series was pretty meh

This was the point I started to lose interest in Street Fighter. Street Fighter 2 released like 5 different rehashed versions of the same title and it was hard to get excited about another title and I moved onto other fighting games that were out at the time. Instead of really doing a true sequel they made a prequel or tweenquel? Most of the new characters were pretty lame. If you were already getting burnt out on Street Fighter, this didn't really bring enough new to the table and felt more like another side-step. And of course a dozen different versions, alpha, alpha 2, gold, anniversary, and different characters in 3 between the arcade, consoles, and portables.

Only really neat additions were adding in Final Fight characters since it was suppose to be a Street Fighter title or at least the two take place in the same universe. The only one I enjoyed playing as though was Guy, the rest were kind of wonky. Also Alpha 3 had some light rpg elements and a character creator in the story mode.

Really I didn't get back into SF until Street Fighter 3. In terms of animation and gameplay that just provided the best flow, yes even better than Street Fighter 4. Why Alpha is so beloved and 3 gets treated like a red haired step child is beyond me.

I'll admit I'm not really fond of Alphas 1 & 2. But I really enjoyed 3, for all the reasons Mike mentioned. Sure it isn't in my top five, but it was still fun to play in arcades, and I enjoyed using Rolento (such an unappriciated character) and Charlie.

I will say the one thing I HATED about the Alpha series was what I've come to call the fat M. Bison, and Capcom seemed to really like this model because they ran with it through the X-Men vs Street Fighter/MvC titles. It looked awful!

On a side note I was wondering on Mike or Tom's thoughts on what I considered my favorite fighting game for a long time running, Capcom vs SNK 2 which I alway felt never got much attention because of all the attention Marvel vs Capcom 2 was still getting at the time of it's release.

Not going to lie, I stopped caring about Street Fighter after 2 Turbo. The last Street Fighter I tried to get into was 4 and it was alright for awhile but I feel like I'm lost on competitive fighters. I feel like memorizing moves, combos, breaker etc. is too much of a chore to become just a mediocre player isn't fun to me. I was always better at Mortal Kombat as it's simple and fun (to me at least). I have no desire to try any of the Alpha games.

BTW Mike, I loved the music you ended the podcast with last week. Any Canadian kid who grew up in the 80s/90s knew the cartoon The Racoons and for some reason I love that end song. It's so... 80s I love it. BTW they play the Racoons on Teletoon Retro at least once a day. God I love that channel!

The overall creation of Alpha was because of Capcom wanting to reduce the wait until Street Fighter III, which was ironically going to be made after Turbo, but MK's rising popularity gave Capcom little time to make a full on sequel without losing to competition, prompting upgrades of II and the Alpha sub series. Funny thing was that T. Hawk, Cammy, etc were all characters that were going to be part of the cast in III, but after MK started dominating the genre, Capcom was too afraid to continue working on III, prompting them to scrap it and throw those characters in Super II.

On the Alpha series, I found Alpha 1 and 3 good, but not in the same level of the others. But Alpha 2, in my opinion, was my favorite out of the 3 games and in the top places in the best Street Fighter games. For some reason, I found Alpha 2 to be really fun and a much more polished version of the original Alpha. But I agree on the new characters, who with the exception of Rose (one of my 3 favorite characters in the series, along Ryu and Ibuki) and Sakura, were not that great.

On interest, I love Street Fighter, but I can't play competitively. Of course I sometimes ask for tips, and try out some combos, but I cannot play fighters competitively without getting bored out of my mind. I just like taking the casual aproach and playing for fun.

What the HELL!!!!!! Are you kidding me?!

Is this episode an April Fool joke? I too must call shenanigans on Jason for saying that EX was slightly less crappy. You sir... Die in a fire.

Okay, I talked before about how there's this new Super Mario 2 hatred that suddenly exists on the internet that never existed 20 years ago when the game came out. The same applies to the Street Fighter Alpha series. You people who say you dislike this series are suddenly abundant and loud, but back in the mid-90s, I never met anyone who disliked this game. I'd like to know where you people came from, because as far as I could see, you didn't exist back then.

I'm with Dodd on this one. Alpha took what was great about the increasingly stale Street Fighter II series and made it better. You know what I don't like? Matches that only last ten seconds. That's what it's like to play Street Fighter II. <sarcasm>Boy it sure is fun to die after only getting hit by four fireballs!</sarcasm> Alpha gave you a life bar that lasted a while, and the showdowns you had were epic!

Tom doesn't like it, because he doesn't know how to play as Sodom and Birdie. Dude, then don't play as them. You had Guy, Sagat, Rose, Adon, Chung-Lee, and Charlie. That's a pretty solid roster, even with a couple slow Zangief-types like Sodom and Birdie. You have got to be kidding me, Tom! Rose is AWESOME. She deflects fireballs for crissake! You just don't know how to play. Also, Adon friggin' ruled. His Jaguar kicks in Alpha 2 were my favorites for screwing up other players.

Alpha was a completely different approach to Street Fighter. Yes, you had air-blocking, Alpha counters, and shit like that. Hell, those aren't even as important to me as the fact that they loosened up the controls a bit. The Alpha was so much smoother. I think Street Fighter II feels a little too stiff.

My favorite stand-alone entry in the series has to be Alpha 2 Gold. You had a pretty big roster that was also very balanced. 2 Gold is my bread and butter. It had a few tweaks to it from the original version of Alpha 2. Plus it has Cammy.

Alpha 3 is pretty good, too. Honestly, I think Tom just needs to stock up on some tampons, because the ism system in Alpha 3, as deep as it was, was not as inhibiting as Tom is making it sound. All of the characters are very approachable in each version. If you know how to play as a character, then it's just a matter of understanding how the isms work before you pick one. The only one that threw a curve at you was the V-ism, and that was actually based on something from Alpha 2. The other two isms were based on play styles that you should already be well familiar with. Too much variety, Tom? Really?

That World Tour mode was AWESOME. The only thing that actually sucks about it is that once you go through it, there's no reason to do it again. If they had multiple tours, that would have been great. And it really sucks that they left it out of the Anthology.

Worst thing about Alpha 3: Undoubtedly, it's the announcer. And they didn't let you turn him off in the home edition. That was kinda bullshit.

I'll give you this much; Alpha 3 had the most ridiculous roster, full of characters that you mostly don't care about, and Tom used that as a reason to rag on the game. But the funny thing is that I know that Tom actually likes Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, so that reason for disliking Alpha 3 can be immediately discarded, because Tom isn't even being consistent with his own standards. Talk about a roster with mostly filler. Pot, meet kettle.

Also, you can't use the terrible Super Nintendo port of Alpha 2 as a reason to hate on the series. Of course it was slow, because it actually had load times due to the ridiculous compression. It's an achievement that they even got it to run on that thing. The Sega Saturn ports were awesome, as was the Dreamcast version of Alpha 3, but the best version, as Tom said, was the PS2 collection. ...even without the World Tour. ...and with the fact that they didn't give us Yun, Maki, Eagle, and Ingrid with it.

My favorite part of that was the Hyper Street Fighter Alpha mode, where you could play as any version of any character from any game. There's even a code that you enter when you start the game which gives you random character selection, so you never know who your fighter is going to be. My friends and I used to have all-nighters where we would play that mode for hours.

You guys have got to be kidding me. Total shenanigans. Alpha rocks. My favorite Street Fighter series. Tom's wrong.

A lot of people were tired of Capcom repackages of the same game. Capcom did it to themselves by pulling a Guitar Hero. With MK, KoF, SB, VF, Tekken, and a ton of other fighters out there the market this was a lot going on and Alpha just wasn't that impressive.

Doesn't help that Capcom has spent the last decade trying to convince everyone how awesome Alpha was by sticking those same sprites and Alpha characters in every freaking game they had the chance to.

Then Street Fighter 4 comes out. Hooray all the SF2 characters. And um half the cast of Alpha. Wonder who from Street Fighter 3 is going to make it into number 4. Oh no one. Well maybe for the console release, nope more alpha characters. Well good we got some Street Fighter 3 characters in Super and guess what more Alpha characters. Do we have the entire Alpha cast yet? Cause they are going to run that game into the ground too until they have the entire alpha cast