Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha

English restoration · The Japanese script, all of it

Game

Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha (Asia 960826)

Hardware

Capcom CPS-2

MAME set

sfz2al

Version

rc1

Updated

2026-09-17

Screenshots

Asian board

English Restoration

About this patch

Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha is the updated Alpha 2, and its Asian board plays in English. But that English script was a shortened one. Story scenes lost pages, Evil Ryu borrowed Ryu's ending, and each fighter picked from four random win quotes instead of the hundreds the Japanese game has.

The English Restoration is the Japanese script, in English. Every story and ending page is back, in the Japanese order. Evil Ryu has his own ending again, and his scene with Akuma. All 452 win quotes are here, picked by who you beat and how much health you had left, just like in Japan. Where Capcom's English said the same thing as the Japanese it's kept; everything else is newly translated.

A few smaller things come along: red blood on hits, as in Japan; Birdie's third victory pose, which the export board swapped out; and the Manual guard panel on the select screen now explains itself.

The fighting is untouched, and the ROM sizes and key stay stock, so it drops in over the Asian set in MAME, HBMAME, on MiSTer or on a real CPS-2 board. The same restoration is in the English builds of Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.

This is a release candidate. It has been checked in MAME, route by route; a MiSTer hardware pass is still to come.

What's changed

• Every story page from the Japanese game, in the Japanese order, including the scenes the English script cut short
• Evil Ryu's own ending, with his narration, instead of Ryu's
• Evil Ryu's scene with Akuma, back in
• All 452 win quotes from the Japanese game, in English, picked by opponent and remaining health, and centered on screen
• Every ending in full, in English
• Story, ending and quote text translated from the Japanese, keeping Capcom's English wherever it matched
• Red blood on hits, as in Japan
• Birdie's third victory pose, back
• The Manual guard panel explains itself (it appears when the operator turns on Auto Guard)
• Gameplay untouched

Compared with the boards

How the English Restoration compares with the Japanese and Asian boards.

Spot a difference we missed?

A restoration is only as complete as its list of differences. If the Japanese version does something this one still doesn't, whether a line of text, a scene, a screen or a small detail, please let us know. Anything you find goes into the next release.

Downloads

Tools updated 2026-09-20. Game version unchanged.

You need your own dump of Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha (Asia 960826) as the MAME set sfz2al.zip. Each zip includes a readme.txt with full instructions.

Merged, split and complete sets work, including nested or renamed ROMs. Use --rompath /path/to/roms to search a collection (repeatable), and --check to check inputs before building. ZIPs and extracted folders need no extra software; 7z archives require 7-Zip. QSound can stay in your emulator's ROM path; valid firmware already embedded in a source set is kept in complete outputs.

How to apply

unzip sfz2al-restoration-rc1-ips.zip -d sfz2al-patch
cd sfz2al-patch
python3 apply.py /path/to/sfz2al.zip --out-dir out

The script checks every file against the checksums below, applies the patches, checks the result, and writes the files for every platform in one go:

out/mame/sfz2al.zip
out/hbmame/sfz2alr.zip
out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/_Asia/Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha (Asia) [English Restoration].mra

MAME and original hardware. Put the zip from out/mame/ ahead of the stock set in your MAME rompath (it keeps the name sfz2al.zip), or burn its ROM files. MAME reports checksum warnings for the patched ROMs. That's expected, and the game runs normally.

HBMAME. Put the zip from out/hbmame/ in HBMAME's roms/ folder next to your stock sfz2al.zip. It loads with no checksum warnings. The HBMAME set definition (sfz2alr) is generated with the restoration; an upstream submission is pending, so for now you add it to your own HBMAME build.

MiSTer. Copy the _Arcade folder from out/mister/ to the root of your SD card, and keep the stock, unmodified romset at games/mame/sfz2al.zip (split MAME sets also need qsound.zip). You need Jotego's jtcps2 core, which update_all installs. The MRA applies the restoration in memory as the game loads, so nothing on your card is modified, and it keeps its own settings and saves under sfz2alr. The MiSTer-only download holds the same MRAs, ready to copy.

Any IPS patcher. Apply each file in ips/ (Flips, Lunar IPS, …) to the ROM file of the same name and re-zip the set yourself.

Changed ROMs

Related projects

• Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, the PlayStation 2 edition rebuilt for CPS-2, whose English builds carry this restoration too

Notes

• MAME shows checksum warnings for the eight patched files. That's expected; the game plays normally. HBMAME with the sfz2alr set definition loads it without them.
• Fan work, unaffiliated with Capcom. The patch contains no ROM data; you need your own dump of the Asian set.