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YMMV / Street Fighter Alpha

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  • Americans Hate Tingle: Ingrid is very popular in Japan, but has a significant hatedom in the Western fandom.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Ingrid. Those who like her think she's cute and a decent fighter atop of that. Those who dislike her would rather pretend that her appearance in Alpha 3 MAX didn't happen. The fact that she's a crossover character from a universally hated game along with her Deus ex Machina storyline in Alpha 3 MAX didn't help matters at all.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: V-ism is why it just isn't as fun watching people play Alpha 3 competitively. One of the best Street Fighter games, awesome to play... but without V-ism.
  • Contested Sequel: The ISM System singlehandedly creates the massive split of opinion between Alpha 2 and Alpha 3. On one hand, it effectively means every single roster member has three versions between something more like Street Fighter II, the standard Alpha mechanics, and the option for a sheer amount of crazy custom ISM combos that are probably some of the most extensive player expression and freedom in the franchise at the cost of being Difficult, but Awesome. On the other hand, V-ISM is so game-breakingly exploitable and the ISM System in general is so incredibly complex, daunting and hard to get a full grasp of that casual players were turned away, and competitive players tend to stick to X- or A-ISM. The Guard Gauge, where you can only block so much before you break and get stunned, was also a bit of a controversial addition. In many ways, this made Alpha 2 more consistent a title to play, and more competitively viable thanks to the lack of certain infinite combo techs as well; the fact that it was excluded from online play in the 30th Anniversary Collection resulted in major backlash.
  • Crazy Is Cool: Rolento is way fixated with military jargon and utopic dreams, but hey, he can dish it out pretty well.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Epileptic Trees: In Rival Schools (a series with loose ties to SF), there is a character who goes by the name of Ran Hibiki. Given that Hinata learned how to fight by watching a video by Ken and Chairperson practices Saikyo, fans have left been wondering if Ran is a relative of Dan's (particularly, his sister). The CFN profiles for Street Fighter V would canonize Dan's sister from his Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter ending (and name her Yuriko in what is yet another jab at Art of Fighting), but the jury's still out on Ran.
  • Even Better Sequel: Alpha 2 shows up the original Alpha in virtually every way. More characters, more stages, more mechanics, Dan and Akuma no longer being secret characters, Sakura being added, and all while reusing or upgrading the presentation from the first that makes the first almost seem like a barebones prototype setting up such a leap. It's to the point that 2 is considered the most competitive entry in the sub-series series to this day, and most revisit the first to see Alpha's roots or the original endings.
  • Fandom Rivalry: A rare case of "Inner-Fandom" Rivalry, as this series developed a heated one with the Street Fighter III series. Both games were developed concurrently as follow-ups to the massively successful Street Fighter II (Alpha serving as a prequel while III was the sequel), with two separate development teams working on the games. Naturally, this caused a heated debate over which sub-series was the superior successor to II. Not helping matters is that Alpha — which eventually brought back all of the II cast by the time of the home ports of Alpha 3 — was critically and commercially successful throughout its entire run, whereas III — which jettisoned all but four characters from II (Ryu, Ken, Akuma, and Chun-Li) — ultimately was something of an Acclaimed Flop, only being Vindicated by History thanks to high-level Tournament Play in the following years (never mind the fact that the bulk of the III series' wider recognition comes from its third entry).
  • Fan Nickname:
    • GARlie for Charlie, due to him being as manly as Guile.
    • Dan "The Man" Hibiki.
    • Sakky, for Sakura.
  • Franchise Original Sin: Many people criticize the early versions of Street Fighter III as attempting to axe out the vast majority of the Street Fighter II cast in an attempt to focus on a new generation of characters, with the only exceptions being series mainstays like Ryu and Ken. This actually started with Alpha, as it took until the home releases of Alpha 3 to make Guile a Secret Character and complete the entire Super Turbo roster. The big difference is that Alpha didn't attempt a new protagonist like later entries did (being a prequel meant to set up events in SFII and flesh out the previously minimal backstory of the SF Shared Universe), combined with very few actually new characters; Street Fighter III's controversial attempt to shift towards a roster of almost entirely new characters — many of whom felt like rehashes of longer established and more popular characters — was a large part of the game becoming a temporary Franchise Killer, which is why the revision sequels would bring back the popular veterans Akuma and Chun-Li, and why every successive game afterwards would have most of the core characters of II at the minimum.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Guy in the original Street Fighter Alpha due to his fast and damaging chain combos. He actually cracks a pretty bad joke in SFA3 about how he has his opponent "on a chain" in reference to this.
    • The crouch cancel bug in SFA3 (basically, being able to cancel longer move recoveries by crouching during a Custom Combo, which made it so that since the character using it never entered a neutral state, their opponent never got an opportunity to flip out of their combo) which made the already powerful V-ISM borderline broken by allowing players to kill their opponents in one long combo.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Alpha 2 developed a large competitive following in the United States, especially on the West Coast. This is in contrast to its native Japan where it wasn't received as well, especially compared to its sequel, Alpha 3. It came to the point where it's generally accepted that the U.S. would hands down beat Japan if they ever competed in the game, a reverse of what usually happens. To this end, one of the points held by many American players against the 30th Anniversary Collection was that Alpha 2 was not one of the games that could be played online in spite of it being such a revered game in the West. (By contrast, the aforementioned Alpha 3 was one of the four titles with online and training mode capabilities.)
  • Good Bad Bugs: On the SNES port of Alpha 2, Rose can freeze time by performing an Aura Soul Spark right as a projectile hits her opponent. She is free to move around, and performing another Super Combo will return things to normal.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The Biblical reference to Sodom's name, which was intended as a reference to the heavy metal band Sodom.
  • Iron Woobie: Rose. Kind of comes with the territory of being the good part of Bison's soul expunged from his body, but things seem to almost never go her way. Even so, she's completely dedicated to her mission of stamping out evil, no matter the toll it takes on her.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Although Guy is canonically married to Rena, at least by Final Fight: Streetwise, he's been paired with Maki (Rena's sister, and thus his sister-in-law), Rose, and Ibuki, among others. In particular, Guy/Rose reached Fan-Preferred Couple status, thanks in part to their interactions in Super Street Fighter IV.
  • Memetic Badass: Dan, Master of the Saikyo style, aka the Strongest Style. The king of taunting and the man in pink. He goes by many names, but you will call him "sensei" today. YAHOO!
    "Dan isn't God tier. God is Dan tier."
  • Narm:
    • Fei Long's Funny Bruce Lee Noises being typed out and written in SFA3's Story Mode. Having him burst into "WA HOATAAAAAAAAAA!" and other screams is cool when you can hear them, not when you're reading what he says to others.
    • The dialogue before Yun's final fight with Bison has a rather unfortunate mistranslation, where Bison refers to Yun's arrival and defeat by his hand as "the perfect ending for a third rate actress like Fei-Long."
  • Nightmare Fuel: Bison's ending in Alpha 2.
  • Polished Port:
    • The Sega Saturn versions of the first Alpha and Zero 3 are just plain obscenely good at what they try to do. The former is only different with the color palette compared to the arcade, and otherwise was just about a perfect port with all the animations and gameplay unchanged. The latter required the Expanded 4MB RAM cartridge, but the trade off was the best home console version of the game ever released, even featuring unique content that couldn't be equaled up to until the release of Alpha 3 MAX for the PlayStation Portable, which itself was an excellent port above and beyond the rest. This also includes the two flavors of World Tour, with Saturn (and PlayStation) carrying a more in-depth and complex version of the mode while the PSP (and Dreamcast) would streamline it a fair amount, adding a meaty amount of solo content to the game.
    • The Alpha 2 Gold ports on Saturn and PlayStation, included as part of the Street Fighter Collection package, were the best home ports of Alpha 2 without a doubt. Cammy using her X-Men vs. Street Fighter sprites was added in, extra modes and features as well as more EX Characters, and the PlayStation version getting a faithful recreation of the intro instead of a crummy, pre-recorded video file of it. The port was also noticeably just improved in general over the base Alpha 2 port the systems got. This title by itself warranted the purchase of the collection singlehandedly, even if it does suffer Loads and Loads of Loading for the individual stages.
    • Alpha Anthology for the PS2 not only contains arcade-accurate ports, but also the aforementioned Alpha 2 Gold and the option for CPS-1 or CPS-2 soundtracks for the first Alpha, as well as Super Gem Fighter, and the Alpha 3 Upper release that has additional console-only characters added. It even completes Cammy's early inclusion in Gold with an actual (albeit non-canon) story, ending included. While it lacks things like World Tour mode, it makes up for it with couch-competitive content galore via the unlockable Hyper Street Fighter Alpha; much like Hyper Street Fighter II, it lets you play as every version of every Alpha character around, all the ISMs, and plenty of extra customizable options like recreating Street Fighter III parries or the like. This makes it the definitive collection of Alpha titles if you're itching for arcade content perfected.
  • Porting Disaster:
    • The SNES version of Alpha 2 is a textbook case of a port that's impressive insomuch as it exists at all, but simply ends up not being worth it. The graphics retain an impressive amount of detail compared to the arcade original, but the controls are unresponsive, there's Loads and Loads of Loading, the frame-rate can tank badly when certain special moves are used, and the sound quality is poor, with most of the soundtrack getting a bland remix, and half of the sound effects being missing. There does exist a patch that can fix the loading issues and replace the soundtrack with the arcade version's, however, which can make the port far more tolerable and easier to appreciate.
    • The GBA port of Alpha 3 Upper is similarly impressive for what it manages to do, cramming the entire roster and almost all of the stages. But having to deal with what amounts to a four-button control scheme is rough, the endings had to take an obvious hit by all being replaced with a single ending of Bison being defeated, various animations were chopped up and especially background animations being simplified, and the game audio took a massive hit with all the music being butchered by the GBA's lack of a proper sound chip and countless character voice clips gone or compromised. Were it not for the sheer number of hits taken to even get it to work, this would almost be a Polished Port and certainly more comprehensive than the SNES port above, but Executive Meddling resulted in an 8MB cartridge compared to larger possible cart sizes and having to shove Eagle, Yun and Maki into the game from Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium, which resulted in such severe compromises and a necessary development delay — which ended up being a Creator Killer for developer Crawfish Interactive despite critical acclaim when Capcom cut all royalties due to said delay.
  • Retroactive Recognition: The voice of Chun-Li (and Rose prior to Alpha 3) in this series is Yuko Miyamura, who is probably best known for voicing Asuka Langley Soryu (and later Asuka Langley Shikinami) in the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Losing to Final Bison in Alpha 3's original arcade mode is an immediate trip to seeing Bison's ending but with him sacrificing your current character to power his ambitions. There's no permission whatsoever to continue, meaning that the entire run got scrapped at the very end. Notably, this would end up being the only game in the series to be this utterly cruel about it; every title before and after allows you to retry the Final Boss or even the Superboss (if you reached it in the first place) readily.
  • Stoic Woobie: Cody. He barely bats an eyelash at anything since he's been incarcerated, and though he ultimately will continue to fight the good fight against wrongdoers, Cody believes he's no longer the hero from his Metro City glory days, to the point he tells Guy in his Super Street Fighter IV ending that he thinks jail is where he belongs. It takes until the events of Street Fighter V, where he (at Haggar's suggestion) becomes the new mayor of Metro City, that Cody finally gets out of his funk and turns his life around.
  • That One Attack:
    • Birdie's Murderer Chain. Go to Heaven!
    • Final Bison's Final Psycho Crusher from Alpha 3. It does ridiculous amounts of damage whether you block it or not and has a hitbox◊ spanning nearly the entire vertical length of the screen. It's also completely invincible, lacking the regular Psycho Crusher's hurtboxes. The only way to avoid it is to use a high-priority move (i.e. Shoryuken), Wall Jump, or, if you're Akuma/Evil Ryu, Ashura Senku it out of there. The first two require critical timing and a lot of luck. On top of that, Bison's boss-exclusive Shadaloo-ism allows him to build meter incredibly fast, meaning he can abuse it multiple times per round if he's feeling nasty. Making matters worse is the fact that if you lose to Bison, that's it. You don't get a chance to continue and try again; it just goes straight to the bad endingnote . It's even worse at the end of the World Tour in the Dreamcast and PSP versions where you fight two of him with infinite Super Gauge, meaning you're bound to take many defeats to the sheer prospect of two Final Bisons spamming their Final Psycho Crusher ad nauseam at you. Fortunately, his A.I. can be read like an open book as you're given cues to when the CPU will throw that attack at you so you can try and react accordingly.
  • That One Boss:
    • Final Bison in Street Fighter Alpha 3. Aside having the aforementioned Final Psycho Crusher, early versions of the game didn't let the player continue if they lost to him.
    • Shin Akuma. He's Akuma without his usual drawbacks: he has very high recovery, his moves have high priority, and the psychic A.I. will make sure to combo the hell out of you. In fact, you might actually learn to play as Akuma just by getting your ass handed to you by the boss version.
  • Too Cool to Live: Charlie, according to Word of God, does everything Guile does but better (sure, he taught Guile everything he knows in the first place), demonstrated in-game by his being able to throw Sonic Booms one-handed (or even out of his feet). And we can't have one of Street Fighter's poster boys being overshadowed, can we? Bye bye, Charlie. He eventually came back in Street Fighter V, though. Only to die again in a Heroic Sacrifice so that Bison could be weakened enough for Ryu to finish the job.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Dan. Story-wise, he isn't taken seriously as a fighter. In reality, he's popular due to his Joke Character status.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Alpha wasn't the first Street Fighter game on the Capcom Play System II, or CPS-2 for short, as that honor goes to Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. However, it was the first game of the series made for scratch on the hardware, and the smoother character animations, bright anime style, and higher background detail came together for a tour de force of how far Capcom had come at the time, holding the bar alongside games like Darkstalkers and the early Marvel vs. Capcom entries. It would take three more years to truly up the ante with the CPS-3 and Street Fighter III to a legendary degree. It's also commendable that in Japan, you could get the first Zero game for the CPS Changer, a short-lived home system version of the CPS-1 board as a failed competitor to the Neo Geo. While some animation frames were missing and both the music and sounds were lower quality, this backported version was otherwise a Polished Port that had everything on inferior hardware.
  • The Woobie:
    • Charlie, who has the terrible luck of dying in his ending in every single game. Only his final fate in Alpha 3 has any semblance of hope and dignity to it, but that's of little consolation. Twisted further in V, where it's revealed that it was his Alpha 2 ending that was actually canon all along, with Charlie's betrayal by fellow Air Force members (implied to be Shadaloo moles), death, and subsequent revival having turned him into a much darker and far more jaded character, compounded by the fact that he's Living on Borrowed Time and later ends up dying for good in a different Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Rose, who's constantly being owned by Bison in some way, despite her power. Until SSFIV.
    • Juni and Juli from 3, exemplified in Juni's heartbreaking ending. Double for Juli(a), when you see what happened to her by the time SSFIV happens. V sees her back under Bison's thumb via brainwashing, possibly rendering T. Hawk's ending in the previous game non-canon, though Juli and the rest of the Dolls do ultimately get a happy ending when Rashid destroys the device F.A.N.G was using to control them.
    • Though it might not seem so because of his mannerisms and Joke Character status, Dan. Even long after, he still sheds tears for his dead father.

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