My contribution to the Actionbutton.net manifesto is up. It's a list of the best twenty five games of all time. An excerpt follows:
"The developers of Street Fighter III mistakenly assumed that everyone was playing its prequel consciously. They looked at what worked, and improved on it, expounding the combo system with frame-specific accuracy. The game was slowed down, so that each decision had gravity. The lightweight rave tapping of the Alpha series was replaced with lurching, substantial blows, like men playing baseball with slabs of steak. Street Fighter III took the brave path of using hand-drawn art in a time when gaudy, popular, three-dimensional brawlers were hitting home systems half-finished, their visual aesthetic aging instantaneously like the Nazi at the end of The Last Crusade. Capcom made choices based on the game’s ultimate longevity. And then, they took the one element of passivity — that is, pulling away to guard — and gave players an active defensive choice. And that was why Street Fighter III failed."
To read the rest, please visit the manifesto.