Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams

English restoration

Game

Street Fighter Zero (Japan 950727)

Hardware

Capcom CPS-2

MAME set

sfzj

Version

rc1

Updated

2026-10-13

Screenshots

About this patch

Street Fighter Alpha's English versions have a smaller win-quote pool than Street Fighter Zero in Japan. The English Restoration brings the Japanese pool and its quote choices to the USA and Asia games, along with English rival dialogue, endings and continue advice based on the Japanese script.

Win quotes are centered in a wider box. The Manual guard panel explains the difference between Manual and Auto. Red blood, the Japanese Auto guard default, Japanese move selection for computer opponents and Dramatic Battle music return, along with Capcom's later fixes for guard behavior and Rose's crouching heavy kick.

The USA build keeps Street Fighter Alpha's title and character names. Asia keeps Street Fighter Zero's title with English text and export character names. Japan keeps its Japanese text and names and receives the shared fixes.

This is a release candidate.

What's changed

• The Japanese win quotes in English, with Japan's quote selection and button choices
• Rival dialogue, endings and continue advice translated from the Japanese game
• A wider win-quote box with centered English text
• The Manual guard panel explains itself
• Red blood and Japan's Auto guard default
• Japanese move selection for computer opponents and Dramatic Battle music
• Capcom's November fixes for guard behavior and Rose's crouching heavy kick
• USA, Asia and Japan builds

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 2026-10-22. Game version unchanged.

You need your own dump of Street Fighter Zero (Japan 950727) as the MAME set sfzj.zip. Every build is made from that one set. 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.

The builds

How to apply

unzip sfa-restoration-rc1-ips.zip -d sfzj-patch
cd sfzj-patch
python3 apply.py /path/to/sfzj.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: (add --variant usa to make just one build)

USA (English):
  out/mame/usa/sfzj.zip
  out/hbmame/sfaru.zip
  out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/Street Fighter Alpha (USA) [English Restoration].mra
Asia (English):
  out/mame/asia/sfzj.zip
  out/hbmame/sfzra.zip
  out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/_Asia/Street Fighter Zero (Asia) [English Restoration].mra
Japan (Japanese):
  out/mame/japan/sfzj.zip
  out/hbmame/sfzrj.zip
  out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/_Japan/Street Fighter Zero (Japan) [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 sfzj.zip, so use one build at a time), or burn its ROM files. MAME's game menu won't start a set with patched ROMs, so start it from the command line: mame sfzj. MAME shows checksum warnings for the patched ROMs. That's expected, and the game runs normally. To start it from a menu, use the HBMAME build.

HBMAME. Put the zip from out/hbmame/ in HBMAME's roms/ folder together with qsound.zip; it holds the complete set. It loads with no checksum warnings. The HBMAME set definition (sfaru, sfzra and sfzrj) 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/sfzj.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 each build keeps its own settings and saves under its own setname. The MiSTer-only download holds the same MRAs, ready to copy.

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

Changed ROMs

Shared by every build:

sfz.05a (512 KB, original CRC32 0810544d) differs per build:

sfz.06 (512 KB, original CRC32 806e8f38) differs per build:

sfz.14m (2.0 MB, original CRC32 90fefdb3) differs per build:

sfz.16m (2.0 MB, original CRC32 5354c948) differs per build:

sfz.18m (2.0 MB, original CRC32 41a1e790) differs per build:

sfz.20m (2.0 MB, original CRC32 a549df98) differs per build:

sfzj.03c (512 KB, original CRC32 f5444120) differs per build:

Release history

rc1 (2026-10-13)

• First release candidate with USA, Asia and Japan builds.

Notes

• MAME shows checksum warnings for the patched files. HBMAME with the included set definitions loads the three regional builds.
• Fan work, unaffiliated with Capcom. You need your own dump of the Japanese arcade set; the downloads contain patches, not complete game ROMs.