The game was originally released on PlayStation in 1995 and is available only in digital form as part of PSOne Classics.
Continuation of the famous fighting game series Street Fighter, launched in 1987 by the Japanese company Capcom. Despite the ubiquitous technological progress, the game holds on to the traditional 2D view, which has become a distinctive hallmark of the series. In the game, however, the backgrounds - which are now fully animated, as well as the animations of the warriors - have been greatly improved. Street Fighter Alpha initially appeared on arcade machines, from where it was ported to home consoles: Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation.
Street Fighter Alpha offers ten warriors in total, four of which, i.e. Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Sagat, are already well known from previous installments of the series. The debutants are: Adon - a warrior brought up in Thailand, whose main advantage is speed, Birdie - a tattooed punk, who focuses primarily on the strength, Charlie - a friend of Street Fighter II's Guile and the mysterious warrior known as Rose. The creators also transferred two characters from their other fighting game Final Fight, and these are Guy and his fierce enemy Sodom. Of course, the game could not miss hidden bonus characters as well. Among them are again mysterious Akuma and demonic M. Bison, and the roster is complemented by Dan, whos is a parody of heroes of competing SNK fighters.
The combat mechanics is an extension of the one that appeared in Capcom's earlier fighting games. However, the devs introduced a few modifications, such as the possibility of blocking in the air, and added new combo mechanics, called Chain Combos (or Alpha Combos). Most importantly, most of them are performed much easier than in the previous parts of the series. Interestingly, the game includes the possibility of taunting the opponent during the fight by pressing the button responsible for making such a gesture. The game offers three gameplay modes: Training, two-player Versus and the basic Arcade mode - identical to the one that appeared in the arcade machine version. It is worth noting that as the game progresses and fights continue, we gradually get to know the story of the selected player.
