The.. STREEEeeeEET FIGHTER.... ALPHA..............ONE thread

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter Alpha Anthology
1

Strangely… Quite a few times this past week people have asked about a A1 thread… So well… I decided to make one.

A1 is defiantly a game that gets a undeservedly bad rap. Complaining about things that basically arnt true, or at least exaggerating. One common thing being guy ruins the game and has broken dizzy combos, and redizzy combos. Guy isnt even the best character in the game, and although he does have a redizzy combos. The general one doesnt even work in most versions of the game, where you would redizzy them a regular combo would kill them in most cases. Whats more his redizzy combos needs a jump into to start off which, doesnt happen off a dizzy combo ethier since your not in position for it.

Someone just picking guy and dizzying you the whole match is just not how the game in reality works. And in many situations where guy can dizzy you, a good number of characters can dizzy you as well.

There are some diff versions of the game but the one that is played online is the last arcade version. Off the top of my head main difference being from most people probably played is, guy can only redizzy if he does a stand jab, hk, walk forward stand jab, hk(good luck), and sodoms unblockable does not work. So saying that its pretty much the same as saturn version or the version most people played in arcades(although sodoms unblockable did work in saturn that I remember). That is unless someone actually had the beta version of the game in there arcade were charlie could cancel all his normals besides backfist and guy could redizzy with a jump in mash jab, stand hp, running overhead. Shrug Theres also a gameboy version of the game… Its in black and white… Its on the game boy… It has 2 buttons… Also just to say if anyone tries playing on that ps2 anthology thing jig, the game is off, moves are harder to do(good luck doing akumas demon flip consistently), you can charge for the same combos anymore, cant combo birdie off acs. Just a little off…

I started playing the game again last year on and off randomly online and here are the tiers imo. Contrary to opinion as well people do play the game, and you can usually find people to play on 2df more so. That is of course… Unless you are for some reason a known turbo user like me.( … -____-…) Anyway so yea there are people that play but finding people that will play more then a match(at least for me)is pretty hard. If people disagree id love to hear opinions and better yet prove me wrong online? lol

Best man tier
Akuma and ken

Not much akuma doesnt do. Dizzy combos, redizzy combos, Baits and punishes rolls just as hard as any one else. Hard to think of flaws he has… He does take more damage the normal. His alpha counter theoretically could be a disadvantage if someone is chipping him to death. And his roll is ass. Ass to the point of it probably was only put in the game for the off chance you might miss something it get it instead to… well punish you for fucking up your command.

Kens roll is too good for what it is. Although a lot of people talk about a roll trap with duck lp,lk,mk lp roll stuff that extent. You can actually just do duck hp lp rollXn and it is very hard to discourage/counter for what it is. A lot of characters unless they have a dp just dont have a move that has enough priority to beat kens duck hp, and are forced to take a air hit, or if they have meter try and ac it. Again not some fool proof auto win tactic, but very hard to stop for what it is. Other then that hes basically a shoto, and shotos are very good in this game. Only major disadvantage he has compared to akuma and ryu is he does not dizzy like they do because off his air hurricane kick, and fireball does not combo from max range stand fierce. He does not have the unblockable/ambiguous cross up like akuma and ryu have either.

Guy tier
Guy is in his own tier probably below akuma and ken. Sometimes I think he should actually be in a tier with rose and ryu. But guy has that sorta 50/50ness to him where sometimes you will get hit by a ambiguous cross up or trick, and he will win the match automatically more or less. Saying this guy does get a bad rap, as in reality in real matchs he just doesnt dizzy you from a single chain like people want to belive. It just doesnt happen. His hurricane kick is good, but its actually punishable from every distance but max range just by walking up and hitting him. A lot I think guys stuff is like that, hes not intuitive to punish off hand, but in fact a lot of his stuff is punishable. Also although he has just a ridiculous amont of anti air options(air throw, hurricane kick, duck hp, stand lk, flip kick, air super, duck mp, duck lk to go under cross up…you can go on and on)a lot of these actually all aim at the same spot, and dont win consistently unless its a flip kick from max range, or hk hurricane kick and punch super. Which HK hurricane kick has start up, and punch super hits higher so, in reality jumping around like a jack ass with high priority moves can actually be pretty annoying for guy. You have to basically guess when there going to jump, use a normal that has a good chance of trading. Anyway it sounds silly I guess but really there are certain things you can do to counter to guy that actually are pretty effective for what they are. Purposely putting yourself in the corner can also help stop some of his stuff. And if your character has a move with a huge hit block you can “safely” mix it up easier vs him as well since his hurricane kick loses to throws, and his hurricane kick invincibility wise goes lk=low , mk=mid attacks hk=high attacks. So say ken can actually roll trap guy with duck hp, and guy cant hurricane kick it to beat it. Just a random example I guess…

Next tier
Ryu rose and sodom
id say guy could be in this tier again if not for the random sometimes guy just wins factor that can happen. Ryu arguably dizzys the fastest besides guy, and its really easy to count wtih him your stuff. Ryu theorectically has a 50/50 chance of killing you after almost any knock down, guessing roll or going for his unblockable cross up. And at the very least a ambiguous mix up. He pretty juggly friendly as well, although none of it is gaurenteed but again, theres a good chance if ryu guesses and times it right, he dizzy combos you to kill. Super fireball might be the best super in the game as well. Rose has slide, duck hp, very chain friendly and shadow unblockable dizzy stuff. But a lot of her stuff is rollable and she gets punished for it as well. Sodom kinda iffy on. If he has the unblockable hes probably in this tier, if he doesnt maybe in the next. Basically any time you can time his stand hk meaty its unblockable, so after any knock down, or some random air hit/throw tech to stand hk, stand hk, fierce scrape. I personally think its probably better to link 2 hks together since its safer imo, and even if you miss the first one you actauly have a chance of the second one hitting, as the hit box exstends a bit at the end. Hes a pretty huge target though, and you can try and roll to throw off his timing. So again if he doesnt have unblockable probably not with ryu and rose…

War against drugs drama tier
Charlie and Bison
I think the japanese actually rated bison as the second best character in some tier lists. I personally dont see it. Maybe him having double fireball makes him that much better? Charlie is a pretty solid character all around, has some of the only legitimate juggles in the games, and actually does good dizzy as well. Unfortunately he cant really force it on you like ryu, akuma can. Bison does good damage, has a really power super, and can be pretty annoying by basically doing nothing but running away and alpha countering you. But I think when you think about characters above him who can out right win matchs from knock downs, he doesnt do that…

Not as good as everyone else tier
A cluster fuck in some mix of chun li, adon birdie dan sagat…

I think the game is a flawed but relatively balanced in terms of this character can win somehow way. I dont think any of these characters are that off from each other in terms of how good they are. Chun li is pretty decent all around but all of her stuff is rollable, and her throw is rollable to on hit and she can be comboed after it. Adon is just sorta there. Doesnt have many combo options and has to rely a lot on random hits. Birdie was a white guy in sf1 and is now black dude. Dan has one of the best cross ups in the game, and he and can have the most powerful regular combo in the game. Which is really his saving grace, since dan basically runs into the problem of… how the fuck am I going to get in? MK hurricane kick in this game actually also goes over fireballs if timed right but hard to use consistently. He does not bait rolls well, can not punish rolls well, and some of his combos are rollable and get him punished in the process. He also does the worst dizzy out of the shotos. Some matchs really feel hopeless with dan(cough akuma). Dan has some alright stuff but the problem is getting in before the guy can push you out with a AC. But combo to hurricane kick saves him from being raped…Probably sagats worst game. And even saying that I dont think sagat is out right horrible. He sorta is like charlie to me, a solid sorta all around character, but where as charlies moves actually win in his favor, sagat kinda does his thing, but loses. He actually would be a pretty easy character to make better if they just changed him to how they did in the Hyper version of the game(besides the nerf to his level 1 tiger raid)so thats saying something. Sagat is just missing that little extra something to keep him competitive in the game. He and birdie do probably have the best jump/normals in the game. He might be the best of jobbers against akuma though when I think about it, so that might be saying something… But not sure…

To much typing ill stop there… Anyway A1 is a fun game, although I think a2 is a “cooler” game. I think a1 is actually the funniest alpha game. shrug…

2

Werd. Now start the write ups. lol.

3

I actually did have some stuff written down at the wiki… But… I guess thats gone now…

4

A great read, dialup. I found this version of Bison to be pretty sluggish. Despite many claims that he can really dominate, from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem that great. Knee Press although safe if blocked (?), has a really long charge time, and doesn’t leave him at an advantage. Foot speed seems slow and his standing Forward’s reach and speed are not impressive. Crusher is nice though (when it properly hits) and the low Roundhouse sound sample is still the best.

It would be nice to see more people playing this. Especially now since information is easier to share and demonstrate, it would be a shame to see a game forgotten about or abandoned because of misinformation or preconceptions. It’s all just a bit of fun, right?

5

Yea I dunno about bison being that great. Maybe in the earlier version when he has his double fireball it makes him that much better? But still only characters in my mind that are “dominate” are ken and akuma.

I wish I could find some of those old tier lists for the game to compare. I remember in that one original strategy guide for the game back in the day I think it actually akuma ken and birdie as the top 3 in the game. And even though the guide had stuff like guys redizzy etc guy was rated I think with ryu really low. Only above I think sagat adon and dan or something off the top of my head. And back then it didnt have anything like ryus dizzy type stuff or anything.

I think the thought that guy is broken is one of the worst things. I cant count how many times someone has randomly signed on to play a1 just to start trying to tell me how broken the game is because of guy etc lol.

6

The game is decent, just SOOOO DAAAAAMN SLOOOOOOW

7

I think alpha one is one of the more clear cut SF games where you can count dizzy. I cant think of another SF game off the top of my head where I literally count to myself “1…2…3” Then alpha one. In alpha one every character dizzys after 40 points unless your playing hyper alpha where the characters or different. (ive even seen in ps2 anthology alpha one somehow akuma having 34 dizzy randomly… its weird…)And your dizzy always resets after 3 seconds. OK maybe saying always is a bit extreme, lets say once in a blue moon ive seen the game throw the attacker a bone and it might last 5 seconds. But again in general after youve been hit by a big combo, and if youve been counting a long with the other dude you can “easily” decide to turtle for 3 seconds, shake it off, and then try and start your “come back” with out the fear of a random move dizzying you. Because in this game again a lot of characters theoretically can dizzy you very easily off one knock down. Its not just guy. Also most of the bigger combos in this game work on standing opponents not on ducking. And when you roll remember when your hit out of it, your always standing. Sorta a cluster fuck to balance out the fact that you can roll 99% of the moves in the game… sorta.

Anyway might not be 100% but off the top of my head dizzy notes for shotos…(this does not include dan, as almost all of dans moves do horrible dizzy. They fliped ‘em around for dan, his normals/specials do really bad dizzy, and his supers do very high dizzy. DP super at level one does about 1/3 dizzy, where as a level 3 dp super does a little more then half… beat em’ up super does a fair amount of dizzy and about 1/3 at level 3.)

All shotos

duck lk 1
duck lk 3
duck mp 6
duck mk 1
duck hp 8… TEN for akuma 10
duck hk 8
stand lp 1
stand lk no idea lol
stand mp 6 for ken and ryu and EIGHT for akuma. 8
stand mk differs
stand hp 8
stand hk 8 for ken ryu is something like 4. And akuma is 6~4 depending on when it hits

jump attacks lets keep it simple in terms of dizzy jump hk does 8 all around the board. And jump mk does 6 around the board. And jump hp for ryu does 1, where as ken and akuma do 6? I think.

Specials of note fireballs do 12. Ryus comes out the fastet of shotos however in the grand scheme of things both he and akumas fireball will come from the same distance every combo. However ryus hp fireball will knock down slightly farther then akumas. Kens fireball will miss from max range moves which makes him lose out on some of the other 2s dizzy combos. However. Kens recovers the fastest, and where as ryu is realistically punished after some fireball combos ken is almost always safe. Kens fireball also does the most damage in the game by a fair margin. Go figure that one out.

Hurricane kick is important of note too, because ryus hurricane kick does 10, where as ken and akumas do 1 for each hit. So therefore obviously ken and akumas have a harder time getting that 50/50 guessing game dizzy kill thing after a random air hurricane kick knock down.

DPs do 8 for lp 10 for mp, and 12 for hp. So when you anti air in mind you can have the thought of if you hp DP you cant realistically always react to a roll or go for the ambiguous cross up trick whatever. And lp you can more easily react to the roll or if you jump in, but cant as easily land a dizzy combo from it.

ACs do 10. I think.

Over heads do 8 for ryu 6 for ken, and 8 for akuma. Ken and akuma can realistically combo off there overheads though so its safe to add usually a sweep for good measure after there overhead. Giving them 14 and 16 respectively.

And finally just a few notes for the chains in the game, akuma and ken can chain duck mp to stand hp where as ryu can not. And akuma can stand mp, to duck hp where as ken and ryu can not.(put that together and you obviously have a simple 30 points of dizzy from akuma in a 40 point game from something like stand mp, duck hp, fireball.)

phew…

So what do we have from that? Lots of dizzy basically. For people that like the horrible progression of generalization SFA2 we can see that ryu ken and akuma all still(or actually it should be the other way around since this came first)dizzy combo from a2 in. A “good” knock down, to cross up whatever duck mp, link duck mp fireball. Dizzy

Some other stuff to remember is the most in general duck lks you can vs a standing opponent is 3. Vs ducking 4. So again quick numbers if you hit a duck opponent right up in there stuff duck lkX4 to sweep with all shotos does half dizzy out right. Though be warned all though I say this in many cases its probably best to just go with duck lkX2 in many situations and adjust from there.

Using ryu as a example say you hit a air hurricane kick kick. Thats 10 right there. After the knock down go for cross up unblockable/ambiguous(remember in a1 ryu and akumas cross ups are legitimate unblockables if done from the right distance), to duck lkX2, (notice if the opponent is standing or ducking)stand hp(if they stand), duck mp(if they are ducking)fireball. Dizzy. After that depending on your luck with the damage buffer even if this was at the beginning of the ground you can then jump in attack combo to super to kill. Just like that.

If the opponent rolls after hurricane kick, duck lkX3, stand hp, fireball will leave them at 39.

Note again that ken can not combo into fireball from max range like ryu and akuma. So duck lkX3 to hp fireball does not work…

Also remember with ryu you can combo jump mp after hurricane kicks in the air. Which actually bring his hurricane to 16 points. (jump mp keeps the property of the last move done remember so it will knock down)Also he has some although roll able, they are safe guard breaks with jump mp. Say if the opponent blocks your air hurricane kick you can stand jab to jump mp for 9 points of dizzy. Then walk/stutter whatever for a cross up or fake cross up to duck lkX2, duck mp fireball for 33 dizzy right there. Ryus fireball then knocks down and you only need one mix up to dizzy from that then. Note its also possible to hit a duck mp after blocked air hurricane kick instead of duck jab but takes a bit more timing. Which would bring you to 36. And of course if they were standing you can get a stand fierce to fireball which would dizzy period.

Akuma has a lot of rollable combos. Sweep hurricane isnt a true combo, hurricane to dp isnt a true combo all that stuff. But its super risky to roll vs akuma because sweep hurricane you recover in time to punish the roll even if its rolled. So even at the start of the match say you did a sweep, hurricane kick, they rolled. You can do duck lk, stand mp, duck hp fireball. For a dizzy. So he can be pretty dum like ryu using the fact that his stand mp, and duck hp do more dizzy, even though he does lose the sorta auto dizzy guessing game ryu has after a air hurricane kick.

Again ken doesnt do as much dizzy as ryu and akuma. But if you land a good knock down his A2 dizzy combo is still there. But anything farther and his fireball will not connection. However of course you have the single most powerful special in the game in hp dp. And kens dp has a pretty large random factor to it. Combo to dp is a safe bet to always do half life usually, and if you get a bit of luck on your side, vs a character like akuma you can literally knock off 80% life with a simple combo to dp. So with ken again even though he loses some of the dizzy factor of akuma and ryu you have combos like something to duck lkX2, stand mk, hp dp. Or light to duck hp dp. I personally think duck lkX2 to stand mk one hit dp is more reliable although slightly less damaging then doing a light to hard dp combo. Note that akuma also do some stuff like cross up light/or medium to duck hp, dp. However its no where near as damaging as ken, but again… its a shit load of dizzy. Anyway… whatever the case… your ken. Dont complain? lol

To much typing the end for now.

EDIT: Other stuffz

Birdie has some pretty dizzying stuff as well. Unfortunately capcom must have been aware of it because the game actually makes you lose your charge on purposes for crossing up, unlike other characters, and his duck fierce wiffs a lot durning combos. Which strangely though, they put in the hyper version of the game. Im pretty iffy on birdies stuns… so throw me a bone here if there a bit off.

Anyway

Duck hp is 2 hits 8 each hits of stun each hit. Both hits cancelable.
Hp bull horn does 12 stun.
stand lk does 3
stand hp does 2 hits four points of stun each hit.
stand hk does 2 hits each four points of stun each.
duck mp does 6 points of stun.
sweep does…3 points of stun.
Body splash does 8 points of stun
And jump hk does 8 as well I think…

Ok again im iffy on his stuff again. But birdie potential does a lot of dizzy. Hes pretty limited to chain combo wise. For little attacks your forced to start with a stand kick. After that you have duck mp which goes into basically everything. So some combos might be…

Stand lk, duck mp, stand hp 13 points of dizzy
stand lk, duck hp, hp bull horn 23 dizzy a good roll punisher. although bull horn can be iffy sometimes. If you can get both hits of duck hp it will do 31.
Duck mp, duck hp, bull horn… again getting duck hp to hit twice isnt terribly realistic, but if you do a jump in(again not cross up as the game will not let you charge with birdie if you cross up combo)to this it is a instant dizzy.

He also has can sweep off his duck mp as well… Again though sweep only does 3 stun so…

So looking at this you can see although limited, there is potential there for birdie to do dizzy fairly quickly. Unfortunately in the original game duck hp hitting twice is very unfriendly, and hp bull horn can miss if done from far away.

But you can get some other sorta tricky stuff from chain comboing into his stand hk as a sorta ghetto moving foward top down attack with shitty range thing jig…

Stand hk when does as meaty or not always links to a stand hp or a super from any range which is nice. So some sorta tricky/fun stuff is just say stand kick, stand hk, from close to the opponent the hk hits, and you link to stand hp, or a super. If your a little farther the hk will wiff and then you can go into the simple biride mind game of, am I going to turn around puch, or am I going to turn around punch/random 360 grab mix up. Also works from a duck mp as well stuff like this. Pretty ghetto, but birdies attacks actually have a good amount of priority so…

Charlie stuff just since I know some points off the top of my head for him…

back hand does 10 points
Cross fire blitz does 0 dizzy at level 1, 3 points at level 2, and 2 points at level 3… Go figure that one out.

For a good roll punisher or if you hit a cross up some numbers to remember are…

Duck lk, duck mp, hk flash kick(2 hits) does 22 points
duck lk, duck lp, duck mp, mk flash kick does 23 points.
duck lk, stand mp, back hand does 19

Hk flash kick if it hits twice tends to do more damage then the mk version but mk you dont need to worry about accidentally not getting the double hit version and you do slightly more damage. Back hand for combos is a nice punisher as well if you arnt charged , say walk up to punish something then this, to net you a half dizzy right away. You can actually get a few jabs in if your fast, but just in general.

And of course I guess one obvious dizzy combo off the top of my head, rose friends super, mash on slide. Unblockable depending on if you time it right, and a dizzy. shrug… lol

8

Im sure Ive read rose can ac, c.mp xx SI, then mash on slide for the win.

9

Well you can actually roll roses alpha counter. So its not guaranteed per say. So its sorta more like a 50/50 I can slide kill you. Either you guess to attack right away and hope that they didnt roll, or wait till they roll and try to hit them out of it. shrug… Not that its not dum either way of course. Though actually even if you guessed wrong say as long as only the last hit of the shadows hit its unblockable. So you can slide stutter on so the hit misses for a sec but then you slide back into the dude and then it will be unblockable. That sorta stuff…

Just about everything in the game if your in the air at one point can be rolled… I think some other “strange” things that can be rolled are, sodoms level 3 scrape super you can roll through it while its hitting you, guys level 1 kick super, and all of guys punch supers you can roll through. Although granted there easier to roll through if your player one since player 2 gets sucked in farther and the hits will hit later.

Again its just sorta the risk reward, you can roll through a ton of the moves/combos in the game(granted not that I dont think the above is flawed as theres no reason why you should be able to roll through a super half way through of course)just the risk reward thing.

Since im posting I guess a couple other dizzy combos in the game I forgot to post… Birdie meaty I think 4~final tap to duck hp, mp bull horn is a instant dizzy. The final one actually does like one point less then a redizzy I think. Probably possible to to get a duck lk, duck hp, the mp bull horn for a redizzy… but ive never seen it so…

Sagat can dizzy with a jump mp, duck mpX2, tiger knee, hp tiger uppercut. Unfortunately The only characters that can even get hit by jump mp standing are akuma, sagat, birdie, sagat, rose and charlie off the top of my head.

Of course if your playing hyper alpha though its much easier since his tiger knee actually combos realistically in the game but anyway… I guess also since sagat…

Tiger knee/tiger raid level 1 to uppercut works on…(in terms of easyness… excluding chun li since she works at every level and is easy… )
Charlie, guy

Thats basically it. Its also possible on shotos,and rose but the timing is very strict. Tiger knee is more doable though. For all the other characters in the game its either nigh impossible or impossible. Though even saying this tiger knee to dp is rollable by everyone besides chun li. Tiger raid to dp works on roll for everyone but problem is its so tight again if your not chun li, charlie, or guy its very missable.

10

Completely random but today I played and did a level 3 tiger shot while only using a level 1. Still had my meter left over everything. If sagat could do that at will he actually might not suck. Cant say ive ever seen that before in this game. Only game I ever recall seeing it happen is CVS2 where it could happen with balrog or chang. Still no idea why it happens, but I guess maybe its in every game where there is level 1-3 supers. Go figure. shrug

[media=youtube]3IyZReklihc[/media]

There ya go, did some testing and I got it. Guess its not the same as the cvs2 bug. Just gives you a knock down and a fire effect where normally it of course doesn’t knock down.

11

[media=youtube]QwBE0HpT2Nw[/media]

Just something random showing off how if you stand hk right after a bushin combo with guy vs shotos/rose/or chun li in A1 they can not roll. Or well… they technically can, but they will always roll to the corner no matter what. So it takes the “guessing” game out of the whole roll stuff.

Of course not many people care but whatever. Oh and I forgot if I ever said but apparently the reason some charge combos don’t work correctly in that ps2 version anniversary or whatever is because it takes another 30 frames for charge moves. So I guess if the wiki is correct that would explain why birides dizzy combo etc just don’t seem to work.

12

Someone should check up on this, because during the Alpha time because my knowledge of it is super hazy. However, if I remember correctly on another Alpha thread a few years back, I remember Mike Watson talking about how Guy was the best character in Alpha 1, over Gouki and Ken. If I’m also not mistaken he was basically wrecking everyone and taking names during A1’s prime w/ Guy as well.

Again, “not” trying to say the list is wrong, but that’s what I remember from what Wats stated in that thread (can’t remember the threads name so can’t find the exact post).

Anyone wanna give a heads up on this, or know more about it?

13

Its all opinions a lot of people have dumb shit in this game.

14

Ive unfortunately only gotten to play waston a few matchs in alpha(well hyper alpha)… but it was me and him in the finals and he switched to ken in it. shrug I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean anything for sure… But from what I played the game when I was younger and when ever ive played this game online ken and akuma are the best. I see a lot people use guy, japanese whatever. And hes just not as good as ken and akuma. Again there are diff versions of the game, like the very first one where guy could dizzy off jabs to hp over head etc. But ah yea ive never played that version in the arcade shrug.

Anyway a lot of things people didn’t even know about apperently back in the day. People didnt know about ryu dizzy combos, unblockable cross up all that stuff. And actaully if you want to go back to those tier lists they use to have I think guy was like 8th in the American one. And he was like 3rd or something in the japanese one? Or maybe 4th? I forget I thought there was some japanese one with like akuma rose and m.bison as tops? its been so long now…

Oh well again guy is good. But ive never seen any reason to believe he is better then ken and akuma.

15

Is there any footage of Guy and his redizzy combos?Alpha 1 combo videos seem to be the rarest thing on the planet.

16

From dialupsucky’s channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/SaishuuKessen: [media=youtube]6fEklmZJb3U:[/media]

17

sniffle sniffle thanks for advertisement. We all know how SRK refuses to put up my videos on the front page since I talked about them rigging tournaments before lol.