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Undoubtadly the best fighter on the GBC

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Forget all those horrible fighting game translations that hit the original GameBoy and GameBoy Color (most of them started with Mortal Kombat) and take a good long look and Capcom's 8-bit version of Street Fighter Alpha for the GBC. Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Charlie, Rose, Guy, Sodom, and Birdie; all of which look surprisingly faithful to their more powerful console bretheren, albeit some lacking animation and detail. Controls are surprisingly solid and the special moves will take time to pull off but once you do they're easy. The sound is mostly terrible and you'll want to turn down your GBC's volume, and the endings for each character are ridicuously cheesy, but the meat and bones of Street Fighter Alpha is the fighting itself, and that is where this comes out a winner. All in all, Street Fighter Alpha for the GBC may not be the best fighter to come along, but in the case of the GBC it reigns supreme.

Not bad for a gbc game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: September 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Capcom may have cancelled one highly anticipated game for the Game Boy Color, but Street Fighter Alpha is still alive and kicking ? and it's finally available stateside. Those lucky ducks in the UK have been enjoying this darn-close arcade-to-portable rendition for three months now, and Capcom USA has finally dropped this cartridge onto retail shelves across the country. It was worth the wait, but there are a few omissions to the conversion that drop it from becoming the definitive portable fighter. You have to hand it to Crawfish for converting such an ambitious 32-bit arcade game to the Game Boy Color. Street Fighter Alpha may have been released in arcades almost three years ago, but it definitely wasn't an easy feat bringing the game to pocket form. And for a system with only two action buttons, the translation of the action has been ported really, really well.
The game features the line-up of 10 characters (so far Akuma has gone undiscovered), and features the same one-on-one fighting engine that was enjoyed in arcades just a few years back. Each character has his or her own feel, but pulling off their moves are similar to one another. The A and B buttons do their job as the Kick and Punch actions ? the longer you hold the buttons, the more powerful the activated move. As you battle, you fill up the gauge at the bottom of the screen, up to three levels ? performing a pad/button combination will activate the Super Combo, a devestating flurry of powerful moves that'll sap the power right out of your rival. The game even keeps track of how you out your opponent, with an icon that displays the many ways: normal move, special move, cheesy move, throw, super combo, and a perfect victory. The graphics are excellent for the Game Boy Color ? characters are rendered based on the Street Fighter Alpha style instead of the NeoGeo Pocket "big head" mode. The backgrounds are equally nice, with just a bit of animation thrown back there to be more interesting. The imagery is some of the best I've seen on the Nintendo portable to date. Don't expect much sound other than a few FM music pieces and white noise "thud" sounds when every punch connects ? it would be silly to expect the Game Boy Color to accurately push constant "Hadoken!" digitized sounds during the action. It would've been nice, sure, but hey, this is the Game Boy Color we're talking about. The big difference between the Game Boy Color and arcade versions is in the cosmetics ? most of the Alpha-style elements are in the game, minus one key factor: the Game Boy Color does not count combo hits. It's been a while since I've played the first Alpha game in the arcade or the Saturn, but I clearly remember a counter of some sort as you plaster your opponent with continuous hits. And even if it didn't, it's a feature that should have been included. The game also doesn't have the necessary "oomph" in the hits ? granted, the speaker on the system isn't the greatest sound tool out there, but there needs to be something that portrays the brutal punches and kicks when they connect. It's good enough, but the game just needs a little bit more. But the absolute kicker that reduces the game a notch or two ? no link cable option. In a fighter, it's an absolute must to include some sort of two player option. I know that a link cable mode was planned, but here we are, final cartridges in hand, link cable at the ready, and no two player option. One player modes can only go so far in fighting games ? we all know that fighters shine when battling a human over the computer AI, and Street Fighter Alpha loses its lastability simply because there's no way to play your buddy. And including a training mode just isn't enough to keep your interest for longer than a few minutes per play. But that doesn't mean the single player game isn't good. It is ? but only for brief moments of challenge. Without the random, unpredictable skills of your friend on the other controls, the game just loses its variety. SNK has nothing to worry about ? the NeoGeo Pocket Color and its huge library of fighters is the reigning champ in the portable fighting genre. You'll just have to imagine how annoyed and disappointed I was when I popped in two copies of Street Fighter Alpha into two systems, connected the link cable between them, and waited for the Vs. option to appear. Darn near had a fit right in my cubicle. The single player game is good, and really shows off Crawfish's Game Boy Color expertise, but the link cable omission makes me actually rethink how good a programming team Crawfish actually is. If you're going to tackle Street Fighter Alpha on the Game Boy Color, the first thing on people's minds is going to be "How's the two player?" Sadly, it's non-existent. I salute Crawfish and Capcom for excellently shoehorning an ambitious game into the Nintendo portable, but I just can't look the other way when the link cable is left out. You'll just have to imagine how annoyed and disappointed I was when I popped in two copies of Street Fighter Alpha into two systems, connected the link cable between them, and waited for the Vs. option to appear. Darn near had a fit right in my cubicle. The single player game is good, and really shows off Crawfish's Game Boy Color expertise, but the link cable omission makes me actually rethink how good a programming team Crawfish actually is. If you're going to tackle Street Fighter Alpha on the Game Boy Color, the first thing on people's minds is going to be "How's the two player?" Sadly, it's non-existent. I salute Crawfish and Capcom for excellently shoehorning an ambitious game into the Nintendo portable, but I just can't look the other way when the link cable is left out.

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