Year released: 1995 (Arcade, PlayStation), 1996 (Saturn, Japan only), 2000 (Gameboy Color), ? (PC)

Number of Players: 1-2 simultaneously

Graphics: (95%)
The SFA series introduced the anime-style look to the SF series. The graphics look great and are bright and detailed. The fighters are well animated and backgrounds look good as well.

Control: (93%)
Well, if you’ve played any of the previous SF games before, then you’ll learn the game very quickly. If not, then you won’t have a hard time learning at all; just practice a bit. You may want to look at a movelist as well; veteran player should know moves from characters from SF II, but may not know the moves for “new” characters not in SF II.

Sounds: (80%)
Pretty much what you expect: pretty good. SFA’s music doesn’t match up to the awesome themes of Super/Street Fighter II, but they still are catchy. Fighters still announce their attacks. Ryu, for example, still yells his famous “Hadoken!”

Gameplay: (83%)
After the Street Fighter II games, Capcom released the SFA series, which takes place between the first Street Fighter and Street Fighter II. The gameplay from the SF II games is still here, but is much improved. Moves don’t do nearly as much damage as they did in SF II, so you’ll have to do more work to defeat your opponent. The Super Meter introduced in SSF II Turbo is now here, fully functional and characters have more than one Super, too. Your Super Meter also fills up much faster than it did in SSF II Turbo. Computer AI is smart and can sometimes be cheap. But hey, the computer players are almost always cheap in Street Fighter games. Since SFA was the first in the series, the fighting system isn’t perfect, but was improved in SFA2.

Replayability: (60%)
One of the reasons why some people didn’t like SFA is because of the lack of fighters; there are 10 at the start, and 3 are hidden. Most players who mastered a certain character in the SF II games may not have their favorite fighter or a similar fighter in SFA. Also, SFA has a lack of modes, so there’s not much else to do besides playing against someone else.

Final Words:
Overall, SFA was a good start to a new SF series, but needed improvements. Many improvements were made in the next game, Street Fighter Alpha 2.

Final Score: (82%) B

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