Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams, known as Street Fighter Zero in Japan, Asia, South America and Spain, is a fighting game by Capcom, inspired by Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.

It's the first major overhaul of the Street Fighter series since Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The characters are drawn in an anime style, similar to Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of the Atom, and were given a more youthful appearance. This may have been a result of Capcom's experiment with the Darkstalkers series, which, at the time, had been introduced shortly before and had been popular among gamers.

Gameplay
Street Fighter Alpha introduced the concept of "Chain Combos" to the Street Fighter series. Basic attacks for any character can be progressively "chained" by using a series of light-to-hard combination of punches and kicks. By doing so, the attacks would combo together allowing for quick, short combos. This game also introduced a new 3 level Super Combo gauge which the player could use to execute Super Combos and/or Alpha Counters. Alpha Counters are similar to the "combo breakers" found in Killer Instinct, however, they are used while blocking an attack instead of while being hit, unlike Killer Instinct. This game is the first 1-on-1 fighting game to feature multi-level Supers. A player can choose to either use multiple, weak Super Combos or a single, powerful Super Combo.

Characters
Returning from Street Fighter II are Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Sagat, M. Bison, and Akuma, along with Birdie and Adon from the original Street Fighter, who are playable for the first time in the series.

New characters are: Charlie (known as Nash in Japan), Guile's comrade; Rose, a gypsy who uses tarot cards as her method of attack; and Dan, a parody of Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia from Art of Fighting.

Although Haggar from Final Fight has been referred as a former "Street Fighter", Alpha marks the first full-fledge crossover with Final Fight as both Guy and Sodom make their Street Fighter debut. Guy's design in the game would later be reused for Final Fight 3.

Returning Characters

 * Adon


 * Akuma


 * Birdie


 * Chun-Li


 * Ken


 * M. Bison


 * Ryu


 * Sagat

New Characters

 * Charlie


 * Dan


 * Guy


 * Rose


 * Sodom

Reception
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the game was that only 4 of the 10 selectable characters were from Street Fighter II: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Sagat despite the fact that both M. Bison and Akuma were hidden characters. It has been speculated that Capcom rushed this game in order to cash in on the then-booming arcade industry since at the time the graphic quality of home console games had not yet reached arcade status. The game seemed very unbalanced though at the time, this aspect was overlooked by the fact that the game had flashy new graphics and a new storyline to follow. Several magazines have reportedly printed that the producers and programmers have gone on record stating that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was the game they had wished the original to be.

Ports
The game was released on both the PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. While well received, neither game was arcade perfect (due to RAM limitations in the case of the PlayStation version). Both versions enjoyed a remixed soundtrack that streamed off the game disc. The arrangements possessed higher quality instrument samples compared to the sound generating chip on the CPS system.

A Windows version was released a few years later and was based on the PlayStation version. Impressively, a Game Boy Color version was also released, but suffered from poor play control. It is also interesting to note that this was the last title released on Capcom's experimental CPS Changer home system, which was essentially a modified CPS-1 without the encryption of the newer CPS-2 board.

It was later re-released as part of Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for the PlayStation 2. This version most closely resembled the arcade in terms of graphics and sounds, but added the extra gameplay options granted to the PlayStation and Saturn ports, such as training and Dramatic Battle. Furthermore, the player can turn on an option to allow Super Cancels; canceling a Special move into a Super. The Sound Option menu also enabled the player to use either, the original CPS2 music, or the CPS1 music from Street Fighter Zero on the CPS Changer.