Street Fighter Alpha 3 (English restoration)

[strygo]

Download and instructions at arcadepatches.com
Current version: rc4 (October 21, 2026)​

Street Fighter Alpha 3's US arcade release gave each fighter eight generic win quotes. The Japanese game also had a line for each opponent: 625 more quotes that never made it into the English arcade version.

This brings back all 825 Japanese win quotes in English, along with the detailed stage locations. Biographies, rival dialogue and endings follow the Japanese script, keeping Capcom's English where it was accurate and using Alpha 3 MAX's wording where it fits.

What's in it​

• All 825 Japanese win quotes in English, including the 625 opponent-specific lines missing from the US arcade version.
• All 24 detailed stage locations in English, centered in the original panels with Capcom's per-panel text colors.
• Biographies, rival and boss dialogue, and endings that follow the Japanese script. The arcade ending scenes are retained, with corrected backgrounds, framing and colors, including cleaner picture edges and character placement in E. Honda's ending.
• Corrected Sodom portrait colors, including a blue X-ISM mask and the original gray V-ISM mask in the rankings.
• Japanese Regulation OFF by default, with red hit blood and the full defeat and ending effects. The operator can still switch it on.
• Japanese 980904 gameplay, secret-character access, difficulty and Turbo 1 defaults.
• USA presentation: Alpha branding, English A/V-ISM labels and descriptions, score rankings, Western names, title and entry announcements, and operator menus.
• An optional Japanese edition keeps the original Japanese text and names, Zero branding and Z-ISM, with the same ending corrections.

English A/V-ISM selection.​

New in rc4​

• Restored Capcom's per-panel text colors for the English stage locations.
• Corrected Sodom's mask, eye and mouth colors in portraits and rankings, including his X-ISM ranking portrait.

New in rc3​

• Corrected ending background edges, framing and colors for Blanka, Cammy, Karin and Sodom, with cleaner picture edges in the other endings.
• Raised E. Honda and his trainees to their correct positions in his ending.
• Fixed the picture corruption where Dhalsim's ending cuts to Chun-Li.

Both editions have new checksums, so rebuild with the rc4 kit. Earlier versions are listed on the changelog.

Getting it running​

• You need your own Japanese Street Fighter Zero 3 romset, sfz3j. Split sets also need the sfa3 parent and qsound.zip. The kit takes merged, split or non-merged sets, as a .zip, a .7z or a folder. No game data is hosted.
• The IPS kit builds the English restoration and the optional Japanese edition for MAME. Add --variant english or --variant japanese to build just one.
• On MiSTer, use the stock romset and the MRA kit with Jotego's jtcps2 core. Both editions appear under _Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations, and each keeps its own settings and saves.
• MAME reports checksum warnings for the patched files. That's expected, and the game plays normally.

Full instructions are on the project page.

This is a release candidate. Bug reports and suggestions are welcome right here. Tell me which build you ran and what you saw.

 

[strygo]

rc2 is out. A-ISM labels and the names of Akuma, Charlie, Vega, Balrog and M. Bison are corrected on the stage, versus, winner and score-ranking screens, and the ending backgrounds, framing and colors are corrected for Adon, Akuma, Dhalsim, Gen, R. Mika, Sakura and Vega. There's also an optional Japanese edition, with the original Japanese text and names, Zero branding and Z-ISM. Both editions have new checksums, so rebuild them with the rc2 kit. The first post is updated.

Link: arcadepatches.com/sfa3-restoration

 

[Ipla]

Thanks again for the Street Fighter Alpha 3 rc3 update, @strygo !

I was also wondering if you've ever considered doing something with the Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper version from Capcom Fighting Collection 2.

That version now includes Maki, Yun, Eagle and Ingrid, and after seeing what you've managed to do with the USF2 backport, it made me wonder if an enhanced Alpha 3 project based on that version — perhaps bringing some of its additions back to CPS-2/CPS+ — might be possible someday.

Just an idea in case it's something that interests you.

 

[Heatermania]

I noticed one tiny detail. During scenes where the character's name scrolls inside the bars, like during the next challenger screen, Japanese names are still used in the USA version. I played through the whole thing as Akuma, and the GOUKI thing was the only error I saw.

 

[strygo]

I noticed one tiny detail. During scenes where the character's name scrolls inside the bars, like during the next challenger screen, Japanese names are still used in the USA version. I played through the whole thing as Akuma, and the GOUKI thing was the only error I saw.

I tried to find them all, but must have missed this occurrence. Will fix!

@Heatermania: I can't reproduce this. Can you check whether you are on rc1 or rc2? (I think your issue was fixed in rc2)

 

[strygo]

rc4 is out. This corrects defects in the original SFA3/SFZ3 game. Thanks to @jonnymodlin for reporting them. The English stage locations have Capcom's per-panel text colors again. Sodom's portraits are corrected, including a blue X-ISM mask and the original gray V-ISM mask in the rankings. Both editions have new checksums, so rebuild them with the rc4 kit. The first post is updated.

Link: arcadepatches.com/sfa3-restoration