Street Fighter Alpha Anthology

"Arcade perfect and then some."

The Street Fighter Alpha series has been ported to so many consoles throughout its years, starting from the SNES' poor iteration of Street Fighter Alpha 2, to portable versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3, to the umpteen other Street Fighter Alpha games on various other consoles-- but almost none of them captured the true experience of the arcade equivalents. Street Fighter Alpha Anthology did what most of the others couldn't do, and added much more as well.

The collection includes Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Super Gem Fighter (otherwise known as Pocket Fighter). There are two secret games in this collection that have to be unlocked, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper as well as Hyper Street Fighter Alpha. A handful for any fighting game fan.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper differentiates from Street Fighter Alpha 3 by adding several new characters (the characters most people are familiar with in the PlayStation iteration: Dee Jay, Guile, Fei-Long, Evil Ryu, Juni, Juli, Balrog and T. Hawk) as well as new character modes (Normal, Saikyo, Mazi and Classic as well as a hidden "Shadaloo"-ism). Hyper Street Fighter Alpha is a combination of all characters from each of the Alpha games, allowing you to pick any iteration of any character, and on top of that Hyper Street Fighter Alpha features three new secret "ism" modes for the characters. The "Darkstalkers" green-ism, the "Street Fighter 3" blue-ism, and the "Marvel vs." red-ism. Each adding a new spin on the gameplay by adding certain gameplay elements from the mentioned titles such as chain combos for the green-ism, parrying for the blue-ism and different special moves and push-block for the red-ism.

Street Fighter Alpha, Alpha 2, Alpha 3 and Alpha 3 Upper all feature the typical game modes which are Arcade, Versus, Survival, Dramatic Mode (two on one fights) and Training (no World Tour mode for Alpha 3). Super Gem Fighter features Arcade, Versus and Training while Hyper Street Fighter Alpha is the most barebones of the bunch with only a Versus and Training mode, which is disappointing for the fact that Hyper Street Fighter Alpha is one of the most interesting additions in the Alpha Anthology. While Hyper Street Fighter Alpha does allow for Versus against a computer opponent, you still need a second player controller in order to choose the computer opponent, so it's more of a hassle than it needs to be, however for those who plan on competing with other people and don't care about computer opponents, Hyper Street Fighter Alpha is worth the purchase alone.

The games come with a deep set of options to configure the game with, options that change around the gameplay entirely. Hidden options in each of the game's Options menu can be selected by holding R1 while selecting Game Options for the Extra Options menu where you can change around a number of game rules, holding R2 while selecting Game Options enters the Secret Option menu where you can set the game's dipswitches to automatically set themselves to a certain revision date of the game, or you can manually change the dipswitches yourself. Lastly, holding R1 while selecting Display Options enters you into a Colour Edit mode, which, as the name suggests, allows you to edit the colours for each outfit of each character. The rest of the normal options allow you to switch around basic game rules such as damage, difficulty, round length, speed, the typical options you'd expect. The display options are better than your typical game, they allow you to edit the offset, the ratio, sharpness and have a filter option as well, great enough to adjust to anyone's screen.

Graphically, the games retain everything from their arcade glory days. Everything intact from the arcade iterations. The only change, is that the resolution has been edited from the original arcade resolution to match that of a television set; the arcade versions of the games didn't have true translucency, and used a fake dither effect to compensate. This works well for the arcade versions of the game, but because of the stretching, the effect is slightly warped and noticeable on a television set. However, because of the filter option mentioned in the Display Options, this fixes that almost perfectly and makes it look great.

The sound and music in the games are flawless with an exception. I've noticed that in the Alpha 2 and Alpha 2 Gold games, when you finish a match with a super combo, the sound becomes slightly scratchy and pops for a brief moment. On top of this, I've also noticed that Sakura in the Alpha 3 games also has a move that's obnoxiously louder than anything else. Lastly, the sound in Super Gem Fighter overall is slightly lower than the rest of the games. All these issues are very minor, and shouldn't detract from the games overall.

As far as loading goes, the only loading within the Alpha Anthology happens at the start, where it loads the game selection menu, and then once more when it loads the game you select; both loading segments are very brief. Within the games themselves, there is absolutely no loading whatsoever, match transitions are instant.

Regardless of whether you're a casual gamer, or a hardcore tournament-level player, you'll find something you like. I'd recommend this collection whole-heartedly, If you like the Street Fighter at all, this game deserves to be in your collection. If you want any console version of Street Fighter Alpha, then this is your best option.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/06