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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) from
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
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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 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 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) |
