- Ryu
- Chun-Li
- Nash
- M. Bison
- Cammy
- Birdie
- Ken
- Necalli
- Vega
- R. Mika
- Rashid
- Karin
- Zangief
- Laura
It's interesting to see that beyond some of the characters that you can't really not have, like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and arguably Zangief and Bison, they're really focusing on characters that are not from Street Fighter IV to a great degree. Nash (otherwise known as Charlie—we'll see how he's labeled when the US version actually comes out in March), Birdie, R. Mika and Karin were from the Alpha series; in fact, all but Nash were very late adds to the series, in fact.
Street Fighter IV, the original iteration, featured 19 total characters, three of which were initially "hidden" in terms of being playable, for a total of 16 regularly selectable characters. This is probably congruent with what Street Fighter V is shooting for. However, IV launched with all 12 of the original World Warriors and Bosses available immediately, as well as four new IV characters. Of the hidden characters, two were new to IV and one was Akuma. Clearly V is going in a slightly less "classic" direction with its roster, but let's be honest; I'd be very, very shocked if all of the original 12 World Warriors and Bosses, as well as the 4 New Challengers and Akuma aren't eventually playable. I suspect that there will be a few hidden characters in addition to the 16 announced ones, and I wouldn't be surprised if Akuma isn't one of them.
Which Alpha and Final Fight characters eventually make the roster, as well as which III and IV characters eventually make the roster are perhaps a little less certain. Who else do I personally see as likely to eventually make the roster, and who would I like to see get a bye? Let's break it down by game or game series of origin:
- Street Fighter 2
- I expect every character from SF2 to eventually make it into the roster. This includes the original 8 World Warriors, the original 4 bosses, the original 4 New Challengers, and Akuma.
- Street Fighter 1
- Not counting Ken, Ryu or Sagat who feature prominently in SF2, a few SF1 characters have made the transition into other game on occasion. Adon and Gen are the most notable, who were in the Alpha series as well as SF4. Birdie, who also made the jump to Alpha but not to 4, is already confirmed for V. I wouldn't be surprised to see one or two other SF1 characters get revisited for a change of pace. Eagle has been animated in the past, for hand-held versions of SFA3 and for CvS2, so he's a possibility. Some of the other characters, honestly, are kinda boring. I can't imagine what in the world they'd do with Mike or Joe, or even Lee. Geki is a great possibility, in my opinion, an untapped potential.
- Final Fight
- A lot of characters from Final Fight have already made it into the SF series over the years, most especially in the Alpha games, although many of those Alpha Final Fight characters also were in SF4, including Guy, Cody, and Rolento. Hugo and Poison also have their origin in Final Fight, although they don't come to SF via the Alpha series. I've said it many times before and I'll say it at least once more: I'd really love to see Mike Haggar show up. He was in MvC3 already. He's a no-brainer. Plus, he's the only one of the three original Final Fight protagonists who's never been an a SF game, whereas Guy and Cody have each been in two.
- Street Fighter Alpha
- A number of Alpha characters have already been announced for the roster, and a number of them are not the Alpha characters that were already in 4. I'd be surprised to not eventually see Rose, Dan, Sakura and Evil Ryu in V. Of those, Rose is perhaps the most iffy. The rest are, I've given to understand, extremely popular characters.
- Street Fighter 3
- I personally didn't really care that much about the 3 characters and wouldn't care if any of them showed up again or not, but clearly I'm not in the majority since at least some of them have advanced. I think the 3 characters that ended up in 4 are the only ones likely to end up in 5, though. I simply can't see really weird characters like Necro or Oro or Twelve, Q, etc. make their way in. Of the Street Fighter 3 characters who haven't been updated to 4 that I see as possibly coming to 5, I think Remy and Sean lead the pack. Other than that, many of the 3 characters who were in 4—Dudley, Yun, Yang, Ibuki, Makoto, Elena and Hugo—I wouldn't be necessarily surprised to see any of them eventually make their way in. Yun and Yang in particular seem to be very popular and have made numerous appearances in various games, even outside of the SF series, on occasion.
- Street Fighter 4
- While many Alpha characters ended up being popular, and many 3 characters eventually clawed their way into some degree of popularity, the IV characters seem more like the Alpha characters; a bag of hit and miss. Some are great characters with lots of... well, character... and interesting moves, whereas others were interesting experiments that maybe should have not been tried, or at least not repeated. Who would I like to see make it in, or do I think is likely to? Crimson Viper, Juri, Oni and Gouken are the most likely in. The most likely to not advance is Seth. I'm on the fence about guys like El Fuerte, Rufus, Abel, Hakan and Decapre. I personally don't care if they advance or not, and I'm unlikely to play them so I suppose I'd side weakly on preferring that they don't. They're either kinda boring and not very memorable: like Abel or Decapre, or too silly and weird and therefore never really captured, in my opinion, the fanbase's heart, like El Fuerte, Hakan and Rufus.
- Keep in mind that there are some major changes to some characters too. Reportedly, unless this changes, neither Charlie nor Vega are charge characters anymore, which makes them totally different from what they used to be. Honestly, I'm certainly one of those guys to whom charge characters weren't very accessible, especially once the game migrated out of being a cabinet game to a home game with a control pad. I didn't mind the charge characters as much on the cabinets—I played plenty of Guile, Honda, Blanka and Bison on the old SF2 cabs—but they're terrible on a control pad, especially doing the bizarre double-charge super combo moves. I think Capcom finally figured out how inaccessible this was in the format in which most people played the game, and are taking some steps to try and help make these characters different. Given this; adding characters doesn't necessarily mean what it used to mean, if they play totally differently than they did before.
- Street Fighter 5
- What do I think of the three new characters so far? Obviously, I don't know too much about them, but here's what I've got:
- Necalli is a very dark, savage looking character. With stomp type moves (I've never liked them much, but a lot of SNK characters in particular have used them in the past and Viper kinda is like that too) and an aggressive approach, he might be interesting to fight against, but I doubt I'll be terribly interested in actually using him myself.
- Rashid is an interesting one, because he kinda looks like a riff off of Shiek Maherl from the Breakers game in many ways. Of course, Maherl was obviously a riff on E. Honda, just Arabic. Not suggesting that I think Rashid looks or plays anything like Honda, but there are certainly some similarities between the Breakers character and the new SF character, including the little tornados
- Laura looks like a Rule #63 Eddie Gordo, but in actuality, her moves seem much more Blanka like than capoeira. Although Blanka's a real classic, as one of the original World Warriors, if Laura ends up being a much better looking replacement Blanka, in spite of my prediction above, I wouldn't complain too much.
- When I bought SF4, I bought it as the Ultra Street Fighter IV version, and it was already quite old. I managed to get it bundled with all the DLCs and alternate costumes that were out already at that point. We've had a teaser of a few alternate costumes already for the game; here's the so-called "hot Ryu" which launched a ton of really stupid articles online about male sex appeal, personification, identity and other SJW-related nonsense which has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that as the flagship character of the series—and arguably of Capcom as a whole—a significantly different, yet cool look for Ryu is simply kinda fun. Leave it to SJWs like the entirety of the useless (and in fact actively anti-useful) staff at Kotaku to screw something like this up, though.
