Fighting games are a divisive genre in video games. Many people directly avoid them because of the learning curve or sometimes toxic communities. I used to feel this way about the genre. That being said, one day I saw the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection on sale and decided to pick it up. I had started to become a Capcom fanboy at the time, and Street Fighter was somewhat inevitable thing I had to experience. I thought it would be fun!
This game was so, so hard for me. I always say that I'm mediocre at fighting games, but when I started this game up I was absolutely awful. I didn't know how to do inputs correctly, I didn't understand many basics of fighting games, I basically just winged it and pressed buttons. It was pathetic, and I even thought it was just the game being harder then it actually was. But, eventually, I started to figure things out. Street Fighter became my hyperfixation, with my obsession becoming a joke within my online friend group. It was a fun summer.
Yeah, this game is great. Movement is fluid, it's easy and fun to experiment with move cancelling and seeing the variety of combos to play with. The hidden custom combo system is an entire extra level of complexity to the game and it's absolutely broken in many ways. I love the roster, graphics, music, everything. It's always stuck with me.
Sakura Kasugano was the first character I ever picked when playing this game, and it's stayed that way since. She's remained my fighting game comfort character, because what isn't there to love? She's an upbeat, peppy highschooler who reaches out to challenge and learn from her personal idol. She's a fan favorite for a reason, her energetic and adorable animations and voice clips are timeless and memorable.
I love playing this game with friends, even with our different skill levels it's just such a blast. With the matches being so engaging and short I can never tire of it. If anything, losing is just a learning experience for me to improve slowly to become a World Warrior myself. And that's just an appeal of fighting games for me. You aren't gonna start out great, but dedicating the time to master your abilities feels great to earn. I've even considered learning this game competitively, it's that fun.
This game is what started my interest in fighting games. It's still one of THE most important video games in my life, as cliche as that may sound. Whenever I see that opening start up with Akuma in the flames, man I just know I'm in it for the time of my life. I may prefer KOF in a lot of ways to Street Fighter, but I don't think this game will ever be forgotten by me.
It's fun, it's charming, it's memorable, it's fantastical.

It's Street Fighter Alpha 2.

Já tinha jogado muito o port do Super Nintendo, que mesmo com as limitações do console foi o jogo que me fez começar a gostar de verdade de Street Fighter. O controle dos lutadores é uma delícia, o elenco já é incrível mesmo sem as adições de SFA3 e por ser um jogo relativamente curto dá vontade de fechar com vários dos seus personagens favoritos e assistir seus finais, que são muito satisfatórios. Também gosto muito dos cenários, o do Guy com os personagens de Final Fight no fundo, e o do Ken cheio de referências às séries da Capcom foram feitos com muito carinho pelos desenvolvedores.

SF Alpha 2

É um puta avanço do Alpha 1. O jogo é bem mais rápido, tem bem mais personagens (INTRODUZ A SAKURA), OST é uma das mais icônicas da série inteira, os cenários novos são ESPLÊNDIDOS e os custom combos são incríveis, uma pena que tiraram os chain combos :(

9/10

The most literal example of the term "Anime Street Fighter"

Alpha 2 functions a lot like Street Fighter 2 Super Turbo. No dashes, combos in general are very short and simple. Most of your gameplay is walking back and forth to bait the opponent into missing an attack, hit them if they try to jump at you, and try to approach the opponent/keep the opponent away from you.

Combined with the excellent music and very nice pixel art graphics, this makes it very fun and approachable for a beginner. Especially with how many mechanics games have these days, Alpha 2 can be refreshing in how barebones and basic it is.

Once you get invested though, you can start to squeeze a little more out of it, by learning to use the Custom Combo mechanic to perform fast high damage combos like what you see in Guilty Gear or Blazblue.

essentially a vertical improvement in every way over alpha 1. alpha 1 had a low character roster, certain characters needing codes to input, bison being way too difficult. in alpha 2, all have been improved. now there's a wider swathe of characters to pick from, the characters that needed codes are just flat out available, and i'm not sure if bison was either nerfed or just had his AI adjusted (my cursory google searches didn't give me a definitive answer) but either way he's much more doable here. overall it's a very tight package. everything positive i feel about alpha 1 applies to alpha 2, just with a lot less downsides here. this is one of the best early fighting games you could play.

plus, they brought back zangief, my bisexual husband, and that by itself deserves a half a star.