Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams

1995 · Fighting · Arcade

About Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams (1995), Street Fighter Zero in Japan, is Capcom's first all-new Street Fighter since 1991, a prequel to Street Fighter II with younger fighters, a three-level super gauge and Alpha Counters.

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams in Depth

Alpha expands the Super Combo system of Super Street Fighter II Turbo into a three-level gauge that fills as the player attacks; how many punch or kick buttons are pressed decides how much of it a Super Combo spends. After blocking, the player can spend one level on an Alpha Counter. An Auto mode blocks a limited number of attacks automatically and allows instant Super Combos, at the cost of limiting the gauge to one level. New techniques include blocking in mid-air, Chain Combos that cancel one basic move into another of equal or greater strength, and rolling on landing after a knockdown.

The ten regular fighters are Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Sagat; Birdie and Adon from the original Street Fighter, playable for the first time; Guy and Sodom from Final Fight; and two newcomers, Guile's combat buddy Charlie and the fortune teller Rose. M. Bison is the final opponent for half the cast, and Akuma and the new Dan, Capcom's parody of SNK's Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia, can appear as hidden challengers. A secret Dramatic Battle lets two players team up as Ryu and Ken against Bison, recreating the climax of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.

Making Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams

Production started in October 1994, after Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors. The team was given three months to make a game from scratch and took six. Capcom had been buying back CPS-1 boards from arcades to help sell CPS-2, so Alpha was developed for both boards at once; the CPS-1 version had a different-sounding soundtrack and fewer sound effects, and could be sold to arcades that could not afford to upgrade. Its art followed the style of Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of the Atom.

RePlay reported it as North America's most popular arcade game of August 1995. Critics praised its sprites, the revamped Super Combos and Alpha Counters, though Next Generation noted that the changes were small. Because it had relatively little animation data, the PlayStation and Saturn ports reused the arcade source code; EGM made the PlayStation version its Game of the Month, and Maximum gave the Saturn version its Game of the Month award. Street Fighter Alpha 2 followed in 1996 and Alpha 3 in 1998.

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams Trivia

Its prototype name was Street Fighter Classic, because it was set between Street Fighter and Street Fighter II.
Capcom of America disliked "Zero" as sounding negative; it was announced as Street Fighter Legends before becoming Alpha, to suggest a new beginning.
The Japanese arcade version plays an instrumental of the film's song "Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokoro Zuyosa to" in Dramatic Battle, replaced abroad for licensing reasons.
Its PlayStation and Saturn ports were the first console Street Fighter games with a Training Mode.
It was Japan's second highest-grossing arcade game of 1995, behind Virtua Fighter 2.