Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES) Review

Overview

As many of you no doubt know by now, the latest incarnation of the long-running Street Fighter franchise is soon to be upon us. As a matter of fact, the fifth numbered installment comes out in about a month. I figure that in the spirit of that (as well as just being bored, I guess), I decided to take a look back at an interesting iteration in the franchise as a whole. Street Fighter Alpha 2 was released not only in the arcades, but on quite a number of consoles over the course of 1996. I’m sure many people know of the PSX port, as it’s the one that is considered by many to be a classic of their childhoods. There is, however, one port that tends to get overlooked: the Super Nintendo version, and that’s what we’ll be looking at today.

Graphics

Graphically, this game is, by the standards and limitations of the system, pretty good. Everything from the intro to the stages themselves are actually quite lovingly recreated based on their arcade counterparts. The characters themselves look…okay, certainly not as clean as their counterparts. I’m probably comparing apples to oranges in a way, as no port of that era was arcade-perfect, but it’s just the slightest bit off putting. Not much else to say here. Moving on…

Audio

there’s no easy way to say this. The chatter and basic sound effects in this game so muffled that it sounds like everyone is pretty much talking (and fighting) through a pillow, and the sticks out incredibly badly with the announcer. You can tell what they’re saying most of the time, and most of it is limited to just a few phrases and grunts here or there, but it’s certainly noticeable. They try to re-create the themes from the original game, and they do an okay job, in their defense, but they just come off as rather cheap knockoffs that are comparable to their original versions. It’s not that they’re bad per se, they’re just sort of average. In fact, if I’m being honest, I’d say that the previous SSF2 port had better instrumentation. I suppose though that it really all comes down to taste in the end, and this game soundtrack didn’t grab me like it probably should have.

Story

Funny. I honestly never thought it actually have to use this section. Anyway, the story of Street Fighter Alpha 2, in its most basic form is a revamp of the first game bearing the Alpha name. Basically, it chronicles the random adventures of the Street Fighter cast between the events of the original game and Street Fighter II. Each character has their own story told through the arcade mode of the game. Some are considered canon the main series, and some are not. These stories only manifest themselves in the endings for each character. That’s pretty much it.

Gameplay

Gameplay in this game breaks down to three modes: arcade, versus, and option. While the last one basically what you configure various options (such as number of rounds and whether or not you want time limits and how long set time limit is) as the name implies, the arcade mode takes you through the affirmation stories of each character, facing eight opponents along the way. Versus mode pits you against another player in one-on-one combat. That’s basically all there is to it. There’s one issue with this particular version that really does need mentioning, and that’s the load times. Whenever transitioning into a match or the end of one, the cartridge seems to need a five second load time. I can understand how many people would be put off by this, but it really doesn’t harm anything in and of itself. Something a bit more bothersome would be the fact that this game plays at 30 frames per second as opposed to the 60 FPS standard set by the other versions. This didn’t bother me particularly, but I’m sure there are quite a few hard-core players out there raising their pitchforks over issues like this, so it bears addressing, if only as a bit of forewarning.

Depth/Replay Value

Most of the replay value from this game will come from configuring different options from the options menu, such as the difficulty. If you want to take your time learning the game, I think you’d get a few hours out of it. If you’re a completionist, you might get closer to five or six, just as a rough estimate. This topic is up and play, though, a few quick matches would take about 5 to 10 minutes at the most while corresponding arcade mode might take 30 or so depending on how good you are.

Conclusion

when all said and done, the question becomes: what I recommend this game? The answer that question is, if you’re interested by what you see here, give it a go. Considering it’s free on the site, you’re really not losing anything. However, I absolutely do not consider this the recommended version of this game. If you are able to play the arcade original, play the PlayStation version. Aside from the load times, it’s just a cleaner version of this game, from the 60 frame per second action, to clear voice clips, sound clips, and soundtrack. I will admit though that was fairly ambitious developers part to put this at all considering how big this game is. They even had to cut some stages out (namely the two boss stages) to make room for the kind of data this game stored. Basically, it’s a bit of a technical marvel and not much else. Happy new year, and farewell for now.