Street Fighter Alpha’s story is set six months after the original Street Fighter. It bridges the first game’s World Warrior tournament and the later events of Street Fighter II.
Alpha, known as Street Fighter Zero in Japan, was designed as a prequel to Street Fighter II. Its cast includes younger versions of Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Sagat, and M. Bison, while also bringing back characters from the 1987 Street Fighter, such as Adon and Birdie.
The timeline is easy to mix up because Alpha 2 expands and revises much of the first Alpha’s story, and the Alpha games cover a relatively compressed period. The six-month figure is associated with the Alpha storyline’s placement after the original tournament, not with the six-year gap before Street Fighter II. Capcom released Street Fighter Alpha in arcades in 1995, even though its events occur earlier in the series chronology.