Despite the fact that the game is about to hit its 25th birthday, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike still has a very active player base with new competitors and veterans alike grinding away in the technical classic.
One such player in Juan Zuniga recently shared a rather impressive Third Strike match with an almost inhuman Raging Demon punish with Akuma.
As can be seen in the footage, Akuma is put into the dangerous 3S predicament of an Aegis Reflector mixup, but it’s dealt with in absolute style.
Hai!#3rdStrike#fcmatches pic.twitter.com/kL3ub8cTRi
— Juan Zuniga (@FearMex805) April 14, 2024
He parries the first hit of the mirror on wakeup as the Urien attempts to jump over him, but before the mixup can even be put in place, the Raging Demon comes out to end the round in a staggering reversal.
It all basically happens in less than a second, so luckily tech master Arlieth provided a more detailed breakdown to show why the move was so impressive.
OKAY HERE IT IS, slowmo and then frame by frame in the next posts pic.twitter.com/hqY8MkLtbz
— Arlieth (@Arlieth) April 16, 2024
According to Arlieth, the Akuma player had exactly 17 frames (or .28 seconds) to input light punch, light punch, forward, light kick and heavy punch while also timing and inputting the wakeup parry on top of it.
LP is pressed for 2f, released for 2f, then pressed again for 3. Urien hasn’t even hit the ground yet.
5F later he taps forward. Urien presses crLK.
3F later is the LK. Urien’s own crLK is already on its way.
2F later is HP; this is literally a frame before the crLK will hit. pic.twitter.com/Xz42Vz9uA0
— Arlieth (@Arlieth) April 16, 2024
Using hitbox and input viewers, we can see that Akuma’s Raging Demon comes out on the last possible frame before getting hit by Urien’s crouching light kick (and potentially the Reflector again).
The awareness and execution to pull that off from a wakeup Aegis parry while being crossed up by Urien is pretty darn wild and impressive.
Oh i forgot to add this. It’s the very next frame when Urien crLK came out LOL pic.twitter.com/bZWMPfcX9S
— Arlieth (@Arlieth) April 16, 2024
According to Arlieth, the low parry was also apparently clever too since it left Urien without enough time to go for a high / overhead as well.
For an extra layer of fun, Alrieth concluded by showing what would have happened if Akuma went for Kongou Kokuretsu Zan instead after the parry, and it doesn’t work out for the demon.
Bonus: Here’s what happens if Akuma tried to KKZ it instead pic.twitter.com/HEtfBicbDA
— Arlieth (@Arlieth) April 16, 2024
There’s a lot of reasons thousands of people all over the world are still playing Third Strike on the regular, and the fact that you can pull off stuff like this is just part of why the game is loved.