It's always a joy to see that an older game has aged gracefully. Such is the case with Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition. It's not as polished or as easy on the eyes as Street Fighter IV, but its beauty is in the little things. Though it bears much more of a resemblance to its big brother, it's hard to overlook the stunning artistry in the animation work. By default, this port looks smoother than the arcade version, but only by default. You can turn off the smoothing filter and add scan lines to the picture if you really want a blast from the past. Regardless, this is a fine-looking fighting game that offers a lot of eye candy in the way of environments, character models, and flashy attacks.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition's eclectic, funk-heavy soundtrack fits the onscreen action like a glove, and while most of the beats are extremely simple, they are also downright infectious. Voice acting is simple and effective, two qualities that most modern Japanese games sorely lack. In places, the game has a tendency to sound a bit muffled and bass-heavy, but that's okay. This was an arcade game, after all, and it needed to be heard in one way or another. In a sense, it's actually kind of nostalgic.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition is about as solid a port as you'd like to expect from such a well-respected franchise. There are a few additions here and there, but the game remains largely unchanged. Make of that what you will.

The meat of the single player experience is Arcade Mode, which sends a character of your choosing up a ladder of opposing fighters that increase in skill the further you go. Occasionally, you'll have to destroy a car or parry a series of basketballs, but most of your time will be spent in one-on-one brawls. The roster of fighters isn't as huge as that in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, but it makes up for that by encompassing a wide range of fighting styles.

The action in Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition doesn't take up the whole screen, but that doesn't mean it has to settle for a boring border for the sake of the emulation. Instead, they've implemented a rewarding challenge system that rewards the player with unlockables. The challenges are reasonable and fit the game well, considering how this era in gaming is all but defined by these kinds of systems.

Of the most commonly-known Street Fighter games, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition is the most difficult and the least user-friendly. If you want to win online or offline, you've got to be on your toes all the time. Two things matter above all else in this game: timing and precision. That's fair enough, but here's the rub: you can't have only one or the other. You've got to execute with both of them almost without fail. If you toughen yourself up and learn how to play by the game's rules, you'll find an incredible sense of satisfaction every time you return to the game. If you don't, you will find yourself face down in the mud more often than you'd like.

Part of Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition's intimidating difficulty level has to do with problematic fighter balancing. Put simply, some characters are naturally worse than others. Perhaps this could have been ironed out by making some of the weaker characters a bit quicker or possibly tuning down the defense of some of the heavy hitters. I'm not saying that victory is even remotely impossible for weaker characters, but the occasional disparity is noticeable at times.

Capcom and Iron Galaxy Studios made the wise decision to graft Street Fighter IV's nearly-perfect default control scheme onto Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, and it works just as well here as it did there. What's even better is that the controls are extremely responsive, a must for any fighting game.

The third entry in the Street Fighter franchise saw the introduction of a new gameplay mechanic that only appeared once in the history of the franchise: the parry. This mechanic encapsulates everything there is to know about Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition and what it expects of you, the player. The parry is simple in idea and incredibly difficult to execute -- at first. Here's how it works: when an enemy aims at you with a high or low attack, tapping (Forward) or (Down) respectively will nullify the attack and give you a short window of opportunity for a counterattack. It's an incredibly risky gamble of a maneuver that pays off in spades for those who know how to use it properly.

I won't accuse Third Strike Online Edition's namesake of a bungled execution, but I can't call it flawless either. It comes close enough for my approval, though. Online play is great when it works 100%. If you run into an opponent with a sketchy connection, abandon all hope. Latency issues kill games that require surgical precision, and this game is nothing if not demanding.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition is a perfect port of an imperfect fighting game. Don't get me wrong; it's a fantastic fighter from just about every perspective, but a couple of drawbacks keep this one from reaching the heights of its successor (and even its predecessor). Still, if you're a Street Fighter fan, you really can't go wrong with this one.