Collection essentials #332: Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior’s Dreams (Saturn)

Street Fighter II, as I previously discussed and as you already know if you are at all familiar with classic games, was one of the biggest hits of the early ‘90s in all of gaming. Over the next few years after its release, Capcom released several versions of the game which expanded and tweaked it in various ways, adding playable characters, faster gameplay, and eventually a meter that can be spent to unleash a super-powerful attack when full. But no matter how big these updates were, none of them were truly a new follow-up entry. This here is the first brand new Street Fighter game afterward, first released in arcades in 1995. 

But rather than make “Street Fighter III”, Capcom decided to make the next game a prequel, hence the “Alpha” in the title. The game features some characters first introduced in the not-very-good original Street Fighter game, and it also has characters from their popular arcade beat ‘em up, Final Fight. This game also introduces a hidden character named “Dan”, who is a joke character invented to parody characters in SNK’s fighters that had ripped off the designs of Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter. Dan would go on to be a popular fan favorite who appears in nearly every Street Fighter game even though he tends to be one of the weakest characters in the games he appears in.

As you might expect, Street Fighter Alpha keeps the fundamentals of Street Fighter II’s gameplay while adding in some welcome new elements. The biggest thing it does is expand upon the super meter concept from the last iteration of Street Fighter II. Now, the gauge can go up to three levels. Fighters have the flexibility of spending one level of the gauge to unleash a super attack, or they can consume multiple to make their attack even more powerful. There are other smaller gameplay additions too, including the ability to block in mid-air. 

I don’t have a whole lot more to say about Street Fighter Alpha 1. I completely missed it in its heyday, but in the later ‘00s I grabbed this Saturn port and had fun with it. It’s quite a solid fighting game, but it’s kind of overshadowed now because there are sequels with more to offer. Still, it’s a very significant release from the prime days of arcade fighting games and one I want to have in my library.