For 35 years Capcom’s Street Fighter has served up some of the freakiest and strangest characters in gaming history. We’re now on the cusp of Street Fighter 6, which brings back icons like Ryu, Chun Li, and Zangief along with a smattering of new weirdoes bristling with combo-heavy special moves.
With those new characters about to stride into the video game hall of fame, it’s worth remembering that Street Fighter has always balanced ‘regular’ fighting game characters like E. Honda, Sagat, and Ken with some very odd challengers like Seth and Blanka. So, let’s take a look back at the strangest, most-ill conceived and downright imaginative characters Street Fighter has ever seen.
10. Hakan (Super Street Fighter IV)
One of the core conceits of Street Fighter is that it’s about warriors from around the world and as such has a truly international cast. As the series has developed Capcom has tried to incorporate as many countries as possible, but faced with Super Street Fighter IV‘s Hakan, we suspect Turkey wishes they’d been skipped over.
Hakan, the Turkish representative for the game, is a bright red muscled man with aquamarine hair and a mustache whose move set involves drenching himself in cooking oil and then writhing around on the floor. His fighting style is based on his “slipperiness”, so the more oily he is, the faster and further he slides around the arena. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hakan hasn’t returned in any other Street Fighter games since IV.
9. F.A.N.G (Street Fighter V)
F.A.N.G is Street Fighter‘s first (and so far only) poison-based character, with his attacks inflicting damage that slowly chips away at his opponent’s health bar. F.A.N.G’s backstory is that he was repeatedly exposed to deadly poisons as a child, eventually giving him the fabled “Poison Hand”. This manifests as bright red, clawed hands, with his abilities seeing him eventually joining forces with M. Bison as one of his most feared lieutenants.
At this point, you may be wondering what F.A.N.G stands for. Well, the answer is.. nothing. His name is really just Fang, though we guess it just sounds cooler written as an acronym. He’s a sinister and eccentric fighter, quite unlike anything else seen in the series to date.
8. Sodom (Street Fighter Alpha)
The unfortunately named Sodom seems to be an extended inside joke about American gamers from Capcom. Originating as a boss in Final Fight, he made the leap into Street Fighter with the Alpha series. His gimmick is that he’s an American obsessed with Japanese culture, though is constantly making cultural and linguistic mistakes as he struggles to fit in. In the Japanese versions of the game, the character’s comedy is based on the misuse of kanji and his mangling of Japanese phrases.
Naturally, this humor doesn’t exactly translate to English, leaving us with a bizarre and vaguely offputting fighter with one of the worst names in fighting game history. And, if you’re wondering why he’s called Sodom, it’s because the developers were big fans of German thrash metal band Sodom and wanted to pay tribute.
Perhaps wisely, Nintendo renamed him ‘Katana’ when they ported Alpha 2 to the SNES.
7. Abigail (Street Fighter V)
Street Fighter characters often push the boundaries of physical size, with characters like Zangief and Sagat towering over most opponents. But neither of them has anything on Street Fighter V’s Abigail. This monster stands a colossal eight-foot tall and weighs almost 600lb. His size is only equaled by his idiocy, often pretending to drive a car and making the noises, randomly bursting into tears, and generally acting like an oversized child.
Whenever we fight him we can’t help but think of Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’. Well, the sadistic father who called their giant kid “Abigail” certainly achieved his goal of toughening him up.
6. Q (Street Fighter III: Third Strike)
Street Fighter III is renowned for ditching many old favorites for bizarre and offputting new characters, but even among them, Q has to be one of the strangest. Q looks like an old-timey private eye crossed with a robot. His true purpose remains unknown to this day — we don’t even know whether he’s a robot or human underneath — and the identity of who’s behind the mask has never been revealed.
All these unknowns make him by far one of the most enigmatic Street Fighter characters, with our only clue as to what he’s thinking, a muttered “I am… abomination” after defeating an enemy. If you’ll forgive the pun, this guy definitely leaves us with more Qs than As.
5. Blanka (Street Fighter II)
Blanka is such a firm Street Fighter mainstay that his weirdness has almost faded into the background. But, one more time, let’s go through his genuinely bonkers backstory. Blanka was once Jimmy, who took a fateful plane ride that crashed in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Most children would have died quickly, but Blanka quickly began communing with the jungle. His absorption of chlorophyll gave him his trademark green skin, with him learning how to generate electricity from observing electric eels.
Though ferocious-looking and a violent combatant, Blanka has slowly become an endearing Street Fighter softie, ending focused on saving the rainforest, hanging out with his friends Dan and Sakura, and promoting his ‘Blanka-Chan’ merch. As a firm audience favorite, Blanka is about to return in Street Fighter 6 and we’re eager to see how his wild style makes the jump to the new game. It just doesn’t feel right to have a Street Fighter game without him.
4. G (Street Fighter V)
All hail… the President of Earth! The Street Fighter character design team must have been having some fun when they conceived of G, a mysterious Abe Lincoln-looking figure who loudly and repeatedly claims to not only be President of the entire planet, but the physical embodiment of Earth itself. To be fair, he backs that up with a suite of lava-based attacks and the ability to turn his body into gold, so who are we to argue?
Even more strangely, G’s powers are governed by his ‘Presidentiality’, i.e. the more Presidential he acts (not being hit, not being knocked down or thrown) the more powerful he becomes. Thankfully he’s not evil, expounding at length how all people are equal regardless of gender identity, their age, race or beliefs. Well, if we’re going to have a President of Earth, at least he seems like a nice enough guy.
3. Skullomania (Street Fighter EX)
The now obscure 3D EX series spawned some very odd additions to the series, though by far the strangest is the wonderfully named Skullomania. Skullomania was once mild-mannered salesman Saburo Nishikoyama, whose bosses were unhappy about his terrible work performance. As such, he was told to wear a humiliating costume at a sales conference. This unexpectedly awoke something inside Saburo, who decided to become Skullomania and fight injustice in all its forms.
Since then, whenever the stress of the salaryman life gets too much, Saburo dons the Skullomania suit and heads out into the night. Both he and his family are now happier for it, so who are we to judge?
2. Necro (Street Fighter III: New Generation)
Necro is a Russian experimental subject genetically infused with the powers of the octopus and uh, rubber. He can stretch his limbs, generate electrical charges, and uses his bizarre appearance to intimidate others (though at heart he’s a good guy). In what should be uplifting reading for some, this scary-looking weirdo is one of the few Street Fighter characters able to hold down a committed relationship.
Necro’s girlfriend Effie often turns up to mimic his victory pose when he wins a match and commiserates over his unconscious body when he loses. So, if you’re unlucky in love, just remember that if rubber-limbed genetic monstrosities can get a girlfriend, there’s a chance for you too!
1. Twelve (Street Fighter III: Third Strike)
Twelve is so out there he doesn’t even feel much like a Street Fighter character at all and would probably be more at home in Darkstalkers. He’s a pale, milk-white humanoid that looks very alien and can morph his body into a variety of weapon-like forms. Here, perhaps, Street Fighter III went a teeny bit too far, with influences apparently ranging from Terminator 2‘s T-1000 to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
One of the more interesting wrinkles is his X.C.O.P.Y. Super Art, which lets him morph his body to mimic his opponent. In a fun twist that Capcom really didn’t have to include, there’s even a unique animation if he attempts this move against the SUV in the Bonus Stage. It appears that Twelve’s morphing doesn’t stretch as far as turning into a car, and he just holds his head and writhes in pain.
Those are our favorites, though we wait in anticipation to see exactly what flavor of eccentric maniacs Capcom is about to serve up when Street Fighter 6 lands next week. Beyond its launch, there are going to be a lot of DLC characters on the way, so we’re hoping it once again pushes the boat out and delivers on the Street Fighter franchise’s long history of weirdness.
