Public Relations associate Chris Kramer of Capcom USA was concerned about oversaturating the market with Street Fighter games, so when Alpha was being shipped to the United States, it took him by surprise. He said:
"It did come out of nowhere. It showed up really fast, and it was at a point in time where there was already concern — like, Hey, do we have too much Street Fighter in the marketplace? You know, the Super Nintendo version of Hyper Fighting came out in '93 and then Super Street Fighter came out in '94 and all these [console] games were just coming on top of each other, and the arcade games were getting either updated or were getting new versions, and I was like, Oh no, another Street Fighter game. What are we going to do here? Are we oversaturating the global market with this brand? And I think there was initial hesitation just across the board from people going, Oh, do we really need a new Street Fighter? But then when it showed up, it was very different. So once people saw what it was, there was less hesitation around the game. I think people were like, OK, it looks fairly different. The art style had moved to a much more anime style, and they were doing different things with the gameplay, and it's like, OK. We get what you're doing."
1
1