Publisher: SNK
Developer: SNK
Size: 1 CD
Memory Usage: Yes
No. of players: 2(simultaneously)
Known in Japan as: GarouDensetsu 3
(or "Groundnuts" as the DW spell checker will suggested I change it to)
Got it for: $15, new over at The West Exit.
After tearing Geese *and* Krauser a new ass, the FF gang is now after some sort of ancient scrolls. What these do, or why they want them is anyone's guess. All I know is that some punk-ass kid has them now...and boy does he whip ass! Maybe the message of the game is "Don't beat up on small children or someday they will find magic scrolls and use them to fuck you up"...perhaps they ought to put that in the intro...sure beats that "Winners don't use Drugs" crap...

What's it all about?
Well, like the last three Fatal Fury games...it's a one on one fighter. In this, the fourth game, they've revised the whole two-plane fighting field to an almost fine-tuned perfection. No more jumping back and forth slowly, and non-stop until someone finally takes a hit, now you will mainly use it to avoid or counter attacks. Some hits will even push you into one of the outer planes, which you can then immediately retaliate from with an attack to get right back in the action. Past that, most all of the characters now have this sort of cheap button-press combo thing that you can perform by hitting the strong attack button repeatedly when close to an opponent. This will result in a three or four hit combo where, normally, only one or two hits would be possible. It really helps against the cheap-ass AI, but when playing against buddies it'll tend to wear on your nerves as now someone can just simply jump in, then slam the attack button for a five to six hit combo. Finally, and this is pretty hip, there are now finishing moves...kinda. Depending on what attack button you use when delivering the final blow to your opponent, you can actually knock them off the playing field and either into the background, or towards the screen and past the viewable foreground. Though it’s kinda gimmicky, it’s still a very hip thing to watch to see what happens in certain backgrounds when you do it.
Graphics - Excellent! The characters are huge, and extremely well animated. The backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous, with a huge amount of color and activity going on. Also, in true FF-style, there are even changes between matches(time of day will change, activity, spectators, etc).
Sound - Rocks. SNK went the extra mile and redid the soundtrack to take advantage of the CD format, and it sounds *great*! Sound effects are loud, and quite clear...though I didn't notice that they took advantage of the stereo setup like most Neo games will(I may have just missed it, or they didn't make it very apparent)...
Control - Though I still have issues with a few of the super moves, for the most part the control is solid. The new additions like the plane skipping, and multi-button-press attacks are smooth as silk and come off immediately.
AI - Cheap-fucking-ass(as usual)! What the AI likes to do here is jump immediately after you jump, in order to knock you out of the air, or if it’s Mia, to air throw you EVERYTIME. It also has this nasty habit of hopping or jumping every time you try to sweep. It’s like the AI is letting you know it’s a little too good to actually just block an attack or something. That in and of itself really goes a long way in showing you that the AI is actually reading your controller rather than quickly reacting to your attacks. Word of warning: Sokaku and Geese will test your restraint to the max...try not to break your controller...
Replay value - As with most decent fighters, it's relatively high....though the cheap-ass AI may have you only playing it when buddies are around.
Load Times - Ugh, could be better...much better. They don't cut you many breaks on this one, at all. Though the initial load isn't the 45 seconds+ were usually accustomed to, the bordering-on-ruining-the-game match loads more than make up for it. First, you have the "first fight" load where both your character and the opponent are loaded, plus the background...and that takes a hefty *47* seconds. After that, when you fight the mandatory "Accident!!!" scenario against Yamakazi, even though the next person you fight will be on that same background, the game still loads for about the same amount of time as if it were a completely new match. Though on most other games these extensive loads would be enough to absolutely ruin them, SNK is very lucky that FF3 really is just *that* good.
Please note that this set of load times was based on using Terry while playing through the entire game.
Initial Load: 34 seconds
First Fight: 47 seconds
Vs Blue Mary: 23 seconds
Vs Franco Bash: 28 seconds
Vs Joe Higashi: 27 seconds
Vs Bob Wilson: 25 seconds
Vs Yamakazi(accident!!!): 26 seconds
Vs Mia: 25 seconds
Vs Andy: 24 seconds
Vs Hon Fu: 27 seconds
Vs Sokaku: 28 seconds
Vs Same Character: 10 seconds
Vs Geese: 26 seconds
Vs Yamakazi: 28 seconds
Vs Jin Chonshy: 25 seconds
Character Ending: 16 seconds
Choosing new character after continue: 22 seconds
Loads are timed when the "Now Loading..." screen appears, not just when the bar starts moving(as this can be one to three seconds after the screen initially appears). I don't use a stopwatch or anything fancy, just the internal clock on my iBook to time it. It could be a second or two off...
Tips for better gaming experiences:
There are quite a few FAQs out there for the game, and they're definitely something you'll want to take a look into. The two following are my favorites, be sure and check them out.

Fatal Fury 3 FAQ(release 2) by Galen Komatsu
Perfect Player's Guide to Fatal Fury 3 by Henry Adams Moriarty

My rating: 80(out of 100) - An excellent fighter with a lot of technique, excellent character design, gorgeous backgrounds and the FF engine tuned to near-perfection; this is the pinnacle of the FF series thus far. Though the game itself just rocks, the loads *really* bring this down quite a bit....add about 12 points if you're playing the AES/MVS version...
EGM gave it: 7, 7, 8, 8.5(out of 10) Note: This score was originally for the AES version
GamePro gave it: 4.5(graphics), 4.0(sound), 4.5(control), 4.5(funfactor) (out of 5)

Lazy Cat's thoughts: Huh....what....oh sorry, I was just taking a nice nap between the horrible, horrible loads times...
Terry gets the tank...
....and it's straight off the screen for Bob.
Ah, the always-ass whipping "Power Dunk" move...
His throw hasn't changed since FF1, and after all these years it still looking unbelievably painful!
Mandatory bits of hilarity brought to you by the ever-wonderful SNK US-translation crew:
As per the game's official side-description, it is boasted as: Real Battle Action Game.

Past that, just about every intro and win quote in the game is hilarious. They all have that SNK-ish, off-the-wall-so-bad-it's-good sorta thing going for them.

Fatal CD Fury?
Weird thing happens at the beginning of every match, and at the end if you win: The screen blacks out for about a fifth of a second. It’s weird. Some say it’s due to the CD music, but I don’t know that I’d agree with that. The music is already playing before the match even starts. The only thing I can think of that it could be is maybe the “Go” and “Terry Wins” sounds are on the CD rather than stored in the sound memory as PCM...but if that were so, how does the music keep playing(it's redbook)? It also blacks out the screen whenever you pause...