is going by now. Hayao sees it coming and parries all four hits, comboing Frankie on the way down and suddenly obliterating the life lead. Justin Wong happens to be commentating the match, and screams out “Oh my god, no! No!” on seeing the parry, witnessing Frankie suffer a similar fate. Frankie desperately tries to hit Hayao with a wakeup Shippu Jinraikyaku super, but Hayao reads it once more. Hugo’s heavy kick, something Justin accurately describes as a “worthless move” in any other context, launches him into the air to completely pass over the super and let him punish with a brutal clothesline, taking the match. Hayao isn’t Daigo, though. Rather than sitting calmly and snapping back to reality after intense concentration, he leaps up from his chair grinning, raising his hands to the sky and running over to the crowd to high-five anyone available. He’s a showman, and he’s having a damn good time. It’s a wonder he didn’t hit the Running Man or do the splits as he did earlier in the set. The combination of incredibly specific game knowledge, exact reads, precise execution, and joyful showmanship makes for a moment finally worthy of being an (unofficial) sequel to Daigo’s achievement. Fighting games are something so great.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the phrase ‘EVO Moment’ without something of a bad taste in my mouth (and I apologize for this tone shift, stick with me). The event that grew from the relatively small ‘Battle by the Bay’ local in California to the single biggest tournament on the planet has lost its soul as of last year, being bought out entirely by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. What was previously an event bringing together the very best from across the world to compete and make history has become a blatant sportswashing endeavor, shamelessly hoping to divert attention away from the Saudi government's participation in the brutal murder of journalists and unimaginable, flagrant abuse of human rights. 

Everything I’ve fondly reminisced about now comes with this baggage. The biggest fighting game fans I know, including myself, boycotted attending or even watching EVO as a result of what it’s become, what it represents, what it contributes to. EVO 2026 just happened, and the difference in energy across the community was palpable — no one cares like they used to. There probably won’t even be another ‘EVO Moment’ — there’ll be incredible plays performed by those who still choose to attend, but the adoring community spirit that led to their documentation and legendary status is gone. The PIF isn’t even content with just its ruination of the main event, either — previously announced new events across France, Singapore, and other countries alongside Vegas and Japan are soon to be bolstered by yet more shameless sportswashing in the EVO Locals initiative. Take a $1,000,000 cash injection for your grassroots local, don’t worry where the money came from, and certainly don’t think about what happens when the PIF gets bored of their little fighting game enterprise a few years down the line. 

But the beauty of fighting games is that, as mentioned, they’re a conversation. Not between you and EVO, not between you and Mohammed bin Salman. It’s between you and your opponent, whether they be sitting next to you on a plastic chair amidst the bustle of a local or chatting to you over an unstable Discord connection between rounds on Fightcade. 3rd Strike is alive and well thanks to its community keeping it alive, not thanks to investments in EVO. As long as you’re fighting a friend, or a stranger, and trying to read their parry habits mid-match, 3rd Strike is alive. 3rd Strike is parrying every hit of a fireball super without missing a beat and turning to your dumbfounded friend, an evil grin on your face. Hell, try to replicate the Daigo Parry and die trying, giggling about your attempt at mimicking a legend while far below the skill level required — there’s no other way to get better. And as the answer to that Reddit thread sarcastically replies, effectively highlighting the simple meaning found in choosing to keep going and fighting for the future when things seem hopeless: “What’s the point of living if we are all just going to die?”

Additional Sources:

• Sadamoto interview

• Supercombo System Page

• Moment 37

• Moment 38

• Splits

• Core-A SFV

• SF6 Daigo Parry

• Why attack?

• Khashoggi

• Rights

• EVO Locals

Ashley Schofield is a freelance critic, essayist and journalist, as well as the author of VA-11 Hall-A: Design Works for Lost In Cult.

This newsletter is free for anyone to read, but if you’d like to support my ability to continue writing, you can become a Patreon supporter, or donate to my Ko-fi to fund future game coverage at Retro XP.