[Coola Yagami]

From what I heard Alex was supposed to be the main character, but pressure had them bring in Ryu and Ken. But originally it was gonna be all new characters with Sean being the only possible link to Ken.

I remember the magazine complaints about SF3, everyone was on a 3D buzz back then. I forgot what game it was, either Darkstalkers 3 or one of the VS games where a magazine complained that the ending was just a picture or 2 with some text and whatnot, since everyone was so spoiled on short FMV endings with games like Tekken and whatnot.

For me, SF3 just felt weird, like idk.... no one really resonated with me but Ryu and Ken. Like there was no one I could really get into of all the new characters. They all got improvements and became better characters in the later revisions of SF3 (and they would improve in SF 4 and 5), but in that very first game SF3 The New Generation, it felt everybody sucked except Ryu and Ken. I remember in the arcades everyone would get tired of it and go to either the older SF games or the 3D ones. Like yeah SF 2 also had Ryu and Ken, but I could win matches with Guile, Chun Li, and Blanka in the arcades. Like I WANTED to use Elena and Dudley to kick some ass, but I just couldn't get into them as easily and always had to fall back on Ryu/Ken if I ever play at the arcade.

Part 3s were weird man, like they had this extra pressure to really change and mix things up. SF3 was Ryu and Ken and bunch of weird new characters. Art of Fighting 3 was just Ryo and Robert and a bunch of weird new characters. Fatal Fury 3 brought back the Bogards, Mai and Geese, then a bunch of weird new characters. Mortal Kombat 3 mixed it up a bit with lots of new characters to replace old character as well as the return of Kano and Sonya with new looks. Tekken 3 only brought back a handful and the rest were all new characters (though to be fair some were sons or students of older characters).