Street Fighter Alpha 1 was quite the success in the arcades and the home, bringing a new artstyle with familiar gameplay and new additions to the cast and game systems that made it a standout hit, especially given Street Fighter The Movie: The Game came out at the same time. You can guess which one was more successful.

Naturally, a sequel was greenlit almost instantly once cabinets and kits flew out Capcom's warehouses. With what they had built on with the meters and Alpha Counters, it would make sense to fundamentally improve what they had going and give fans a bigger, better game. With a bigger budget and more creative freedom thanks to no longer being tied to an animated movie, they did just that and then some.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 is what I call an absolutely perfect sequel. It takes everything from the first game and amps it up tenfold to make a game that looks, sounds and plays beautifully. Raising the base roster of 13 in the first game to 18 certainly helped, turning secret characters into base roster choices and bringing old faces from past games.

Such new blood includes Dhalsim and Zangief from Street Fighter 2, Gen from Street Fighter 1, Rolento from Final Fight, as well as new character Sakura Kasugano, who practically stole the show and became one of the biggest female faces of the entire franchise. You don't get an entire manga series about yourself and a playable appearance in Rival Schools if you weren't a slam dunk right out of the gate, and the plucky schoolgirl was exactly that.

The game itself is basically an expansion from the first game, but everything just feels smoother. Gone are the majority of target combos but replaced with new moves and old ones getting tweaked to better pace the game. Alpha 2 just feels faster in general, one of the fastest in the series that's actually playable if you stick to Turbo 2, just be wary that the speed may fuck with your combos due to how the frames in turbo mode are rendered.

One the biggest new systems of Alpha 2 is the Custom Combo, how it works is when you have super meter, you can press two punches and a kick to activate CC, all your attacks are much faster and recovery is basically non-existent, giving you a few moments to string any attacks together to build huge combos. This was the game's biggest addition and it seriously helps with characters that might not have good supers to use the meter in new and exciting ways.

Graphics and Sound took a huge leap forward with the increased budget, giving the original soundtrack a bigger, more exciting tone. While not as thrilling or intense as X-Men vs Street Fighter, but still pumping to get you ready for a fight. The new backgrounds are more vibrant and have way more animation and scale to them, stages like Ken's, Charlie's, Rolento's and especially the secret stage for Sagat and Ryu really stand out.

The UI, not usually something I bring up, is also way more alive, like the transitional Z that zooms in and out, showing things like the stage or the character select screen when a second player challenges is also magnificent to look at. Also the intro is so damn good, but not my favorite of the bunch.

Alpha 2 is a clean, pretty, simple to play game that anyone that likes fighting games can jump right into. Its ease of play allows anyone to jump in, and the large flexibility with the super meter and Custom Combos really bring the game high above its competition. The only real complaint is having to press multiple buttons while doing super moves to use more than one level of super can be cumbersome, but that's a small nitpick for cackhanded people like myself.

Otherwise, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is a damn fine masterpiece and one jumping into. Also the Saturn and PS2 ports add Cammy as a secret character! What's not to love?