Street Fighter Alpha

The Street Fighter Alpha series of fighting games is part of the Street Fighter series developed by Capcom. The games serve as a prequel to Street Fighter II, and explains the events which happen before that game.

Games

There are three games in the series:

• Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams (SFA)
• Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SFA2)
• Street Fighter Alpha 3 (SFA3)

The names of the game are commonly abbreviated to SFA, plus the series number, as can be seen above.

There are also many versions of the game with slight modifications, as well as ports to home consoles. The Japanese version of the series, called Street Fighter Zero, while mostly the same as the 'World' version tends to have slight differences

The game was ported to the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, as well as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the last Street Fighter game for that console.

Series Progression

Each game in the Alpha series can be seen to be updating the storyline in the previous games. This combined with Capcom's decision to change some of the storyline after the games have been released has made the Street Fighter II story confusing.

Each game in the series introduced more characters from Street Fighter II. Characters were also introduced from other games such as Final Fight and the original Street Fighter.

Gameplay

The fighting system of Street Fighter Alpha is based on those of previous Street Fighter games, with Super meters included for the characters. In Alpha 2 "Custom Combos" were introduced; this is a state where the character can chain together a string of attacks at the cost of the super meter's charge. As the series progressed every character received some gameplay tweaks, and new backgrounds were added to give everyone a separate area.

Street Fighter Alpha

The original SFA was released in 1995 as the prequel to Street Fighter 2.

Street Fighter Alpha 2

This was released in 1996 as an update to the original SFA.

Storyline

Street Fighter Alpha 2 overrides the story of Street Fighter Alpha. While most of the characters' endings in Alpha 2 take place in some fashion, Charlie is the only character "unaccounted for," as his ending does not officially happen.

Characters

Street Fighter Alpha 2 brings back all of the characters from Street Fighter Alpha as normally selectable characters, including Dan Hibiki, Akuma, and M. Bison. Alpha 2 also brought back Gen, Zangief, and Dhalsim from previous Street Fighter games (the latter two allegedly due to popular demand), as well as Rolento Schugerg from the Final Fight series of games. Sakura Kasugano is a brand-new character in this game.

Street Fighter Alpha 3

This game was released in 1998, with updated graphics and characters compared to SFA2.