Starting at the beginning
Street Fighter Alpha sets the tone for spinoff franchise
I promise I can see the potential in the original Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams. I can look down from my high perch of love for Alpha 3 and accept that the series came from somewhere. After all, every series must have a start. But it’s a long hard stretch to say it’s an all-time great start.
Street Fighter Alpha establishes the series’ story: After Ryu wins the first World Fighting Tournament (as depicted in Street Fighter), he returns home to find his master Gouken murdered and sets out to get revenge. At the same time, Chun-Li, Guile and Charlie — along with other various members of the cast such as newcomer Rose — work together to take down M. Bison, who is working to establish his empire and achieve world domination. Know two things about the story: One, it’s a sequel to 1987’s Street Fighter and a prequel to Street Fighter II; and, two, its storyline is supplanted by Street Fighter Alpha 2. Capcom deployed this strategy with the Darkstalkers/Vampire series as well, which was coincidentally created around the same time as Alpha. And this isn’t the only instance of crossover concepts, either.
Alpha plays and feels much like early Vampire as well. The new additions of multi-level super combos and air blocking are here, too, and like Vampire, represent an upgrade from the days of Super Turbo. But, as much as I like the upgraded mechanics, I don’t like how Alpha plays. It feels clunky and slow with a molasses edge to the movesets. While the series did eventually improve with time and speed adjustments, it’s painfully obvious here that it needed a speed boost.
Alpha also resembles Vampire in presentation. The graphics are nice and big, and the sprites are nicely drawn. It’s an early version of the Alpha 3 presentation that we’ve come to know and love, and it’s pleasing to see it here. The music isn’t at the Alpha 3 level yet, but there are a few tracks that might make you tap your toe.
What I wanted from the first game in the Alpha series shows up later in the final game, but the start isn’t terrible. It needed some work and given that Alpha 2 made improvements on this solid foundation in Alpha, I think it’s safe to call this the beta of the Alpha series.
Score: 3 out of 5