Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 2 bootleg

This is a Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 2 pirate, which was found in Brazil. Thanks to Marvinsaint for sending these pictures, and Lucas Leal for sending more pictures and dumping the cart. By: Evan G Last updated: August 1, 2022

This bootleg is notable because the original game uses the SDD-1 chip, while this bootleg somehow manages to bypass that requirement. It was found in Brazil. Therefore, it appears that the pirates managed to reverse engineer the SDD-1 chip years before the emulator authors did, or they managed to secure a supplier of the SDD-1 chip, which was developed by Ricoh for Nintendo.

Marvinsaint's copy is a bootleg of Street Fighter Zero 2, although the label says Street Fighter Alpha 2. Lucas Leal dumped his copy of the bootleg, and found that it is identical to the US retail release version.

The cart picture that Marvinsaint sent me uses a grey cart shell, but the copy that Lucas Leal sent is in a Killer Instinct style black cart. The label artwork is arranged in a different way, with the grey cart using something more similar to the legit version. It is possible the black cart artwork was taken from the PAL version of the game. Street Fighter Alpha 2 was published by Nintendo, so the label layout and colours are the same as a first party game, with red colour used on the red bar on the top right side (third party uses purple, typically). As a first party published game, it also lacks a "licensed by Nintendo" on the top left, which the black cart has. Despite the differences in label, the PCB board of the two pirated carts are the same.

Cart - front

Black shell version

Scan of label

Legit cart, scanned by Near

I included the pictures of both Marvinsaint and Lucas Leal's copies of the PCBs, but they are the same even though the cart shells and labels are different. It is notable in having a globby chip, which I assume is the ROM chip. The chip that I assume is the cloned SDD-1 has a date stamp of late 1997.

PCB - front

PCB- back

PCB from Lucas Leal's copy, basically the same

PCB from Lucas Leal's copy, basically the same

A legit PCB, scanned by Near