"We didn’t redraw the graphics, of course, those are done with filters and things like that," Seth Killian, Strategic Marketing Director of Online & Community, said in an interview with Siliconera. "Even though there are just filters, there was still a lot of work put into that."
Killian dug into the details, "There are three filters, including an unfiltered version and we can’t take any credit for that. Even when the other two filters are applied they are applied on a per character basis. The way the original characters were drawn they were shaded differently. The use of negative space and shadows varies across characters. Even if you apply a filter that looks good overall to some of the characters, it doesn’t necessarily look good to all of the characters."
"That’s not even really where most of the money was spent. A lot of backend technology to implement our own game system of achievements and systems of unlocks. It was a matter of getting into the basics of the code and tearing the code apart from the arcade side to implement it properly. For 3rd Strike it’s the first time where we’ve had access to the source code, which really paid off," Killian concluded. Ripping apart the source code let Capcom add in replay sharing over Xbox Live/PlayStation Network and YouTube. Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition also runs on its own external servers.
Since Capcom made HD remixes of Super Street Fighter II and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, I asked Killian why they didn’t give Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online the same treatment.
"It was a very different time for fighting games, that was even before Street Fighter IV had been released. In terms of energy, interest, audience and things like that it wasn’t necessarily there," Killian replied. "We also didn’t have that kind of filtering approach happening properly. Our thinking was it needed to have that. We were able to strike a good deal with a few studios at the time to try and produce those animations. It ended up costing a lot more and being a more difficult process than we anticipated, which is part of why it didn’t happen. It’s literally eye candy, right?"
"It is… and I think older gamers that remember Street Fighter III are fine with this," I answered. "However, I also see younger gamers who are quite critical of visuals if isn’t as shiny as I don’t know… Street Fighter X Tekken."
"There is a crowd there you may not be able to win over and I understand that. It’s a matter of budget and resources and things like that. Also, the Third Strike animations are so beautiful. Redrawing all of those would be – we learned a lot of lessons with HD Remix. We thought it needed that kind of graphical update to be eye catching to the kids there. I don’t know if every ten year old is going to want to run out and buy Third Strike. I mean I think they could and learn to play it, but it’s sort of a love letter to the people asking us for Third Strike for many years. What we’ve created is something respectful of Third Strike that brings the game into the future with better single player modes, really great training modes for parrying, combo challenges and all sorts of stuff."
