Street Fighter Alpha brought a lot of new mechanics to the tired and true format of Street Fighter II. Yes, fighting game fans should remember the time where II was getting so ridiculous that the next iteration would have been named Super Hyper Duper Street Fighter II Turbo Mega Deluxe Edition.
Recently, Capcom paid tribute to the series that brought air blocking, reversals, three-level super gauges, custom combos and more to the Street Fighter universe with the release of Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. Blending together Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Super Gem Fighters MiniMix onto one disc, fighting fans will have more than enough to whet their appetite for a mere $30.
Street Fighter Alpha harks from before the II series and features Ryu, Chun-Li, Ken, Sagat, and Bison mixed with a whole new lot of characters. Alpha 2 extended the roster and added the custom combo gauge. The version of 2 offered in this collection is the Japanese gold edition that expanded the dramatic battles, tweaked the game play a bit, and added Cammy to the cast.
Many fighting fanatics claim Alpha 3 as the pinnacle in the series, expanding the roster even more and giving players a chance to customize a bit with different super gauge abilities. Gem Fighters was released as Pocket Fighter originally in the U.S. and features the chibi versions of Capcom fighters duking it out in a more simplistic, but fun fighting game.
Navigating the menus is painless and the load times between each selection are a bare minimum and can even be shortened to almost nothing by installing a file in to your PS2 hard drive. What? Wait a second ... the PS2 has a hard drive?
Each conversion is high quality as every installment is almost 100 percent arcade perfect. While arcade perfection is something the fighting purists strive for, operating pound for pound like the originals does have its pros and cons.
The Alpha series continued the superb character sprites and animation that made II visually appealing and one-upped the quality. The vivid sprites bring the characters to life and each character animates extremely fluid in every version. All of the music is a direct port and all of the characters moves are all intact for each game. The bottom line is Alpha 1-3 and Gem Fighters are all an exact replica of the arcade titles - no complaints here.
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