Street Fighter Alpha Anthology Comments by Luke Albiges

I was an avid Street Fighter player, but Alpha, while being graphically stunning and very challenging to master, was far from perfect for me. The original was far more balanced, expecially if you played the most refined versions. Yes, there were clearly better characters, but the roster was much more focused and aside from some problems of over and under powerfulness of the bosses the "standard" fighters were much more near in strenght than the Alpha ones. Also the controls in Alpha for some character became too complicated, bringing the series more near to the SNK style than ever IMHO. Still, I could be dusting off my metal PS joystick soon... SF has just too much of an appeal to me...

Is this full or budget priced then?

I've got two of the Alpha/Zero's on the Saturn y'see...

I love the Alpha Anthology. For £20 it's an absolute bargin! Kudos for mentioning the hidden games and fighting styles in the review. You're basically looking at arcade perfect versions of each one here.

Also - Gem Fighters is pretty original and funny, a worthy addition.

By the way, the list of games available are (from Memory)

Street Fighter Alpha
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper (complete Alpha 3, then hold select while choosing to play Alpha 3)
Super Gem Fighters
Hyper Street Fighter Alpha (complete all games, inc A3Upper then hold select while choosing to play SFA)

It's like a circle only faster, and it holds many more doubts than your average geometry.

But is it better than Super Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES?

everybody was 2d fightiing

Okay, okay, I'll buy it already. :)

They could have included Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo though, just for me.

I'd be tempted to buy this, except I still own a copy of Alpha 3 for the PlayStation and what with backwards compatability and all that makes this re-release a bit less essential. ;)

except I still own a copy of Alpha 3 for the PlayStation

Out of interest, is there much difference graphically between ps and ps2 SFA3?

Yeah. The sprites are smaller, have a lot less animation. Everything generally moves smoother on the PS2 version.

dem sprites was fast as lightenin'

hog-lumps

once you've selected what alpha you wanna play, there's no load times at all.

@Hog_lumps: I don't like much the PS1 SF Alpha 3 graphics. They lack too many animations. That also introduces a gameplay problem since it is harder to pull some combo if you're used to pull 'em in the arcade game. Can't comment on this one, but I guess it is arcade perfect.

@AcidSnake: I'd say it is better than the SNES game you mention, but SSFII on the PS1 (or on MAME) is a better game overall in my opinion.

@ilmaestro: Super Puzzle Fighter is one of the best puzzle games I've ever played. Too bad some characters were much more powerful than others. Including the ubiquitous Dan which released only Red gems that allowed the opponent to get some massive comboes was just classy too.

I agree with neuroniky the first couple of versions were the best balanced (SF2-Turbo being my favourite) ... as the series went forward it seemed to be less about strategy and style and more about repeating combo's until one of the fighters dropped.

(that being said I'll probably get it ... if only to try and persuade publishers to keep 2D fighters alive)

In fact, it was a little bit fright'nin

@pacrifice

Well that's a huge relief! - the load times on the PS1 SFA-3 drove me mad! (although admittedly they could be significantly reduced by turning off the 'snazzy' character select screen)

Well I loved SF2 as a kid and I thought I knew a bit about StreetFighter.

Obviously not - with all the talk of isms and alphas this review went totally over my head.

but they fought with X and A-ism

(half rhyme there)

Tempted to get this - the fella has all the arcade Street Fighter games emulated on his X-box (pikey sod!), but trying to play Street Fighter on an X-Box pad is like trying eat soup (perhaps Heinz Cream of Tomato) with chopsticks.

One word: J-ism

@Riggers: I agree. Only the Snes pad up until now was good enough for playing 2d fighters. On the PS there are a lot of very good joysticks around, but I don't know if something similar is available for the XBox too.

One very important thing not explined in review, does this compilation has online mp? If it does it deserves those 8/10.

No, it's offline only I'm afraid.

Alpha 3 pwns SFIII

/runs

neuroniky there's a xbox arcade stick in the same vein as the saturn ones (which are great btw) seen it on play-asia works out about £36 with P&P http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-2a-4...

Everybody is street alpha fightin'

... except me, I'm Tekken PSP fightin' ... 8)

Arwin, whats tekken 5 on the psp like? is it worth me getting it?

Eh "only the SNES pad is good enough for 2D fighters" are you having a laugh? The SNES pad was great for many things but 2D beat 'em ups weren't one of them. THE BEST pad for beat 'em ups was either the Megadrive six button or the standard Saturn pad. Why? Well for starters you had all six buttons on the face of the pad. I'm sorry but shoulder buttons are cack for this game I don't know anyone who honestly prefers using awkwardly positioned L+R for Hard Punches+Kicks rather than having all the buttons infront of you. The other beauty of these pads-the D button which (1) had proper 8 way D-pad intead of the awful ninty 4 way cross key that often gave a suspect response when pressed diagonally and (2) was mounted on a rollerball so it spun round effortlessly when doing those fireball motions. I believe Capcom themselves had a hand in designing it with Sega which may explain why the resurrected the design for their own Street Fighter anniversary pads for the PS2 which are ace, even better than an arcade stick-erm dunno if they did X-box versions but hey you just gave me a chance to cream myself over those lovely pads again....

I have a question. In Hyper Street Fighter Alpha, can you use ANY background from any game in the series?

What the fuck's an ism?

Hah, that was my question as well... I didn't really get into Alpha series that much and SFIII I couldn't get into at all. A lot of people really like the SFIII games but by that point I was far more heavily into the KOF series and just found the new characters in SF a bit shit.

Anyway I picked up Alpha Anthology to give the series another try, but much prefer Alpha 2 to 3...

@ HIGHVOLTAGE

Agreed... the best pads for 2d fighters had to be the MD 6 button pad and the Anniversary pads.

The best arcade sticks had to be the Hitori pads and the DC arcade stick.

The xbox d-pad has to be the worst but is light years ahead of the PSP d-pad. The PS2 d-pad is so so but I'd prefer to use an Anniversary pad.

@HIGHVOLTAGE: surely the shoulder buttons were a little bit less responsive than the face buttons, and so you had to readjoust slightly your timing in pressing them, but the D-Pad is much better than the one found on the Saturn or MD pad. Also, the buttons were much more responsive, giving the Snes pad it's unique "speed" that is what you really needed to pull the most fast combos out of SF2. I think the pad was the best for me because of its responsiveness, it was just so close to the arcade in that regard.

Does anyone know which PS2 compilation contains SF III 3rd Strike? CPS3 encryption is seemingly impossible to crack, and I was thinking about giving SF III a go since I never did so.

Mmmmm gotta totally disagree about the d-pad thing, like I say the Sega style pad rolled in its socket, it was just sooooooo so so easy to do all those special moves that required 90/180 degree spins of the d-pad. But hey its all personal preference at the end of the day. If you can kick more butt with the SNES joypad then who am I to argue.

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