Let me first say that I am a die-hard fan of the Street Fighter
series, starting with Street Fighter II (I never played the original street
fighter).  In fact, seeing Street Fighter II in action on the Super Nintendo
is what convinced me to buy one.  Then, when SFII Turbo came out, I eagerly
snatched it up and it remains the most-played video game that I own, even
after purchasing a PSX.  I remained loyal to SFII CE in the arcades long
after I had learned Mortal Kombat.  When Super SFII came out, I borrowed a
copy from a friend for a while, and loved every minute of it, but
unfortunately I didn't get around to buying it.  

        Well, when I heard about Street Fighter Alpha coming out for the
Playstation, I couldn't possibly have been more pleased, even though I had
never played the game in the arcade (Street Fighters are very unpopular
around here, probably due to the fact that they've kept basically the same
engine for 5-6 years).  In fact, I borrowed the money from a friend to go
out and buy it immediately.  And let me say that I have never been more
dissapointed with a game purchase than I am with this one.  First let me hit
on the high points of the game, and then I will go into the much longer
section on the low points.

THE GOOD

        Ken, Ryu, and Sagat basically remain the same as SFIITurbo, with a
few new attacks.  For example, Ken now has a rolling attack that can be used
to escape acorner trap, roll to the other side of your opponent to confuse
them, avoid a jump-in kick, etc.  It's not invincible, since Ken cannnot
block while rolling, and foot sweeps usually take care of players that use
the roll too much.  His Fierce Kick hasbeen changed slightly.  It has a huge
range and hits people on the ground very well, but is terrible for
counterattacking an airborne opponent.  The medium kick is now the kickof
choice for that, as well as doing cross-up combinations.  Ryu seems to have
a slightly faster fireball, and has a very powerful ground punch that hits
low blocking opponents (all characters have a move like this, but Ryu's
seems particularly effective). Sagat remains basically the same.

        Of course, the Super Combo's really add a lot to the gameplay, and
give the game some OOOMPH it sorely needs, having no finishing moves,
desperation moves, or anything that makes onlookers say {Joey Lawrence mode
ON} "WHOOOOAAAAA" {Joey Lawrence mode OFF}. To execute Super Combo's, you
must have Chi energy built up in your Chi meter (which is done by doing
special moves, getting hit, etc.) and then usually perform your character's
main special attack motion twice, ending it with one, two, or three attack
buttons depending on how much Chi you want to throw into the attack.
Thegame's animations pauses for a split second, and you go into your super
combo, leaving a blue shadow trail behind you.  For certain characters, the
effect is quite dazzling. AND, if you defeat your opponent with the combo,
the entire screen lights up with a brilliant flash that only gets old after
the 10th time you see it :).  Up until then, it's quite stunning.

        The control is dead on, and the standard Sony controller feels good
for this game to me.  You can customize your buttons any way you want, and
put all three kicks and all three punches to a single button, to assist in
pulling off super combos and similar moves.  With the missing crosspiece,
playing Alpha for a while might give you a sore thumb, though.

THE BAD

        Chun Li is present as well, but in my opinion, feels totally
different. Her kicks and punches are different, and don't expect to play her
as well as you can in other versions immediately.  Also her character looks
very different, a lot worse (more on that in the graphics section).

        There are several new characters, some from the original Street
Fighter, and some that are totally new.  These are Rose, Guy, Charlie,
Sodom, Birdie, and Adon. In my opinion the new characters are terrible.
Playing them feels like playing characters from the game Time Killers.
Their animations are horrible, their attacks are horrible, even their names
(come ON, who want to play a guy called SODOM, for crying out loud?) are
horrible.  One of the biggest dissapointments to me was that they took fun
characters out like Dhalsim, E. Honda, Blanka, etc. and replaced them with
characters that look like they come from some cheap kit game that sits in
the corner of an arcade at 25 cents for 2 credits and _still_ isn't getting
played.

        The sound is nothing to write home about.  The music is very cheesy
and reminescent of 70's disco at times.  The new characters tend to scream
out the name of the special attack they are performing (Such as Adon's
"JAAAACKALLLL KICKKK") and this is quite cheesy as well.  Although the sound
is done in Q-sound, it's just not that remarkable to me, and I am somewhat
of an audiophile.  

        The graphics are where this game really suffers.  The characters are
all redrawn, with an attempt to give them a Japanese anime look.  Street
Fighter Alpha is the first sequel that I know of whose graphics reverted
back to the early 80's.  The whole game has a cartoon feel to it, like Bugs
and Daffy.  The animations are drawn choppy, not very fluid at all.  The
backgrounds live a lot to be desired.  The characters and the multi-colored
backgrounds tend to blend together, and this is very straining on the eyes.
After playing SFA, I hooked up my Super Nintendo, and honestly the graphics
and animations for SFIITurbo look better than Alpha, hands down.

        I've saved the absolute worst for last.  The loading times on this
game are horrible, without a doubt the slowest game released for the
Playstation (with the possible exception of Wipeout, from what I've heard, I
don't own it). Expect to be staring at the "Now Loading..." legend just
about as much as you are playing.  The game takes forever to load in the
main screen, forever to load in the character select screen, and forever to
load in the match.  The worst part is, if you get beaten by the computer and
wish to continue, the game has to load the countdown screen, then it has to
load the character select screen AGAIN, and then it has to load the match
once more. This can easily take 30 seconds, and is totally infuriating.  I
understand that since Alpha's graphics are all 2D bitmaps, and cannot be
calculated in real time, they will take longer to load, but the loading
times take whatever fun out of the game that may have been there.  Even in
VS. mode it takes forever, and that's with the option to turn off the
graphics on the character select screen.

        That along with the fact that all the fun characters were taken out
of the game really makes the replay value of this title nil.  My friends and
I have started playing Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES once more, and I
have fortunately been able to trade Alpha for King's Field, which is a great
game, but more on that later. :)

Final Scores: (out of 10)

Graphics:     6
Sound:        8
Control:      10
Fun Factor:   2
Replay Value: 2

Total Score:  56%  You're better off playing the Galaga intro to Tekken over
and over again. 
                             Michael Sims (phsims@sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu)