What is street Fighter Alpha to start with. Well, alpha as we know it represents first, but in japan, Street Fighter alpha was dubbed Street fighter Zero. This means that it is the first street fighter, or at least the first story, before any of the street fighters created. Why!? Why would they do this? Well, we know many people played Street Fighter II when it came out, but why in the world was it the second one!? Playing the true first street fighter really didn't help much either and I don't want to talk about that ever. So, here comes Street Fighter Alpha and we now understand that Ryu (ree-oo) was never saying that you can't defeat him if you can't defeat his master Shen Long, and he was instead saying, you can't defeat him unless you can beat his Shoryuken, which means Dragon Punch. Why does he bring that up? Well, here is a little background on Ryu. He possesses what's known as the Satsui no Hadou, or the killing intent. Remember that guy Akuma (gouki) who you can fight at the end of super street fighter 2 turbo by clearing two rounds perfect and using two supers to finish the opponent, or Ryu's boss in Street Fighter Alpha 2. Well, that guy is a master of it, so in general, being all violent, using dark hadoukens, the Shun Goku Satsu (raging demon), and all that awesome stuff is the Satsui no Hadou, an evil state to put it in simple words. Then one must question, what does this have to do with Shoryuken? EVERYTHING! A shoryuken is actually a dangerous move and can possess a killing touch if used with too much power. Ryu's master, is a master at using the most strongest Shoryuken, while not having a killing touch to it, in other words, peaking it close enough to heavily damage his opponent without casualty. Gouken on the other hand uses the Gou Shoryuken which is said to have the power to decapitate. What does this mean for Ryu? Well, as a practitioner of the style Ansatsuken (On (On(aun)-Saught-soo-ken), alignment came into play ever since Gouken became corrupt. Ryu was fighting is famous rival Sagat, king of Maui Thai, who proved quite a match to him. However, Ryu had a corrupt desire to win the match no matter what and tapped into his killing intent and pulled off a forbidden shoryuken which scarred Sagat for life. Ok, sorry for the huge background, but trust me, this game has a big story to it, but you need to search it up, as it is not provided in the game in detail. Reading the manga for Street Fighter Alpha will provide you with some accurate info here and there, and street fighter 3's manga actually features Sagat (who never appeared in the game street fighter 3) and a true fact about why Sagat's scar glows (as seen in street fighter alpha) or bleeds (when Ryu defeats him without killing intent in the manga) when fighting against Ryu. Ok, on the the review, and yes, the main character is Ryu, the movies and cartoon are wrong thinking it's Guile. But by now we know from street fighter 3 and 4 that Ryu is the center of the world, since everyone seems to want to fight "him." (even in cross over games or manga, they never refer to Ryu by his name unless he is actually in presence.)


As I told you towards the end of the background info, not much of the story is provided unless looked up online. All you'd truly know are rivals and ending scenes. The stories are displayed with pictures showing the characters in scene, and subtitles below of what they are saying. Other than that, the most I can tell you is, look it up online. (5/10) I would give the story itself which is not in the game a (10/10)

Ok, I'll tell you about the depth of the game. It's a small box with exotic foreign gifts popping out of it. There are only three options, Single player, Vs, and Options, ok ,well two since options doesn't count unless the switching of things really provides you with that much entertainment. I mean, they could have at least put training mode, but considering it's an SNES port, they'd probably put more on the Playstation or Saturn port considering that those were the next gen systems of the time. Sorry to those of you who really need to practice some sweet combos, but it seems you'll have to pull of something crazy in single player or just set up a versus mode and turn damage down to one star and time to unlimited. As for playing versus mode, playing with a friend who is experienced in street fighter can be pretty addicting considering that you'd compete against your friend. Single Player mode on the other hand provides a good amount of challenge. luckily, there are 8 modes difficulties with the star system so there is something for everyone. 1 Star difficulty is still sometimes challenging considering that sometimes, the game goes to 6 stars behind your back around the 7th round maybe, or at least, that's what my friend says. The four star difficulty is the normal mode, and for some reason, I can get to the last stage faster than the 1 star setting and without losing. As for the 8 star setting, that's like saying, WELCOME TO YOU KNOW WHERE, PREPARE FOR YOUR DOOM! So, don't say you can bet bored of the game because that's not really possible with the harder difficulties unless your a street fighter expert.

 Learning moves, well, if you've played street fighter, it's no different. Just look moves up online for your character, there you go. One of the new techniques added is the EX Counter in which you can literally just block out an attack and probably shoryuken the attacker right to the face and there's nothing they can do about it. Ok, so why do moves matter in depth? Well, if you are new to these kinds of fighting games, you have millions of things to learn before just going out there and mashing whatever. Learning moves means winning any battle, especially if you learn the hadouken (a projectile that flies across the screen). All these moves give you something to fight back with, especially when pressing the light, medium, or heavy button affects it's speed, length travel, height, or strength (not to mention the amount of frames for the move to connect). Learning a character's standard attacks are also important, why? They all have properties, or what some people refer them to as. For example, with Ryu, a crouching heavy punch will make him do his uppercut which is not only great for shoryuken combo, but it can hit characters coming down at him for an aerial attack. Some attacks have better reach than others so you can poke your opponents to keep them at bay while chipping their health away. Of course, the comes learning supers. Supers have three levels which are the strength of the super used. Use need to charge up your super bar to level 3 in order to use it, as well as pulling of the right combination to execute it (super motion with three punches.) Of course, back in the day, this was so hard to do, people wouldn't do it without the arcade stick. BUT, because we have an emulator provided, we can set macros so with one button, all three or two punches are pressed with one button. i can't remember where the option is, but once you find it, you type in the buttons you want pressed and assign that to a button on the keyboard or gamepad. There are tutorials for this online. Anyway, aside from moves, there is also the custom combo technique which if I remember correctly is executed by pressing any punch or kick button of the same strength at the same time when you have a super level bar.  I think the level of your bar is how long the duration of a custom combo is. A custom combo allows you to attack like crazy without any bounds thus allowing you to chain any attacks and special attacks together, and juggle your opponent in the air. If only there were a training mode, then you can practice this to death. Anyway, the custom combo causes the player to move forward continuously to make putting combos together easy enough, of course, if you want to keep from moving, you just crouch. But when I say you can chain any attacks together, you really can. You can press heavy punch to death, or you can do a combo, then hadouken, then shoryuken, and then shoryuken again and again and they can't do a thing about it, unless they punched you out of the custom combo state before you actually hit them. So all and all, messing around with that is pretty fun and adds a whole new level of excitement as you are able to create your own super attack.

Now you are probably thinking, "ok, so for depth, you covered vs. mode, single player mode on difficulties, moves, and I get the idea about combos, but, is that it?" NO! The single player mode of course has a scoring system for you, and I posted my score up so now you can see if you can beat me on normal setting...which many of you probably can. But that's not all folks, I'll let you in on a little secret. You want to fight the ultimate true boss? You didn't know there was one? You sure you wanna try? Ok, well, you asked for it. All you do is make sure you don't lose a single round and have five perfect victories (Do not lose a single round I say!) and once you get to the end, uh oh, SHIN AKUMA! And then you can prepare to fight the true demon, or prevail! Other than that, you can dare yourself to your own goals in single player mode, beat the game with different character, master different characters, etc. Every character has somethign to offer and no character is ever bad, you just don't know how to use them yet. You can also look up crazy combos on youtube and see if you can pull them off. Oh right, and sorry I forgot to mention, for those of you who have played the game, if this rom is a little slow for you somehow (well, I knew it was for me), put the setting for turbo on turbo 2 and that might help you fix your awesome combos. And THAT is the depth of this game. (7/10) a small package with many things in it

I already told you about the difficulty, but I'll discuss some other matters. The game is hard if you want it to be and it is up to you to learn how to beat your enemy. Best thing to do is, put it on easy, play one match, once you understand the mechanics of the game, put it on normal. If you think you are not learning fast enough, put it on hard, learn the tactics. As for learning techniques, I usually suggest looking on line and looking at the character's move set as to how their special moves work. For example, Ryu is all about sliding that thumb on he d-pad or moving the joystick from down to the right, or tapping down followed by right on the keyboard (and of course the attack button of choice). On the other hand, you have Chun-Li or Charlie/Nash who's moves are executed by holding back for two seconds and then pressing forward and your attack button of choice, or down for two seconds, then up and attack. Of course, with those moves like back then forward, you'd wonder, how do you keep from moving out of your spot since your enemy can see the projectile coming at them. Well, you hold down and left so your character crouches in place, or you can jump forward and instantly hold back and then combo while still holding it and then using your special attack after the standard attack combo (jumping heavy, standard or crouching heavy punch or light or medium).

 Now, if you think that's it, pft, you are wrong. You can just create combos out of the blue. You need to know how to cancel your standard attacks into specials. What this means is, right as soon as your standard attack connects, you must execute the special attack to follow up. This means something like heavy punch to a hadouken. But there are easier ways if you keep keep messing up the hadouken motion. Of course then you'll learn that you can only use the way with combos or if your opponent isn't jumping. This combo is the crouching then special attack. Which is easiest for most special attacks since it it always followed up by down to the right, or holding down-left and then right. So the game can actually be quite difficult for new comers. For me, it came when I finally understood what arrows pointing certain directions meant (thanks to MVC2's magazine command guide.). Difficulty of the game is also quite high, even on easy. I remember i was understanding street fighter and I totally loved the alpha series for the use of multiple super attacks, but I still couldn't beat the game even on easy. So there you have it, difficulty at a (10/10), but if you know fighting games or street fighter, it'll be lower.

Need I mention it again? YES! The review is slightly long, so you might have forgotten already. But now i change my answer to yes and no as I shall go into detail.
Why yes? Well I got three reasons for you:
1. Competition is pretty big on this game, so if you got some street fighting buds and they've been dying to play SFA about you, call them over, here is vizzed.com to the rescue
2. Single player...need I say anymore about the option settings...ok ,well, you can change time limit, speed setting, difficulty, damage setting...oh right, lets not forget that secret I let you in on, AND that it is single player!
3. CHARACTERS! Characters have special moves, different fighting styles, different attacks, different strengths. This equals, COMBOS AND TACTICS YOU MUST LEARN! You want to main a character!? Hah! Who do I main? EVERYONE! I have no true love in street fighter, I HAVE MANY TRUE LOVES!
A new reason approaching! HIDDEN FOURTH REASON APPEARS!
4. IT'S STREET FIGHTER!
(8/10)

Ok, so sadly, I would have better info for you, but I'm a little pissed that when I tried to preview this thread, I goth this glitch saying I failed the newbie quiz when I clearly passed the newbie quiz and am no longer a newbie user. Thank god I copied and pasted to Microsoft word
Ok, so anyway, the graphics at the time are not really as good as the Playstation or Sega Saturn ports, but they still offered some nice details to look at since the game came out after street fighter II. However, the character sprites are much better designed then the precious street fighter and there are more frames for smoothness of the character moves. So that right there is a plus, but then that makes analyzing frames a tad bit harder for those who really want to know what attack frame is when and where and where and when a rest frame is, etc. (7/10)
As for sound, the quality is certainly not as good as the other ports. You can do a comparison between the Sega Saturn, Psx, PC port to Snes and you'll see what I mean. but then again, SFA2 on other ports did come out later right? So they had more time to work on this. However, this doesn't mean the music is bad. In fact, the music is great, or at least coming from me as a musician. I love music in this game so much, I even play it on my tenor sax, so that's really something. But in general, what street fighter has always done well, is really relate the music as close as possible to the character, and they do a good job of that. You'll see what i mean if you look at the story behind a character, then listen to the music, and you'll see, oh, this character is very proud of what they do or this character wants to do their best, you know? (8/10)

Street Fighter Alpha 2 is pretty solid and it will give street fighter fans a very good ride, or dare I say, roller coaster ride. New characters with some awesome moves (rose using her soul illusion to attack multiple times with one attack), past lives of characters, characters who we never knew about who play a huge role in SF4 or a character's growth development (Sakura is an important character for Ryu), and more than one super for every character. For those of you who've played final fight, you are provided with three guest characters from the game, Guy (he's faster in the alpha series than in SF4), Sodom, and Rolento. Anyway, capcom knew what they were doing when they developed this Street Fighter and really wanted to make it big, in fact, Street Fighter Alpha 2 was kinda popular when it came out. But most of all, it set another stepping stone for fighting games. It shows it can make another street fighter with the same love while changing the game play in different way. And don't make me start with the console ports of Street Fighter Alpha 3. But if anything, if you like this version, don't get too comfortable just yet. If you are able to, I suggest trying Street Fighter alpha 2 gold, or street fighter alpha 3. Though there is a gameboy advance version on Vizzed.com, I'm not sure if I approve of it much in comparison to it's other ports, but that's not possible to get on vizzed.com, so might as well give it a go (just make sure you set up macros to make medium attacks easy since on the GBA port, medium punch is both the light and heavy attacks together).  (8.7/10)

By Shogun Gamer

FUN FACT TIME!:

SAY TATSUMAKI SENPUU KYAKU FIVE TIMES FAST!!! Too hard? here, maybe this might help since it's hard for many to say. Taughts-(soo)-Mah-K(ey)-Sen-Poo-Kyauh(k)-K(u) The U is silent when saying it with Japanese fluency because of it being said fast. Same goes for the soo sometimes. Saying it fast kind of makes is silent and if you listen to the pronunciation in the game, well, you hear Tatsmaki senpuu kyak (see how I took out the u in tatsu and kyaku?) Sometimes, the i of Maki is silenced, but in recent street fighters, you can hear it clearly.
Alternate but same pronunciation: Tahts-oo-Makee-Sen-Poo-Kee-Ock. Some people say the spelling of the pronunciation should be like this, but I tright to relate it to words for easier understanding. Tahts versus Taughts. mah-key versus makee (I think kee wins here but not ma), kyauh(k)-k(u) vs kee-ock. kee then ock. But I don't really think there is two syllables for the word Kyaku in Japanese unless stress on kya-ku. ((ok ,sorry about all the long stuff there. Read on!))

Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku is tornado whirlwind kick in English really. But it's easier to just call it hurricane kick or tornado kick. This makes it easier to explain combos especially. Same for projectiles which you can call fireballs. If you are curious about hadouken and shoryuken, well, hadouken can be surge fist, wave fist, and it goes on. Shoryuken is Rising Dragon Punch, Sho-Ryu-Ken.


The Tatsumaki will go clockwise if using your right leg and counter-clockwise when using your left. You want to go in the direction of the outside of your kicking leg so you are hitting with the outer part. If you hit with the inside, your legs are just going to split apart where as hitting the other way, you'll stay in the same position. The general idea of how it works is to concentrate your chi below your body into a whirlwind and make it move below you while spinning with your leg out (which is why they helicopter across the screen.)As for Sakura's version, she only has some use of chi, and concentrates more on jumping and spinning which is why the kick is known as Shunpuu Kyaku (spring breeze/whirlwind kick). But then I wonder if she is referring the the weather, or springing into the air like a whirlwind.

There is much to learn about the Ansatsuken style and it's three signature moves, hadouken, shoryuken, and Tatsumaki. If you search up on Google placing wiki next to these words, they'll tell you about the move and the many variations there are and how they are used by the other characters in street fighter. I really suggest looking into it as the info is quite interesting to look at.
End of fun facts

((If the fun facts are not allowed in this review, I will remove them if asked, but I thought it would be very useful information (in terms of knowledge of questions asked by many fans) so it would allow others to learn and have fun at the same time. I've met many fans of street fighter who always ask how a move is pronounced, or how they even do it or etc so I figured this would be an excellent idea to place in the full review. I hope I am also allowed to do more fun facts for future reviews.))