Platform: PS2 | Developer: Capcom | Publisher: Capcom | Released: July 7th 2006 | 60Hz: Yes | Prog-scan: Yes | Price paid: £12.99 | Bought at: HMV

Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. Mmmmm... yum. Why is that name yummy? Well, it's not the name really, it's what it represents. You see, for years now, the hardened Street Fighter fan has always wanted such a compilation. Indeed, many other leagues of fans are crying-out very similar things from their respectively most-loved game series. Gaming is getting to the point now where you can actually call an old game 'retro', and for that term to actually be correctly-applicable. It's a term of endearment, and not many other series out there qualify for it as much as Street Fighter. Over the years, Capcom has offered mere tasters of the sorts of compilations they are now doing. A couple of Street Fighter compilations went to PSone and Sega Saturn, and the Alpha games themselves were each individually available on both of those platforms. The thing is, at the time, 3D gaming was having it's major breakthrough. 2D games, for a number of years, became highly unfashionable (they're only now really starting to become 'acceptable' again).

Furthermore, for the hardcore Street Fighter fans that remained, the ports of these games to Saturn and PSone (especially) were never that 'holy grail'; arcade-perfect. The PlayStation didn't have enough RAM for all the animation, so fans balked at the PSone versions, as they received many frame-cuts, and such. The PlayStation version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 in particular was abysmal. Frame-cuts, huge loading times (you'd think the game was loading off of a tape cassette), and even content cuts (Shin Akuma was not present, and many of the details in the stages were missing). While the Saturn versions were much better off in this regard, they still had loading times between the character-selection screen and the fight, which stopped the games being truly 'arcade-perfect'. The thrill of the arcade was that you could be throwing hadoukens in a matter of seconds, and that's a thrill which the home ports of Alpha have always had to omit, for one reason or another. Even the otherwise flawless Dreamcast version of Alpha 3 had noticeable load-times. Not any more. This mighty Anthology of Alphas finally nails the arcade-experience down to the pixel, and there are no in-game loading screens in sight. The only quick loading screens are from the main menu when you choose which Alpha you want to play, and even they are very snappy.

Us PAL gamers were always the most dejected. Even on the very good Saturn ports, we got poor PAL-conversions. The games were bordered, squished, washed-out, and ran slower than at the arcade. No amount of arcade-perfection could deter from how ruinous the shoddy PAL localizations were. The Street Fighter compilations during these years were some of the worst-offenders. They even had slow-down. Slow-down! On a 2D fighting game! As any fighting game fan will tell you; timing is everything. If you can't even rely on your fighting game to keep a steady frame-rate, it's as good as useless. The terrible PAL conversions further ruined any chance of properly utilizing those skills you honed to perfection down your local amusement hang-out. Skip ahead ten years, and everyone's playing arcade-perfect (or nigh-on) ports of cutting edge 3D fighters like Virtua Fighter 5, DOA , Tekken 5, etc. It seems silly that we can play perfect home-renditions of these games, and not have access to equally accurate ports of the old Alpha series. Even Street Fighter III beat the Alpha games at coming to consoles in perfect form, first. Well, no longer. Capcom has now released Street Fighter Alpha Anthology on PS2, and it's basically that 'holy grail' which we've wanted all these years, and it's cheap as chips!

Included in the compilation is; Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix. After fulfilling certain requirements, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, and Hyper Street Fighter Alpha become available. Alpha 3 Upper is the version that home machines originally got, and so restores Guile, Dee Jay, Fei Long and co. to the cast, who were missing from the initial arcade version of Alpha 3. Hyper Alpha is basically exactly the same as Hyper Street Fighter II, but for the Alpha series. It allows you to pit any version of any character against any other version of any character. So you could have Alpha 2 Ken fight Alpha 3 Upper Sakura, Alpha 1 Adon against Alpha 2 Gold Gen, or whatever. It's just just thrown in there for a bit of fan-service. For the 'what-if' crowd. Incidentally, Hyper Alpha has a mysteriously amazing 'Sound Test' mode. It's like that one on all the other games in this compilation, but with a difference; Instead of just having it's own songs, it has all the songs from different versions of many of the Street Fighter series (even Final Fight, and the SNES version of Alpha 2!). Madness. Hyper Alpha itself is terribly unbalanced, naturally. But it's a neat extra none-the-less.

What makes this compilation work is the sheer accuracy of everything, and the wealth of options. The games included on this disc are the actual arcade versions. You can even manage the dip-switches and play around with various settings like blood, speed, regional differences, slightly different menu and title screens, like an arcade operator would (don't worry though, you can have things like infinite round time, unlike the arcade). The games themselves are simply flawless. Not a single frame of animation is dropped, and there are no in-game loading times whatsoever. As soon as you've chosen your fighters, you're getting ready to do battle. Seems like such a simple thing, but the snappiness of this game makes it a joy to navigate. If in the middle of a fight, you decide "I don't want to play Alpha 3, I want to play Alpha 2" then you can just quit your current game, go back to the game selection menu, and be playing your new game of choice faster than it took for PSone Alpha 2 to load a single fight.

The icing on this gorgeous cake, is that Capcom have gone to such lengths to make it as perfect as humanly possible. The PAL optimization is the best I've seen in any Street Fighter game to date. It runs at the correct speed (or so near to it that I can't tell the difference), very nearly full-screen. You only notice the 50Hz isn't quite full-screen when you put it on glorious 60Hz, and you notice the picture get slightly taller. Yes, Capcom saw fit to make this product as good as it can be, and bestowed a full 60Hz mode on the PAL version. Indeed, they couldn't have written 'arcade-perfect' on the box if they hadn't. Not only is the 50Hz optimization really good, not only is there a full 60Hz mode, but you can even run the game in 60Hz progressive scan! This goes further than merely 'an Alpha compilation playable as it was meant at full-screen and full-speed in PAL'. The wealth of video options available in Street Fighter Alpha Anthology goes beyond the vast majority of PS2 games out there. There's even some rather nifty 'filter' and 'sharpness' options within the game. Because of the low-res nature of these games (384 x 224), Capcom saw fit to implement an optional filter, which goes some way to smoothing the picture out, to make it seem properly SD/ED.

Now, various other old games released recently have had such a feature (Capcom's own Street Fighter Anniversay Collection being one), but whereas before the filter just made everything look horrid, undefined, and blurry, the filter here is actually of a very good quality, and does what it's supposed to do. You can still not have it on, if that is your preference, but I really like it. This, coupled with the in-game sharpness controls, really means you can tweak them both until you find your own 'perfect-setting'. Or you can just turn them both off. As for the graphics and sonics of the actual games, well, it seems rather pointless going to lengths to describe them. This is a Street Fighter Alpha compilation. The games featured here are arcade-perfect ports (or possibly emulations) of the Alpha games. And that is exactly what you get. This is a very specific product, aimed at a very specific kind of person. I don't doubt that most of the people who buy this game will have played all of them before (with the possible exception of Gem Fighters). You should know what they look and sound like, by now. You should perceive a slight increase in animation-quality over older console ports, and should appreciate the good PAL conversion and 60Hz, but that's pretty much it.

It looks just like you remember (or better, if you only remember the old PSone and Saturn ports), it sounds just like you remember, and it plays just like you remember. I could go into how the game plays, but you should know the drill there, as well. The PlayStation pad works fine for the game, but if you're extra hardcore, you can go out and purchase a good arcade stick, to fully-replicate that 'skanky amusement establishment' experience. Strangely, you can use the analogue sticks for character movement, but it's utter sacrilege, and to do so leaves you with no hope of performing much of your characters moves effectively. I can only suppose that Capcom included this control option for games-playing goldfish. That, or it's for when you wear-out your D-pad. Capcom have gone to almost no lengths to make this feel like a 'console game'. This is a compilation for purists, after all. The only changes/upgrades they have made are extremely minor. They have retroactively given Alpha 1 and 2 the 'Dramatic Battle' mode from Alpha 3 (which lets two fighters tag-team against one), and kitted all the games out with 'Survival', and 'Training' modes. All of them obviously have 'Versus' and 'Options' modes, naturally. Though pretty modest, these additions are not insignificant, and provide a little variation and depth to the proceedings. Should you find yourself on your lonesome, you've got more than just 'Arcade' mode there to keep you occupied.

Therein lies one of the only possible complaints you could level at this compilation; being strict arcade ports, the games are a bit bare-bones compared to the home versions ported to various consoles over the years. Particularly notable is the absence of Alpha 3 Upper's extensive 'World Tour' mode from the PSone, Saturn, Dreamcast, and recent PSP versions. Alpha 2 doesn't have the nifty 'Gallery' from the Saturn, and Alpha 1 never had anything in the way of extra features, anyway (that game was and still is akin to a bald tyre). However, on the other hand, no-one really cares about any of that stuff. 'World Tour' mode is cool for playing on your own, but who wants to play Street Fighter on their own? And as soon as you have a friend round, they aren't going to want you to use your highly beefed-up super-character with infinite auto-block and whatever else against them, are they? The gallery in Alpha 2 was cool, but it's only a bunch of pictures (all of which you can get online), and you never spent more than five minutes going through them. Alpha 1 never had anything in the first place, so it's got extra stuff, here. The most important thing is that they are all truly arcade-perfect (which no other version of any of these games can boast), and all conveniently on one single disc.

This is the best way to actually play any of these games, and it's all on this one modestly-priced package. You couldn't ask for more. In that sense, the only real issue (and it is only a slight one), is that the training modes do not feature any kind of moves-list. So you're either going to have to figure them out yourself, or buy the guide. But then, anyone buying this is going to know the moves for all their favourite characters anyway, I would have thought. So that one negative thing is diminished to the point where it's going to be pretty irrelevant, for the most part. All you need to do now is ask yourself a simple question; "Is this game for me?". Only you know the answer to that. Were you a fan of these games in the mid-to-late 90s? Do you still swear by Street Fighter? If that sounds like you, then this is simply perfect, and a must have. It couldn't really be any better. Furthermore, even if you aren't a hardcore Street Fighter fan, this might just be something you want to check out. If you're a big fan of fighting games, but never really got into the Alpha series, or are too young to remember it, know this; Street Fighter Alpha 3 is, in many ways, still totally peerless as a fighting game. An arcade-perfect port of that game alone is more than worth the thirteen quid you'll pay for it. Then when you consider all the other stuff you're getting as well, it's a veritable bargain of herculean-proportions.

At this price, any fighting game fan with a PS2 doesn't really have much of an excuse for not having Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. There's so much classic, timeless gameplay, here. These games do not really age, you can keep going back to them, year after year. As a matter of course, you probably won't play Alpha 1 much, other than to go through it once as part of the requirements to unlock Hyper Alpha. You probably won't play much of Alpha 2, as if you want to play Alpha 2, you might as well play Alpha 2 Gold, which is a bit better. Likewise, once you've unlocked Alpha 3 Upper, you've got no particular reason to touch Alpha 3 ever again. It's just plain good-manners on Capcom's part to supply you with all these various versions of the games, which all have their own little nuances. A true hardcore Street Fighter nut will appreciate the difference between Alpha 2 and Alpha 2 Gold, in terms of the little bug fixes and balancing changes Gold had, which make the gameplay ever so slightly different. Since this package is aimed at precisely that kind of person, you are given that choice. If you choose to just play the last and most refined version of each game, then that's fine, too. You might actually think including any of them other than Alpha 3 Upper is a bit pointless, since that is the 'best' game in the series. Not strictly so.

While Alpha 1 is admittedly a bit pants (few selectable characters, and generally just very rough around the edges), Alpha 2 is arguably on a par with the marvelous Alpha 3. While it has less characters, less moves, and generally just less 'wow factor', because of it's simplicity, it harkens back to that classic early-90s Street Fighter gameplay a tad more than Alpha 3 does. Incidentally, it was also the last game in the series to retain that old Street Fighter 'atmosphere'. It's hard to put down in words, but Alpha 3 basically introduced all the break-beats, hectic noise and mayhem that the series has since permanently adopted. Whereas Alpha 2 has nice catchy little tunes, and quainter backgrounds. It's just slightly more reminiscent of the classic era. Mind you, that might just be because Alpha 2 was the one out during my 'heyday' (arcades were dead in the UK by the time Alpha 3 hit). I mostly play Alpha 3 Upper, though. It has the entire cast of Street Fighter II returning (including the Newcomers from SuperSFII), along with the Alpha characters. It feels a bit more polished, looks a tad nicer (with some slightly better, more varied animations, etc), has more moves and options, and generally just has a bit more to it overall. However, there's just something totally inimitable about Alpha 2 which makes me go back to it a lot. Playing Alpha 2 after an Alpha 3 session is sort of a 'back-to-basics' experience. Alpha 3 lacks the nice simplicity of Alpha 2, and is markedly less elegant as a result (and actually quite 'bull-in-a-china-shop' in that respect). So while it may not be the 'highlight' of the package, Alpha 2 is still an extremely solid fighter. Fans often can't agree which is the better game, so it's brilliant to have them both neatly included, arcade-perfect (both with their updated editions!).

Gem Fighter is a bit of a peculiar inclusion. It's not an Alpha game, nor is it even a Street Fighter game, strictly-speaking. It's a spin-off game, which strips the gameplay down to it's basics (one punch button, one kick button, one 'special' button), and has you knocking shades out of each other in order to collect gems, which feed your power-bar, which then gives your special moves added properties, and allows you to perform super-moves. Not to be confused with Super Puzzle Fighter (which was just a columns derivative), you do actually fight one-on-one in Gem Fighter. It's just. Well. Not that fantastic, really. It's not bad by any means, it's a fun little game. It's just not the greatest game in the world, and when you've got the whole Alpha series on the same disc, I dare say Gem Fighter's probably not going to see much play-time. That said, it's definitely miles better than Alpha 1, and if you're the kind of person who's just going to play Alpha 3 Upper (once you've unlocked it) and ignore the earlier installments, then this is the only other game you're going to want to play. It could be a way of easing another member of the household into Street Fighter, or playing Street Fighter with someone who isn't that up on the proper games to know all the moves and that. Anyone can play this, and it is actually a good laugh. See I've gone back on myself now. Ha. It's a genuinely interesting aside to the proper games, it's just not the 'main course' of this particular meal. A nice dessert, all the same.

It's all a matter of personal-taste, really. You might be one of those people who totally shuns Alpha 3 in favour of Alpha 2. You might even like Gem Fighter the most. Whatever, it's fine. This compilation is still for you. I'm just illustrating how joyous this package is for a Street Fighter Alpha fan. If I want some hectic Alpha 3 action, I can have it. If I'm 'in the mood' for a bit of Alpha 2, it's there. If I want to play a bit of Gem Fighter, it's only a couple of button presses away. This compilation is all about nostalgia, and not just about offering the latest and greatest iteration. If you're not as mad about Street Fighter, then you can just play Alpha 3 Upper, and ignore the 'lesser' ones. Choice. There's not much more I can say about this game. If you never liked Street Fighter, and perhaps aren't even a fighting game fan, then bugger off. This isn't even aimed at you, so you wouldn't appreciate it at all. There's nothing here to make you like what you never did first time round. You'll probably turn it on and think "Eurgh, crappy 2D graphics!" and then turn it off, never to be played again. This is for people who like these kinds of old-school 2D beat-em ups. That sounds like the sort of thing that goes without saying, but you'd be surprised. If you're a fighting game fan, are in the mood for a bit of retro, or otherwise think this might appeal to you in any way, then just get it. It's very cheap, and has unlimited replay value (people have been playing these games for a decade, already). If you like Street Fighter, then definitely get it. You should already have it, you shouldn't even be reading reviews. The 'non-believers' (aka; scum) might lament the lack of Alpha 3 Upper's 'World Tour' mode, the absence of online play, or whatever. Meh.

Ignore all that guff. If the game were more expensive, I might be more inclined to complain (though even then, I'd say it's only a mild shame). As it is, there's nothing to complain about. You can buy this game with your pocket-money. If you are a Street Fighter fan, you probably won't care much about the lack of 'World Tour' mode, nor will the absence of a laggy online mode particularly bother you. All you care about is the actual gameplay, and the accuracy thereof. Where else are you going to get totally perfect home ports of the Street Fighter Alpha games? Nowhere. Where else are you going to get any sort of compilation of the Alpha series (let-alone such a comprehensive one)? Nowhere. No other home-versions of any of these games actually play as well as they do here, and that's all you need to concern yourself with. This Anthology is essentially perfect, does exactly what it says on the tin, and has all the Street Fighter Alpha you can handle. It'll never be very far away from your PS2.