Street Fighter Legends - Page 8
A Watershed time.
By this time in real life, Capcom had become a fully-fledged 3rd party developer who had no close allegiance with any hardware company. Due to a combination of Nintendos continued delays with the Nintendo 64 and Capcoms unwillingness to port such a demanding game to SNES, Street Fighter Zero/Alpha was ported to Sonys then-fledgling PlayStation and Segas Saturn. Nintendo had no Street Fighter, and history would reveal that for Nintendo 64s entire existence; not a single Street Fighter title would grace its catalogue.
Capcom followed up SF Zero with SF Zero 2. To me, Zero 2 was a watershed time in Street Fighter lore. It featured a staggering amount of characters, selectable speed modes, and for the first time, branching storylines. Each character had their own nemesis character that they would meet as their respective boss character; where upon a victory would deliver the characters end-sequence. It also brought Street Fighter back to where Street Fighter II Turbo was in terms amount of fun extracted from just playing it.
In an extremely short period of time, SF Zero 2 received something of a sequel in the form of Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha with a western name of Street Fighter Alpha 2 (pronounced Street Fighter Alpha 2 Dash). At this point, Street Fighter had descended into the realms of ridicule with all these idiotic prefixes and suffixes. Street Fighter, and Capcom, became the butt of many jokes; to which Capcom would eventually take on board and create games with that sense of humour packed in. Would Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo really have had that name, were it not for the jokes heaped upon Capcom from their Street Fighter naming system? I think not.
SF Zero 2 Alpha included hidden opponents who you would fight if you met certain conditions, such as winning the first few fights with super special moves. Other inclusions were the selectable (via complicated procedures) characters Evil Ryu and Evil Akuma. Evil Ryu was an impressive fighter, quite possibly the strongest fighter in the game.
This time, Nintendo actually got a console conversion. Many believe that Nintendo worked out a deal to allow Capcom to make games for N64, but only if they created another SF game on SNES. The result was an extremely impressive port of SF Alpha 2 (sans Dash enhancements). SF Zero/Alpha 2 (and its Alpha/Dash variant) also successfully appeared on Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation.
The final game in the Zero/Alpha series was Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 3. Capcom had really worked hard on this one, it boasted the biggest ever character list; it boasted 3 separate super special move modes (called isms). In terms of storyline continuity, Capcom kept it up and included a young Blanka for the first time.
Street Fighter Zero 3 and its corresponding console conversions (once again only on Sega and Sony) is considered by many (including myself) to be the definitive Street Fighter game. Everything about it was pure class. Capcom couldnt have created a better Street Fighter game. The console ports even sported an innovative and downright impressive RPG-style mode, which rewarded the persistent player.