I haven't done anything here in forever, but... now that I've got my new desktop, and my own office to use it in that used to be my son's room before he grew up and left home, I've reinstalled Steam, I've put Street Fighter V Champion Edition on my PS4 (technically that belongs to my youngest two boys too; but like I said, one of them is out of the house for at least another year and half, and then he'll leave again after that for college out of state. And the younger one is kinda over video games and doens't care anymore. I'm the only one left that's regularly using it, which is weird, because I didn't touch it for a long time when we got it; not until one of my sons bought Red Dead Redemption II, actually.) So, I'm back in the saddle after a lengthy hiatus where I rarely if ever played one of these types of games, because I didn't have access to SFIV for a time, and I never liked SFV until I got it recently in its more fixed and updated form with enough content to not be embarrassing.
Anyway, although SFV was considered a fairly dead or done game, the Champion Edition was sufficiently well received that Capcom decided to issue a final and fifth (Vth?) season and announced that there would be five (V) new characters added to the game still. While it's certainly possible that a new character will be among them, I think it's much more likely that we'll see the return of some characters that've already part of the Capcom roster. If we get anyone "new" it'll be one of the dolls; maybe one that hasn't ever been playable before. (We do know that most of them are in the game as opponents already, since we fight a number of them in story mode. That would be a quick and easy way to bring a character to the game without having to do too much work on it; you've already got a model and moves, they just need to be made playable. Which I don't want to underestimate the workload involved in doing that, but still--a fair chunk of the work has been done.)
Anyway, the purpose of this post isn't to talk about who I think is likely to be brought in, but who I'd wish to see, and who I'd pick if I was in charge. Before I do, let me at least spell out who some of the potentially obvious adds are, just because. Then I can contrast (and a bit of compare, but it'll mostly be contrast) those obvious adds with my own wishlist. Street Fighter V is the first game since Super Street Fighter II that doesn't feature all of the characters from Super Street Fighter, at least in its final, fully fleshed out form. So, some obvious adds would be the three missing New Challengers: T. Hawk, Fei Long and Dee Jay. Yeah, yeah... those are the least popular of the New Challengers, I'm sure, but still, it's odd that they're missing. But I also doubt that they'd make three of the five be those characters. Probably at least one of them, though. Some of the more popular Street Fighter III characters also seem like shoe-ins. We have less Street Fighter III characters in V than in IV. Dudley, Yang and/or Yun and possibly Makoto. I hear a lot of calls from the fanbase for the latter, in particular, although I've never liked her as a character at all. Of the Alpha characters, I doubt that Rose or Guy will come back as we have Menat and Zeku to kind of represent them. It's the first game not to have Dan, though, so he'd be a kind of obvious addition too. Even if the joke is long past played out by this point. Of the IV characters, I was surprised that C. Viper wasn't already included; she does make a cameo in the story, at least. The same is kind of true for Abel, although he was a much less memorable addition to IV than Juri and Viper. So, that list of "obvious" candidates is obviously twice as long as it needs to be, but I wouldn't be surprised to see at least four of the five pulled from that list, if not all five.
Who would I most want to see return? My list might be a little esoteric, but what the hey?
- Geki. Of all of the non-playable characters from the first Street Fighter game, he's the one who seems to have picked up the most mystique. I'd argue that he's probably more popular than SFI characters that we have had added to subsequent games like Birdie, Gen and Adon. Of course, I don't have much to back up that assertion other than his use in stuff like the Udon comics and whatnot, but I'd really like to see him updated. I know, I know, there are a number of ninja-esque characters in the game already, like Ibuki and Guy and Zeku. But they don't really fit the classic trope of the Shinobi that was super popular in the late 80s and early 90s when these games came out, and the little that we do know about Geki's potential moves is already very different than either of them, with throwing stars and teleportation, etc.
- Edi. E. (I don't know why he has a period in his name after Edi, but that's correct.) The only Final Fight boss (other than Belger himself, and a character in a wheelchair probably isn't feasible) to not make an appearance makes him a good candidate in my opinion. Not only would his rivalry with Cody make for a better story reason to include him than say, Abigail or Hugo, both of which have made appearances, but he'd be a significantly different type of character than any we've seen before, given that he always uses a pistol and a night stick. He'd probably be Zangief-sized too, which would be interesting, as we could always use another bigger character while we're at it. Maybe this time he's the one in a convict uniform, since after he framed Cody and sent him to prison, now that Cody is mayor, maybe he's been drummed out for corruption finally. Yet another reason to have an even more bitter rivalry!
- Mike Haggar. I know, I know. I'm probably leaning too much into the older games, but I'm an older guy, and I like my nostalgia. To be honest, I'd rather have seen Mike make an appearance with his Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 model in Ultra Street Fighter IV, and leave him off the roster for V, but since he didn't ever make it to IV, putting him in V is a must. He's the iconic character from Final Fight, and he's had a bit of a comeback since his appearance in the MvC series. He's primed for a re-appearance.
- Oro. A Street Fighter III character that never seems to get any love, although maybe that's because he's kinda dumb like Twelve or Necro, I dunno. At least he has more character, in my opinion, and he does make a number of cameos in Street Fighter V already, where it's shown that he's pretty good friends with Dhalsim. I think he could turn out pretty cool and interesting, especially if he gets some decent alternative costumes. It can also start to point towards his appearance in Street Fighter III; the inclusion of a bunch of Illuminati characters already starts that, as well as Sean's cameo since his sister is a playable character.
- C. Viper. Just because she's an obvious one doesn't mean that it's not one that I wouldn't like to see! I kind of like C. Viper, although I think she's a little bit underpowered in IV, and could stand a bit of minor updating. She's obviously kicking around, having made a number of small cameos in the Story mode, but as kinda the new protagonist specifically for the IV game, leaving her out is a little bit insulting. She's also a kind of rival to Juri, and picking up Juri but leaving C. Viper out seems incomplete. It'd be like having Ken in the game but not Ryu. Well, not quite, as those are the protagonist and deuteragonist for the entire franchise, but still, you get the picture.
- Honorable Mention. Oni should come back, not as a new character, but as a skin for Akuma. Akuma looks so terrible in this game, and only his "nostalgia" skin actually looks any good. Giving him an Oni skin would be perfect. I think it would actually be interesting to bring Gouken back too, although again, maybe as a skin or "cosplay" for either Akuma or Ryu is better than bringing him back as a complete character. For that matter, maybe that's a better way to bring Dan back than as a character; have someone dress as him in cosplay. Although, to be fair, he already dresses an awful lot like classic Ryu and Ken anyway, and just has a different head. I would have thought the same thing about it being fun to bring some Darkstalkers characters into the game, but given that most of the ones I'd want to see are already skins for someone or other in the game as is, it's probably fine as is.
