It's the mid 90's, the hardware is improving in horsepower, and many franchises are taking that seemingly obligatory plunge into the world of polygons. It was fighting games' turn to make that transition. Sure, there were already 3D brawlers by this point, spearheaded by Virtua Fighter, Soul Edge, and Tekken, but the traditionally 2D flagships like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat seemed obligated to give it a try. 

Street Fighter was up first with the arcade release of Street Fighter EX in Japan. Development was handled by ARIKA, a company made up of former Capcom employees, including Akira Nishitani (one of the co-creators of Street Fighter II). A later patch upgrade, EX Plus, introduced four new hidden characters, along with the addition of Evil Ryu. for the Sony PlayStation was done as a refined upgrade, along with some extras, as home conversions were beginning to feature at this time. Thus the additions to the subtitle EX Plus Alpha, which would be a gigantic meme for Capcom for decades to come regarding the naming of their games.  

EX Plus Alpha (shorthanded as EX+@), is the definitive version, which adds Garuda. This was that period that coined the 2.5D term, describing games that feature polygon rendered models, but the action still took place on a two-dimensional field. At the time, I thought it was an alright game that lacked the speed and finesse of SF Alpha 2, my favorite Street Fighter for the longest time. But when it comes down to the mechanics, the precision wasn't too bad, hit boxes worked, and inputs are fairly responsive.

The gameplay uses a mix of mechanics and combo philosophies of the Alpha series and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. There is a little bit of clunkiness that takes time getting used to, but EX+@ doesn't feel like the time capsule of a fighting game I had convinced myself it was. The blend of the old and new for the time works, though I feel like Zangief's command grabs were finicky. Might be my bias (grappler life), but this was the period before buffering inputs was a coin science. This also the first fighter I can remember where you could cancel out and chain several Super Arts together for some cool combos. That was pretty progressive for the time period, and even more so, when one observes the direction fighting games have taken to maximize damage. Hell, even the inclusion of the Guard Break I see as a primitive Focus Attack of sorts.

The roster blends most of the Street Fighter World Warriors (Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim, Zangief, M. Bison, and Akuma. Sorry Blanka and E. Honda fans) along with new popular Alpha character Sakura Kasugano (this young lady RULED Street Fighter for a short while), with the ARIKA unique cast of characters. For this iteration of Street Fighter, it seems Allen Snider and Hokuto are portrayed as the main(ish) characters, with Cracker Jack, Blair Dame, Doctrine Dark, Skullomania, Pullum Purna, Darun Mister, and Hokuto's brother Kairi rounding out the lineup.

I remember at the time a few game magazine publications didn't think too highly of the ARIKA cast, believing they didn't fit in with Capcom's established fighters. Yes, even in 1997, fans didn't really want a changing of the old guard; Street Fighter can only be Street Fighter by following whatever guidelines fans make up. Gatekeeping is stupid.

For my money, the ARIKA characters fit like a glove, and some of them sported some cool play styles. Blair, for instance, had some gameplay similarities to Mary of the King of Fighters series. D. Dark was a fascinating take on zoning, and Darun was cool close-range brawler, with moves like the Tornado DDT, something Alex would later use in Street Fighter V. And there's C. Jack, who would bat away projectiles with a simple swing. Sure, Rose did the same thing in the Alpha games, Athena could repel in KOF, so projectile deflection wasn't new. But it looked cool every time.

This was still the blocky period of game development, but textures, lighting, and detail were starting to improve. SF EX+@ may lack the wonders that can be done with hand drawn and sprite-based work, but credit where it's due, the game looks fairly clean. Even the backgrounds are 2D rendered in a lower resolution, giving it an interesting stylized depth. There's some clipping and a little bit of muddiness with the character faces, but otherwise, it's neat. Not to mention the music. I think this might be some of Capcom's best OST, many of the EX games' tunes get stuck in the brain. 

Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha can be considered fairly solid. Though it can feel a little bit dated, it's not too slow that it can't be enjoyed with a revisit. It may not be as fun as Rival Schools, and not much was done with Capcom bringing the game to true 3D, these don't hold it back too much. I wouldn't say it's something that was going to overtake the sprite counterpart, the technology was just too young to consider this the true move to make. It was a good debut for ARIKA, who are still around to this day, having done work on Tetris 99, the Endless Ocean series on Nintendo, and are teaming up with SNK to revive classic IPs, so they became a studio with nuanced influence.