Here comes a new challenger! (Street Fighter Alpha Anthology (PS2))

Member Name: thegoldencat

Product:	Street Fighter Alpha Anthology (PS2)
Date:	02/12/08 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant gameplay, Blanka is hliarious.

Disadvantages: Unspeakably annoying announcer, generally frustrating.

Overview
A compilation of Street Fighter Alpha games in one collection on the Playstation 2 system. Included are Alpha, Alpha 2, Alpha 2 Gold, Alpha 3 and Pocket fighter. The Alpha games are more cartoony and exaggerated compared to their original Streetfighter counterparts.

Review
The Streetfighter games have long represented the absolute zenith of the beat 'em up genre. Both in the arcades back in the early days, and on the home console systems. Tekkens and Soul Caliburs have come and gone but only Streetfighter stands firm today.

Streetfighter 2 achieved near perfection on the 16-bit consoles some 16 years ago now. Instead of rushing out a sequel Capcom spent the proceeding years refining their creation, going on to release five different versions. This game is still being refined all these years later, with the imminent Xbox live release of SFII HD remix.

Where then, in all this confusion of sequels does the Alpha series fit in. Well, the Alpha series is less about a perfectly-balanced, sublime fighting engine, and more about immediate thrills and over-exaggerated, chunky cartoon mayhem. Super moves and combos somewhat dilute the formula to something which, though it is still fun, is no Street fighter II.

Whats this all about then? Four alpha games on one disc. Surely though, I asked myself, if each game represents gradual improvement over the previous one, then the earlier games in this set are utterly, utterly irrelevant no?

This seems like common sense to me.

Not to them though apparantly. The games other than Alpha 3 need not be played, except once, and then only to unlock stuff. Afterwards you'll just wonder why they bothered. I have a theory which is that they were trying to cram lots of nonsense onto one disc to warrant the release of yet a-bloody-nother SF re-packaging. And when I say theory I mean absolute certainty.

When released on the PSP it was all just re-jigged into a game called Streetfighter Alpha 3 Max, which seems like a much more sensible way of doing things.

So far then this game has been annoyance after annoyance lets have a look at the actual game shall we. (And by that I mean Alpha 3.)

The annoyance doesn't end there I'm afraid. Go to select a fighter
and you'll be presented with a baffling range of options. These are your fighting styles and God almighty, will you just let me fight?! Yeah; A-ism, whatever. What the hell does 'A-ism' mean anyway? I'd have to have an extensive read of the instruction manual to find out but I shouldn't have to. Its all just extraneous nonsense dilluting the purity of the formula even more.

Oh and its not over yet, the cheesiest announcer in gaming history is shouting bizzare inanities at you. "Sharpen your fangs!" What!? Seriously this guy makes the infamous Burnout DJ seem like a witty raconteur by comparison.

And sweet merciful God, finally the fight has started, and at once all is forgiven. The suspectness of the package, the dumb fighting styles, the arse of an announcer, right down to the quite exceptionally bland box art (I mean look at it.) It all goes out the window. After doing everything it can to annoy and alienate the hell out of you, when you finally get to fighting, you can't help but be wooed and entranced by the singular, epic brilliance of the core Streetfighter gameplay. At its best the streetfighter fighting engine is just unalloyed gaming perfection, bastardised version or no. Find a friend at a simillar level to you and it can be poetry.

This is one of those games that alllows you to regress to those halycon days of monster two player sessions-punctuated by endless recital of that largest of all gaming-inspired misnomers:

"Just one more go".

Twenty matches later, sweaty and sore thumbed with masculine pride lingering heavy in the air you're still saying it, and you know what?

You don't give a damn.

Even though the gameplay of Alpha can't replicate the harmonious balance and precision of the proper games, it excels in other ways and achieves soaring highs of its own. Alpha doesn't take itself serious for one second allowing for an amusing if somewhat arbitrary sense of humour. All adding up to create a pleasent sense of fun. Well it is drawn like a cartoon. Blanka, in particular, has been singled out as ripe for comic opportunity, using his electronic abilities to make himself a smoothie with a blender if he wins.

The roster is fairly large, encompassing a broad selection of classic fighters as well as new characters. If you finish all of the Alpha games once, which shouldn't take too long. You unlock a much expanded cast list for Alpha 3. This contains essentially every SF character ever, and is one of the primary selling points for this package.

But to get this lovely feature you have to hold select every time you choose Alpha 3 from the main menu. Yes, you have to hold select for something you've already unlocked. Sometimes you'll hold select for all you're worth and still not get all the characters, so you have to wait until the match has started, quit the fight, and then quit the game before you can finally try again. Why, oh why do I have to hold select every time? Where is the logic in that? Surely if I've unlocked it then it should just be there. Whatever genius came up with that should get fired... Out of a cannon.

So all in all its the package that the gameplay is wrapped in that strips the enjoyment and stars from this game. Even though gameplay is always of primary importance, theres ultimately only so much a person can take, If you can find this game cheap, go for it because there's potentially many, many hours of classic two player enjoyment to be had. Otherwise; ignore it as if it were 'T. Hawk' on the selection screen.

Summary: If quarter rotation forward, punch is ingrained on your soul, then this game is for you.