Street Fighter Alpha 2 / 3

When, in the mid-nineties, the question was where to play the best home ports of 2D fighting games, connoisseurs pointed to one machine — the SEGA Saturn. Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3 were among its flagships here, and the reason was purely technical: with the help of an expansion RAM cartridge, the Saturn could offer a fidelity that the competition of the time could scarcely match.

The key was that very module of 1MB or 4MB of extra memory that slotted into the cartridge port. Capcom used it to get more animation frames and smoother character movement into the ports. While elsewhere the versions suffered from dropped animation phases and pared-down details, on the Saturn the fighting games looked fuller and closer to their arcade originals. For players who took 2D fighting deadly seriously, this was a decisive difference.

The Alpha series itself brought a fresh interlude between the classic second entry and the later successors — a more pronounced anime style, the Alpha Counter system and later the Custom Combo system, which opened up room for spectacular chained attacks. Alpha 3 then offered a huge roster and three selectable fighting styles (A-ism, X-ism, V-ism) that fundamentally changed the approach to a match. It was one of the deepest fighting games of its time.

The developer was Capcom, the house that practically set the direction of 2D brawlers in the nineties. The combination of its experience with a Japanese hardware specialty made the Saturn a mecca of the genre — especially in Japan, where the console won a strong position precisely thanks to arcade and fighting titles.

Today these Saturn versions are sought after by collectors and by players who want to experience what Capcom fighting games looked like in the most faithful home form before the era of emulation and compilations. They recall a time when every frame of animation mattered and when the right piece of hardware decided how close you got to the arcade original.

Why play it: The most faithful home ports of Capcom's 2D fighting games of the era — if you love Street Fighter Alpha, the Saturn with a RAM cartridge is the right choice.