Emulation

Me and a friend were on voice chat last night and it turned into one of those classic "no, seriously, you have to play this" talks. He's been circling Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max for a while. He could just load it on his phone, but his exact words were "fuck that." He's already got the hardware ready for PPSSPP, he's just waiting on a controller to show up from Amazon.

And not just any pad. It's Sega's officially licensed six-button Saturn controller, just made USB now. The exact same shape, the exact same legendary D-pad, but it plugs straight in. He refuses to play a Capcom six-button fighter with four face buttons and heavy punch on a shoulder trigger. On the actual PSP, Capcom had to cram HP and HK onto L and R. It works, but your thumb is never where your brain expects it to be. With PPSSPP and that Saturn pad, he can finally map light, medium, heavy punches across the top, kicks across the bottom, and just play.

That alone is why I think he's going to actually stick with it this time.

He also kept asking the same thing a lot of people do: what even was Alpha? Why was Capcom putting it out at the same time as the main Street Fighter games? Was it just a cash-in?

Short version I gave him: it started as a hardware problem. Alpha was first built for the old CPS-1 boards because Capcom had a pile of them they were buying back from arcades, then they built it for CPS-2 at the same time. It hit Japanese arcades June 22, 1995, which was four years after Street Fighter II, but story-wise it's a prequel. That's why everyone looks younger.

The other big change was the look. Capcom threw out the bulky SFII sprites and drew everything in that bright, exaggerated anime style they were using for Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of the Atom. My friend lit up when I mentioned that, because that's exactly his thing. He loves the anime look, and Alpha is basically a playable 90s OVA.

Gameplay-wise, Alpha was Capcom's "everyone can play" branch while Street Fighter III was cooking for the hardcore crowd. Alpha gave you a three-level super gauge, Alpha Counters so you could spend a bar to counter out of block, plus air blocking and chain combos that let you interrupt one normal into another of equal or greater strength. It's less about one-frame parries and more about feeling cool quickly. When I told him Alpha was the casual-friendly one, he just said "yeah, that's right up my alley."

And that's where Alpha 3 Max is perfect for him, especially emulated. The PSP version has the biggest roster Capcom ever crammed into Alpha, plus the three Isms that let you pick your own complexity:

X-Ism if you just want one super bar and big damage, no air block A-Ism for the standard Alpha Counter stuff V-Ism for custom combos when you feel like labbing

He doesn't have to learn V-Ism day one. He can live in X-Ism, throw fireballs with younger Ryu, and enjoy the sprites.

The real win is the setup he's waiting for. PPSSPP is zero friction, save states mean he can practice a Dragon Punch without sitting through load screens, and that USB Saturn D-pad fixes the one thing the original PSP release got wrong. It's not nostalgia, it's literally more accurate to how the arcade six-button layout was supposed to feel.

So yeah, I spent an hour basically pitching my friend his own controller back to him. He's not playing Alpha 3 Max because it's retro, he's playing it because emulation finally lets him play it like Capcom drew it: six buttons, anime as hell, and forgiving enough that you don't need to be Evo-ready to have fun.

Controller lands from Amazon, Saturn pad plugs in, PPSSPP boots. I'll report back when he discovers how busted V-Ism Sakura is.

— FP