Review by: Dave Z

Street Fighter Zero 2 (Alpha in the US) is the second game in Capcom's Zero series. The storyline takes place before that of the Street Figther 2 series and features younger versions of those characters as well as characters from Final Fight and new characters never that are entirely new to video games.

Street Fighter Zero 2 features a whopping 18 characters to choose from, including Street Fighting faithfuls Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Sagat and Vega (Bison in the US). In addition, Street Fighter Zero 2 brings back Adon, Guy, Nash, Birdie, Rose, Sodom, Dan and Gouki (Akuma) from Street Fighter Zero (1). And from the Street Fighter 2 series, Dhalsim and Zangief have been brought back. In addition to these older characters, three entirely new characters have been introduced, Sakura, Gen, and Rolento. Street Fighter Zero 2 for the Saturn also has Evil Ryu, Shin Gouki, and true Dhalsima and Zangief available to be played with the use of a code.

The gameplay consists of the same fireball, dragon puch, and charging motions that are common in the Street Figther series (as well as all other fighters), though the moves are pretty varied from character to character as are the combos. The options allow you to choose whether to use Auto-blocking or normal blocking and turbo or normal speeds. With the auto-blocking turned on, your fighter automatically blocks when hit, and the super moves are done with a simple button combination, although the level of the Special only goes up to level one. With the autoblocking turned off, your special meter can go up to level 3 allowing you to unleash different Super special combos.

And added feature to Street Fighter Zero 2 is the custom combo. When you get your special bar over level one you have the ability to do a custom combo. The time alloted for the custom combo depends on the which level your special meter is at the higher the level the longer amount of time alloted for the custom combo. A custom combo is basically whatever you want to make out of it. This feature has been seen as many as the best new feature of this game or the worse feature.

Like most home fighters now, Street Fighter Zero 2 is packed with loads of options. You, of course have the basic arcade and versus modes. You have a training mode that allows you to practice all of your special moves and combos, saving them if you like, and a very cool survival mode that lets you battle it out against all of the opponents with a single life bar the only regenerates about 20% after each victory. The survival mode is exclusive the the Saturn version and is not found in the Playstation version.

Another cool feature that has been added to Street Fighter Zero 2 for the Saturn is a group of Illustrations that you can view. It features 100 different pics of Capcom art from Street Fighter Zero and Street Fighter Zero 2. This doesn't add to the gameplay in any way at all, but it's a pretty cool bonus.

You can't review a 2-D cd-based fighter without talking about it's loading time, so I'll do that now. The loading sucks. Sorry, to put it like that, but it loads as bad as the Playstation version, with loads over 10 seconds at some points. At least this time, the Saturn load screens are superior to look at over the Playstation version so while you are waiting you have something nice to look at.

Graphics: 9/10

The graphics are great. The animation is superior to any other home fighter on the Saturn or Playstation, the backgrounds are a huge improvement over both Nightwarriors and X-Men. There is plenty of parallax, plenty of scrolls, and plenty of movements. In my opinion, these are the backgrounds that should've been in Street Fighter Zero. There supposedly are some frames missing but most people will not notice any at all. In fact, when playing same versus same there is 100% animation. It must also be mentioned that many of the frames that were missing from the Playstation version are now there.

Sound: 5/10

The Saturn's sound processor is superior to the Playstation's. But, the sound in Street Fighter Zero 2 for the Saturn is inferior to that of the Playsation. The voices are not crystal clear, you might even refer to them as garbled, though never approaching the dismal quality of the Genesis Super SFII. The music is very good, it's your typical Street Fighter BGM, and is very clear.

Control: 9/10

The control in Street Fighter Zero 2 is your typical Capcom perfection. Moves come off so easily, and the fighters respond instantaneoulsy and with accuracy. There are no problem that can be mentioned that I can think of. Simply put, the control is Capcom.

Gameplay: 9/10

The gameplay is very good. There are a lot of combos to learn and master, the gameplay is very deep, and the added features like custom combos, etc., really add a lot. Though, it is not a huge leap, if a leap at all over Street Fighter Zero.

Overall: 8.5/10

This game is essentially Street Fighter Zero with new characters, more backgrounds, and custom combos. Is that enough to warrent another purchase? Well that's entirely up to you. (Yeah, I know that's a cop out)