Hidden Street Fighter Alpha 2 Cheat Code Found After 25 Years
Games considered old by today's standards can sometimes surprise players with the secrets that remain undiscovered. Developers will often hide collectibles, Easter eggs, and other goodies in the games they create. Sometimes these remain hidden for years, and it's no surprise that some complicated old-school cheats also remain undiscovered for some time. 25 years after its release, a new cheat has been found in the 1996 SNES game Street Fighter Alpha 2.
Street Fighter 2 Alpha was a port of the Street Fighter 2 game that was a staple of arcades. The arcade sensation was a great fit for Nintendo's 16-bit consoles of the time. The SNES was the first home gaming system that received these arcade games, allowing people to play them without having to put coins into a machine slot. Street Fighter 2 was only dethroned as the most-sold fighting game in 2019, though the huge popularity of the game makes it even more surprising that a cheat could remain hidden in the code for as long as it has.
Akuma isn't a character unknown to players, as Akuma was also added to the Street Fighter 5 roster. While Street Fighter 2 Alpha did not get the best reception, it did hide a cheat for over a quarter of a century. Programmer Gizaha from the Zeldix forums took a long hard look at the game code and essentially reverse-engineered the game. While sifting through the base code for the game, they found a cheat that unlocks the hidden boss Shin Akuma as a playable character. EventHub checked over the findings and verified the discovery.
Cheats today are commands built into the game or external software changing values in the code. In the arcade days, cheats and commands were locked behind passwords that could be activated with specific names or button-press sequences. On the old Mortal Kombat 3 Arcade machines, it was possible to pull up a hidden diagnostic menu by inputting a 27-button code.
To perform the Street Fighter Alpha 2 cheat, players must complete the game's arcade mode and set a new high score. On the score screen, players have to enter the initials KAJ. Once this is done, return to the title screen and hold down the L, X, Y, and Start buttons on a controller plugged into the player-two controller port, while a player hone controller is used to select the 'Versus' Mode. At this point, players can select Shin Akuma by holding down the Start button and selecting Akuma. Akuma's clothes will change color, letting players know they have successfully pulled off the cheat.
The cheat is another Easter egg that took decades for players to find. Sometimes it takes hundreds of hours or years to find long-hidden secrets in games. Players interested in trying out the Street Fighter 2 Alpha cheat should keep in mind that Street Fighter 2 Alpha is available on the Wii U Virtual Console and Street Fighter 2 is on Switch, so no need to pull out the old SNES.
Street Fighter Alpha 2 is available on the Wii U Virtual Console.
Source: EventHubs
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