The game was produced after the Street Fighter III sub-series has started, being released after 2nd Impact, but before 3rd Strike.

Alpha 3 has also been released on a variety of home platforms starting with the PlayStation version in 1998, which added an exclusive World Tour mode and brought back even more characters, with further versions on the Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable.

In X-ism, the player cannot air-block nor perform Alpha Counters, and can only use 1 Super Combo move in its powerful Level 3 version.

Worth noting, while in X-Ism the character has the least defence of all modes it also has the largest guard bar, vice versa for V-ism with A-Zism being in the middle.

by Masahiko Nakahira; Cody from Final Fight, who has since become an escaped convict; and Juli and Juni, two of Shadaloo's "Dolls" who serve as Bison's assassins and guards and who are unlockable characters.

The Dreamcast and Saturn versions move Guile, Evil Ryu and Shin Akuma to the default roster (although the latter shares a slot with his regular counterpart and is playable via a special button combination).

The Game Boy Advance version contains all of the characters from previous versions, as well as three additional characters: Yun from Street Fighter III, Maki from Final Fight 2, and Eagle from the original Street Fighter, all three based on their incarnations from Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001.

The PlayStation Portable version, Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, also adds Ingrid from Capcom Fighting Evolution, to bring the total playable character count to 39.

[20] The Official UK PlayStation Magazine said that the game would outlast Tekken 3, and stated "the only thing to tarnish this is the graphics.