Characters

So... I said in my last post that I hadn't lined up the character rosters; but for the heckuvit, I did just that.  I sorted--or rather, I should say I color-coded--cells in Excel with the origin of the character.  For simplicity's sake, I didn't create every color code that I could have: my color codes were as follows:

• Original World Warrior (one of the original eight possible character selections in SF2)
• Original Bosses (made playable in SF2: Champion Edition and beyond)
• New Challengers (introduced in Super Street Fighter 2; to make things a bit easier, I added Akuma to this list, even though he technically appeared in the Turbo version of the game which came later.)
• Street Fighter 1 characters (many of whom were reintroduced in the Alpha series) but since Ryu, Ken and Sagat all appear prominently in SF2, I consider them SF2 characters, not SF1 characters.  I know, I know, it's a technicality, but it makes sense to me because SF2 established the genre, and only then did Capcom go back and mine the back catalog of SF1 characters.)
• Final Fight characters (many of whom were reintroduced in the Alpha series)
• Alpha original characters; characters who had not previously appeared in any game before showing up in one of the several iterations of SFA.
• Street Fighter III characters (to make things easier, I combined all versions of this game into one single category rather than having characters who were in The New Warriors separate from 2nd Impact or Third Strike, etc.
• Street Fighter IV characters (and I did the same here; it didn't interest me if a character was new to the original Street Fighter IV or didn't come out until the Arcade Edition or even Ultra Street Fighter IV--if they were unique to the IV series, I lumped them all together.)

This may seem a little odd, in that it gives primacy to divisions within SF2 that it does not to other sub-series, but given the primacy of SF2 in establishing the series overall (and heck; the genre overall) I think that's OK.  Only after the success of SF2 did Capcom go back to older games to mine them as a back catalog for character concepts, namely SF1 and Final Fight.  A few observations:

• Eight World warriors; four bosses and four (five, counting Akuma) New Challengers make for a total of only 17 characters at the peak of SF2.  And all seventeen of these characters are repeated in SFA3 (the version of the Alpha series that peaked with regards to character selection) and USF4 (the version of IV that peaked with regards to character selection.)  Although the original intent was that SF3 would eschew these characters entirely, it turns out that four of these 17 made their way in before all was said and done.
• If you count the portable releases (that had a few additional characters, mostly grabbed from Capcom vs. SNK 2 and one other source) the Alpha series peaked at 38 characters.
• Four SF1 characters (not counting Ryu and Ken, of course) ended up coming back in Alpha, but none of them were in III and only two of them made the cut in IV--Adon and Gen.
• Five Final Fight characters (if you count Maki in the portable version) made it to Alpha, none of which were in III and three of which were in IV.  Sodom and Maki are the ones who got cut.  Poison was never in Alpha or III, but is a Final Fight character that gets added to IV.  Hugo is an odd case, but I'm considering him a III original rather than conflating Hugo and Andore as the same character and calling him a Final Fight character.
• Out of ten original Alpha characters, less than half came to IV: Rose, Dan, Sakura, and Evil Ryu.  You could maybe make a case that Shin Akuma evolved into Oni, but I'm considering them as separate characters.  It may be slightly debatable whether or not Shin Akuma should be considered a separate character in Alpha, but I went with it.  I didn't count Final Bison as a separate character, because among other things, he's not playable.
• The portable version of Alpha 3 had a few hangers-on; Yun is in it, which makes no logical sense given the time frame that Alpha is supposed to take place in vs. III, and Ingrid comes in from Capcom Fighting Evolution--although clearly she was just thrown in there because she could be, not because she belonged.
• Alpa had a big selection, but the peak roster for III was only 20 characters, so in scope, it's more like SF2.
• USF4 has the biggest roster of any SF title ever: 44.  10 of them are unique to the IV sub-series.  Curiously, more SF3 unique characters came over to IV than Alpha unique characters, but then again, Alpha already recycled a lot of characters from a lot of sources anyway, so that's not necessarily saying anything significant.  You could, for instance, fairly make the case that the Final Fight and SF1 characters owe much more to their Alpha appearances than they do to any appearances in any other game.  If you do that, then there are more Alpha characters than III characters.
• I've actually done very little with the IV unique characters, and have expressed little interest in most of them.  They're not quite as bad as some of the worst of the III unique characters (like Q, Twelve or Necro) but they clearly don't have the "staying power" of the originals or some of the popular Alpha or III characters, like Yun or Sakura, for instance.
• In thinking about which characters are likely to be added to V whenever it comes, I'm conflicted.  There seem to be hints that Charlie will return, but he seems to be the only "dead" SF character who actually has remained dead, and Guile has had to represent for him (occasionally with "cosplay" costume alternatives, as in IV).  I predict that only four or so of the IV unique characters make the cut: my votes go to Abel, Crimson Viper, Gouken, Juri and Oni.
• Mike Haggar is a character in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 who could therefore have relatively easily been added to SF4.  I'm surprised, honestly, that he hasn't already been as part of the 1.04 patch that added the Omega mode, if not as part of the Ultra update in the first place.  Very curious and surprising.
• It's been said before, but I'll say it again; one of the big reasons III flopped on its face was the lack of recognizable and relatable characters.  It didn't have any of the ones we already knew and loved, and the new ones that it had weren't as interesting as the originals.  That said, in doing this analysis, I was surprised to find that as many III unique characters came over to IV as did.  I didn't really think that until I laid them out, color coded them, and counted them.  Of course, to me they are just filler characters,  I've rarely, if ever, played most of them.  That said—I do like Dudley.  And the Chinese twins aren't that bad.