Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams ARCADE

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams is Capcom’s 1995 fighter, a prequel positioned between the original Street Fighter and Street Fighter II, filling in backstory for characters like Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li alongside newcomers such as Sakura and Rose. Its hand-drawn art style shifted toward a more exaggerated, anime-influenced look than the more grounded proportions of Street Fighter II.

It introduces the Alpha Counter and a chainable combo system built around three selectable “Ism” fighting styles per character, each altering super meter behavior and move options. Running on Capcom’s CPS-2 hardware, it launched a parallel Alpha sub-series that ran alongside the mainline Street Fighter numbering for several more entries.