As Street Fighter V nears the end of its final season of DLC, one fan-favorite character joining the roster is Oro, one of the characters introduced in 1997's Street Fighter III: The New Generation. And while reception to Street Fighter III and its various follow-ups have warmed considerably over the years since the game's initial launch, Street Fighter III nearly stopped Capcom's iconic fighting game franchise dead in its tracks, with no new numbered entries released for the main series for nine years following Street Fighter III: Third Strike's launch in 1999. Here's how the eagerly anticipated third entry in the franchise underwhelmed when it first came out of the gate swinging.

After the enormous success of 1991's Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Capcom released an entire line of updates as standalone titles, with four additional titles released across Street Fighter II's life cycle culminating in 1994's Super Street Fighter II Turbo. While the idea of Capcom being unable to count past the number two became something of a running joke in the gaming community at the time, the company had quietly begun development on Street Fighter III in 1994. Originally planned as a brand new fighting game franchise under producer Tomoshi Sadamoto, Capcom quickly decided to make the project the next numbered Street Fighter game, adding franchise mainstays Ryu and Ken to head a roster of entirely new characters.

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Oro faces off with Q in Street Fighter III

With the project now carrying the burden of expectation as Street Fighter III, the budget and production staff swelled, with development taking over two years, a longer development window than most fighting games at that time. The development time was prolonged by Street Fighter III being produced on new arcade hardware, the CP System III, with the growing staff still learning the technical capabilities of the arcade system board. And when Street Fighter III: The New Generation eventually launched in arcades worldwide in 1997, Capcom discovered that the lengthy development time saw the game emerge in a changing market.

The arcade industry had been steadily declining in North America for years, with the market turning more towards home console gaming. The various Street Fighter II arcade cabinets would ship well over 100,000 units worldwide, whereas Street Fighter III shipped less than 10,000 units. Because of the advances to the arcade system board, the game was not ported to home consoles initially, with a Dreamcast port eventually released over two years later in 1999. And Street Fighter III boasting strange, new characters while Capcom's own prequel Street Fighter series Street Fighter Alpha had a larger, more familiar roster meant Capcom was essentially competing with itself.

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The controversial original roster for Street Fighter III: The New Generation.

In addition to Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter III faced a much more crowded fighting game market than Street Fighter II had in 1991. Capcom was releasing new titles in its Darkstalkers and Marvel vs. Capcom series within Street Fighter III's life cycle, with both series and the Alpha trilogy using the CP System II hardware that made the games easier to port home consoles. And as 3D animation styles became more prevalent, including with rival fighting game franchises like Tekken, Street Fighter III's 2D sprites -- as gorgeously rendered as they were -- seemed outdated and more of the same rather than something exciting and new.

Capcom would quietly recoup some of its losses by releasing two additional versions of Street Fighter III, reusing assets while refining the gameplay and adding new characters and features to the series. Apart from enhanced ports and compilations, Capcom would refrain from producing new, numbered installments in the main Street Fighter series for nearly a full decade. Producer Yoshinori Ono, who previously worked as a sound management director on Third Strike, successfully convinced Capcom to let him develop what would become 2008's Street Fighter IV, while Street Fighter III -- with Third Strike, in particular -- would be more favorably reassessed following a re-release on modern home consoles in 2011 before being included in the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection in 2018.

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