Street Fighter Legends - Page 7
A new direction.
Armed with a new arcade board, the next SF game to come out of Capcom would be Street Fighter Zero in Japan, while its Western name would be Street Fighter Alpha. Its ironic that SFZ was meant to be a prequel to the original Street Fighter, but in the end its correct placement was between Street Fighter and Street Fighter II. Therefore Zero was a misnomer; which resulted in the Alpha tag for the Western markets.
The continuity of the storyline was impressive, all the characters were noticeably younger in their Zero guises, Sagat had his famous chest scar inflicted on him by a rampaging Ryu in SF1, while Guile was nowhere to be found, yet Charlie Nash was a playable character.
The character listing marked Capcoms first foray into cross-franchise inclusions, no longer would Street Fighter hold its own exclusive universe, for Guy of Final Fight fame was a playable character in SF Zero.
However, Capcoms games seemed to hold a genuine storyline continuity. Its feasible to suggest that Guy and Cody (to be seen in SF Zero 3) would go off on their own with Haggar to fight their own battles. For Haggar himself, it is also easy to presume that he really did model his fighting techniques seen in Final Fight on the powerhouse Zangief, star of many a Street Fighter game.
Long-forgotten characters from the original Street Fighter made a welcome re-appearance here too. Gen and Birdie were playable, and many a teary-eyed Street Fighter player reminisced.