For me, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is the pinnacle of fighting games, but it isn’t entirely due to the game’s fighting mechanics. I’m not saying they’re bad, of course. SFA2 is still a really fun game to play, but I’m saying it’s some of the extra details that make it my favorite fighter. First of all, look at that cover. Man, that’s awesome, and it’s part of what makes Alpha 2 so great: Rival battles. Instead of everybody fighting the same last boss, each character has his own rival that he fights at the end for personal reasons. Some of the characters have the same rival (Bison is a somewhat popular one, as you might expect), but they all have their own setup to the fight, including some dialogue. Yeah, I know Alpha 3 had rivals and stuff, as did Street Fighter IV, but then you end up fighting the same last boss as everyone afterward anyway, so I don’t feel like it was quite as special or quite as well done because of it. Plus, Alpha 3 had almost all of them set against the backdrop of Bison’s boring last stage, and the battle was just a preface for fighting him anyway, so meh. Alpha 2 also had unique mid-bosses you could fight by fulfilling certain conditions that I can’t remember off the top of my head, and none of those overlapped, which was cool. I also liked how some matchups gave you custom fight intros, like Sagat’s scar glowing whenever he fights Ryu.
The art and the sprites for Street Fighter Alpha 2 are beautiful as well. The game has some wonderful looking stages, such as Ryu’s stage with the snow lying on the ground and the location of his Street Fighter II stage in the background. I also love the stage they ripped straight out of the anime, the grassy field in a thunderstorm one, which is only used in single-player mode for Sagat’s rivalry battle with Ryu, which is a nice touch. This is going to sound strange, but I liked Gen’s stage because it had those puddles that would splash every time you stepped on them or fell on them. I don’t know why I was so fascinated by those things, but I was. Alpha 2 also has a pretty solid soundtrack, but you kinda expect a SF game to have some classic tunes in it by this point, for the most part. Regardless, the game looks great and sounds great.
And of course, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is a lot of fun to play. I’ve always liked the way the Alpha series handled Super Meters, with you having three levels and each Super Combo getting more powerful the more meter you used. Alpha 2 also introduced the Custom Combo, which allowed you to perform combos you couldn’t normally do due to the limitations the game places on you. Like, you can normally only have one fireball on the screen at the same time, but now you can shoot as many as you want. Your attacks also come out much quicker so it’s much easier to link any combination together that you want to attempt. So that was a neat concept overall, and Alpha 2 tried to prevent it from being TOO broken by making your meter run out very quickly, and you could only move forward, so if your opponent managed to jump over your head and get behind you, tough luck. SFA2 also has a solid cast of characters, and a lot of them are fun to use. I don’t have one particular character I used above the others because there were so many I enjoyed. Alpha 2 was one of those weird games where every character was unlocked from the get go, too. No unlockable or hidden characters in this one, for whatever the reason.
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"I couldn't stand a day without a past or future. I need to live each moment to keep fighting here and now."