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Craftsmanship:
9.5 / 10 -
Great detail -
Excellent paint application -
Artistic sculpts -
Still have a few problems with loose joints Playability:
9.0 / 10 -
Lots of useful articulation -
Many great accessories -
Guile comes with his Sonic Boom attack! - Loose joints prevent the perfect score
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Street Fighter (Series 3)by SOTA Toys
I love fighting games, a lot. Most of my friends complain how simplistic they can be (especially the 2D ones), but if you actually try to incorporate some skill in it, you can kick the crap out of any button masher. The first fighting game that I have ever played was also the game that started my love for videogames in general. This of course, was Street Fighter II. SOTA has done a phenomenal job presenting these classic characters in plastic and Series 3 is sure to please loyal fans of the game, or just toy geeks in general.
Sakura
(left); Adon (right) I will start off the review with the characters from Street Fighter Alpha.
Sakura
is, without a doubt, one of the more popular characters of the SF female
crew. She is a young teen who idolizes Ryu and hopes to become a great
martial artist like her idol. Her plastic modeling is my least favorite
of the line. She loses a few points because her face doesn’t look
right to me. Her eyes look a bit off. Other than that, it still looks
fine. Her uniform looks good and she can be fitted in various poses.
Right now I have her performing a shoryuken with Ryu and Ken. Due to her
small feet, she has a bit of a balance problem… nothing that a little
sticky tak cannot fix. Sakura sports some bright colors thanks to her uniform which includes red, blue and yellow. This is the first SOTA figure where I have spotted some bleeding in the paint. On her neck, there is a bit of blue spots on it. Perhaps I just received a freak batch because other people claim that they do not have the same problem and SOTA does have a very good track record with their paint applications.
Guile
(left); Gen (right) Sakura
comes with many accessories including a second head, extra pair of open
hands, a hand with a pointing index finger and backpack that you can
actually use to store most of her other accessories--like books, a shoe
and a camera (which she can actually hold). Adon was a former student of the powerful Muay Thai fighter, Sagat. However, Adon became disgusted with Sagat’s ways after he lost the first Street Fighter tournament to Ryu. Adon is a formidable Muay Thai fighter and I was really impressed with SOTA’s sculpt of the |
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cocky
fighter. The accuracy is all there, even in capturing the likeness of
his face. SOTA managed to get his huge smartass smile looking just right
and even his hair looks just as funky as it does in the game. When I
take a look at Adon, I can clearly see SOTA’s improvements over their
previous SF lines (which were amazing to begin with). The only problem I
have with Adon is the loose articulation on his legs. At first his
joints were too tight and I tried the freezer trick which did not end up
helping very much. I then gently fooled around with the joints until I
got them moving. Unfortunately, this is how the joints became loose. I did not notice any bleeding on Adon and I think SOTA did an amazing job, as usual. On his |
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shorts,
he sports the official colors of the Armchair Empire. I have to admit
that this puts me in shock because Omni usually likes to keep these
ones. The same goes with Sakura since she wears the blue and yellow on
her top. Adon
comes with three extra hands including one to give a thumbs down/up and
he also comes with one of the coolest accessories; an Adon head from the
very first Street Fighter game. SOTA loves to please their fans and they
take into consideration their customer’s comments on the SOTA board at
action-figure.com. Gen is the old geezer in Street Fighter Alpha who trained the twins Yun and Yang from Street Fighter 3. Despite his age and appearance, he is still a deadly foe and lives to take down Akuma. Personally, I like Gen, but he beat out Guy in the voting for this series which kind of pissed me off. However, SOTA did such a fine job sculpting Gen that I can overlook this. Gen’s headsculpt is very impressive, but his Chinese uniform is what really stands out. The flaps at the front and back look really neat and help him balance in certain poses which is very helpful since he has smaller feet compared to some of the other characters. By small feet, I mean normal sized feet since some other characters have some really large feet and hands which is consistent with the art style from the game (my God, Ryu and Ken’s feet are huge!).
Balrog
(left); Guile (right) In
the game, Gen is a master of many forms so it was only natural for SOTA
to create an extra pair of hands that resemble his forms from the game.
Including the ones he already has on, he has six hands in total. He also
comes with an alternate head that has a small smirk on his face. Gen’s
paint application is fairly simple but the purple really stands out. The
color tones match the game very well so there is some really good
accuracy. Moving
on from the Street Fighter Alpha characters, we have Balrog, one of the
boss characters from the classic and (possibly) most popular game of the
franchise; Street Fighter II. Balrog simply looks awesome. I am very
happy with the body and the detail of the muscles. The face also looks
very accurate to the source material. When
it comes to extra goodies, SOTA is sure to deliver. I was hoping like
hell that SOTA would include hands without the boxing gloves and being
SOTA, they didn’t miss this detail. It is all of these little extras
that give SOTA their high reputation. Like all the other characters of
the line, he comes with an extra head with a classic expression that you
would expect from Balrog. Like
Gen, the paint application is simple on Balrog, but it was still
executed with a lot of care by SOTA. There is no bleeding that I can
spot anywhere on the figure. Now
for the headliner of the series, none other than colonel Guile himself.
SOTA has done the flat-top justice because he is one of the best figures
I have ever laid eyes on and I am not even the biggest Guile fan. He can
be posed in many positions and has excellent balance. The head sculpt on
both of his heads is perfect. SOTA made sure that they really captured
the likeness of the original source. It
seems that one character from each line comes with some sort of chi
attack. It was extremely cool that Ken Masters had his flaming shoryuken,
but Guile’s sonic boom attack looks even better. He also comes with a
hairbrush. (Have you ever imagined how much maintenance his hair would
need to stay up?) Series
1 blew me away and I was really happy with Series 2. Series 3 is no
different and I would more than recommend spending the dough at your
local comic shop or at online retailers. Here’s to looking forward to
Series 4, which consists of Akuma, Ibuki, Fei Long, Birdie and Remy.
This will be the first round to include characters from Street Fighter 3
- J'Tonello (January 10, 2006)
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