The Alpha 3, MVSF/MVC and Vampire Saviour stages look absolutely beautiful and filled with alot of detail. They really pushed the CPS2 to its absolute limit.
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It looks so brown and grey and depressing. I don’t know why, the poor palette of colors, the gradients or something, everything had to have some visible ‘dots’ around, IDK, they just made me want to puke.
I definitely have no fond memories of Alpha 1 and 2 because of the stages.
I guess they gradually learned about how to take the better advantage on the CPS2 graphics processors or whatever.
SNK had a better results with their use of Neo Geo graphics for the backgrounds (who doesn’t love Samurai Shodown 2) by the times of KOF.
As for the KOF '97 and '98 stages, they were well done, but for me they have the flaw of being a bit too ‘same-y’.
And sadly, after '99, they simply became cheap and lazy and most new stages were garbage both in concept and execution. KOF 2000 stages were SO lame, and let’s not start talking about 2001, 2002, 2003…
And I especially hate KOF 2002/UM and NGBC where they became much more focused on cramming as many (poorly placed and poorly animated) cameos as they could instead of creating actually good stages.
That was a big sin for Capcom Fighting Evolution too.
I don’t know, I just hate, hate, HATE stages with cameos (unless they’re so small and part of a better planned stage like in KOF '94 and '97).
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Early alphas are also guilty of give SF stages the absolute dominance of 1-2 colors, a stylistical plague that somehow survived in successive chapters… the ugly color “fog” is to stick with that
SF2 had some color dominance, but was handled better
Agree on A3 improved things, even if the alpha12 virus manage to resurrect in some SF3 ones, with 4 and 5 still showing marks lol
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Alpha 2 stages/music >>>>>> Alpha 3
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there is a reasoning why they were designed like that and it’s not because they can’t do any better.
Well, I love everything about Alpha 3. The GUI, announcer and that was the best of any fighting game.
The only things I don’t like are the fact your color palette changes depending on the ISM you choose, and those stupid “certain distance” Lvl 3s from Ryu and Fei Long. The rest is pure gold.
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Not All the GUI
A2 / Z2 has better transition and map in arcade mode.
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Well yeah. That’s what happens when you make amazing Mega Man X-style remixes of a bunch of classic SF2 songs.
I love everything BUT the music. You should never not use a character’s original theme in a SF game.
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Alpha 3’s OST has an actual reason to turn out the way it did. Basically after failing to install a CD-ROM with Redbook audio onto Alpha 3 cabinets, Takayuki Iwai gathered the rest of the arcade sound team to make an OST as soon as possible.
Just look at the new themes for the later ports. They sound far better with more instrument variety. It’s a shame, because Alpha 3’s soundfont can give out some very interesting results.
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Well, a couple of the songs are still good. Like Ryu’s and Vega’s. But they’re not better than the originals, and should have gone to one of the new characters. Instead of the kinda shitty songs Karin and Mika got.
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Ryu actually has one of my fav tracks on A3, but I agree the OST in general is a downgrade from A2, A3 just sounds too “same-ey” all around, and with the good user a couple of posts above sharing the behind the scenes troubles they had now I understand why A3 music sounds the way it does.
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Yeah because A3 tried to simplify things and uniformed a lot of things. So it end up simplified and similar in assets not just sounds. It might be because of more huge content they had compare to the earlier.
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Yep aside from a few like Ryu, Vega, Cammy and one or two others the rest were forgettable. Nearly all the tracks sounded the same to me. Like I was listening to the same track. Absolutely horrible.
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To be true I don’t remember the OST at all. Probably Nash’s theme only and the transitions tunes.
You would think, if they were being rushed, it would have been faster to remix old themes, instead of creating all new ones.
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Takayuki Iwai was infamous amongst his colleagues for always trying something new with his projects. He basically did all of Vampire Saviour on his own and wanted to make Alpha 3 stand out from the others. Obviously that didn’t work and MVC1 and Alpha 3 started the trend of their fighting games have subpar osts.
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I have no idea what happened to Guilty Gear, but since Xrd, 90% of their new characters (and redesigns) have simply not interested me.
What the hell is this new girl supposed to be? Looks boring as hell.
Meh, I miss Anji.
But to be true, I’ve never even tried the new games. I’m sticking With Accent Core Plus, that’s a game I have zero complaints about 
Vanessa + Juri + some kosher salt = Giovanna