Road Fighter’s characters are the primary level of the sport; the primary level of any preventing recreation, the truth is, any title like that is solely as sturdy as its forged. Whereas preventing mechanics are integral, if the characters are unappealing, rote, or simply plain boring, it’s exhausting for a preventing recreation to succeed.
And one purpose why Road Fighter II might be probably the most legendary preventing recreation ever is due to its forged of characters. So, we’ve picked out all our favorites. When you’ve had your Road Fighter character fill, try some extra preventing recreation legends with our Mortal Kombat Mileena, Mortal Kombat Sonya, Mortal Kombat 1 characters, Mortal Kombat Scorpion and Mortal Kombat Sub-Zero guides.
In any case, listed below are our favorite Road Fighter characters, chosen by the entire workforce.
Guile
There’s no technique to begin speaking about Road Fighter with out speaking about Guile’s Theme. Stick on that video up above, shut your eyes, and provides your self a couple of minutes to only relax to the tune.
Past the long-lasting tune, nonetheless, Guile is among the unique roster of Road Fighter II characters. With spiky yellow hair, chunky muscle groups, and revenge in thoughts towards M. Bison for killing his buddy, Guile’s a basic. (Additionally, attempt to discover Guile’s Theme for SFII Turbo, both on 3DO or PC – each are faster, slicker, and somewhat quirkier).
Maybe one of the endearing issues about Guile comes from past his preventing capabilities. You see, he’s fairly the household man, displaying again and again simply how a lot he loves his spouse and youngsters. It’s humorous to suppose that he’s really fairly a caring soul, contemplating he places up a somewhat convincing, impassive entrance.
Bison
M. Bison, a.okay.a. Mike Bison, a.okay.a a parody brother of the well-known boxer, is the large dangerous archetypal villain of Road Fighter II and all through the collection. He wears an evil-looking cape and militaristic hat, suiting his place as dictator.
So, Capcom modified his identify for the Western launch to keep away from any authorized points, which is fascinating. However that’s not all, because the character additionally appeared in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, a crossover that went fully over my head on the time (and you may try above).
Ryu
Now, it’s a bit boring, however Ryu needs to be on this listing, a bit like Scorpion and Sub-Zero have to seem on Mortal Kombat lists. Showing within the first recreation onwards, Ryu is probably the most well-known Road Fighter character, carrying his legacy all through the collection and into so many different items of media, from Tremendous Smash Bros. Final to Prepared Participant One.
Takashi Nishiyama, director of Road Fighter, created him, impressed by Mas Oyama, a real-life karate grasp who wrote quite a few books. His depiction within the manga Karate Grasp really impressed Nishiyama to create the primary Road Fighter recreation. Now look the place we’re. Pretty stuff.
Character clever, Ryu is strictly what you’d anticipate – he’s fairly humble, wrought with knowledge, and is a bit too exhausting on himself. However, most of all, he’s an especially respectful individual.
Juri
One in all Seth’s lackeys, Juri made her first look in Road Fighter IV. She’s a South Korean Taekwondo grasp, a primary for the collection in each nationality and preventing fashion. This implies she’s largely utilizing her ft to take her opponent down. Good luck should you come up towards her, she does have a trick or two up her sleeve.
Past preventing fashion, she’s additionally stuffed with quips and playfulness when taking down the enemy. Take a look at her Road Fighter 6 trailer above, the place she’s change into some kinda combine between Harley Quinn and a VTuber.
Akuma
A secret character in Road Fighter II Turbo, Akuma is the son of Ryu and Ken’s grasp, establishing a beautiful place for him because the antagonist. The creators based mostly his design on Ryu, and so they wished to distinguish him from M. Bison.
Most apparently, Akuma took place as a form of apology to followers fooled by an April Idiot’s joke concerning a secret character within the recreation. The result’s a surprisingly advanced villain, with an unclear nature despite his drive to govern Ryu.
Ken
Ken is Ryu’s finest bud and a straight-up karate grasp. Oh, how apt, as his full identify is Ken Masters. Anyway, as the one different playable character within the first recreation, Ken is arguably as iconic a Road Fighter character as Ryu. Iconic sufficient to additionally seem in Wreck-It Ralph, alongside Ryu, M. Bison, Chun-Li, and Blanka.
However, Ken’s most iconic second got here at Evo in 2004. The well-known Evo Second #37 exhibits simply how thrilling preventing video games could be, as Daigo Umehara parries and wins towards the chances. Give it a watch above, it’s wonderful.
An fascinating little bit of details about Ken is that he’s really Guile’s brother-in-law. The pair get alongside fantastic, although Ken’s cocksure perspective definitely rubs his sister’s husband the mistaken approach at instances.
Blanka
Blanka is an odd, green-skinned humanoid with sizzling orange hair. He’s inexperienced for one in all two causes: both consuming too many vegetation or from being struck by lightning. That will depend on the place you’re from, because the American model had the latter and the Japanese model the previous.
There are a couple of good tidbits about Blanka’s creation, however I’ll depart you with a private favorite quote from Akira Yasuda: “At first, Blanka’s pores and skin color was pink, and that was disgusting. Lol. I felt significantly better after altering it to inexperienced.” I can’t consider it really says ‘lol’, however it does.
Chun-Li
Now, I don’t know all that a lot about Chun-Li off the highest of my head, so I did some analysis. Wikipedia has her down as “the primary ever feminine playable character to seem in a preventing recreation to realize mainstream recognition”, which is nice. Nevertheless it additionally makes me need to discover out who was the first-ever feminine playable character to seem in a preventing recreation in any respect. Additionally, it makes me need to edit the web page and put a hyphen between ‘first’ and ‘ever’.
Anyway, I’m not going to try this. As an alternative, I’m going to offer you one other wonderful Akira Yasuda quote, concerning the few weeks they needed to create Chun-Li: “Oh yeah, Chun-Li was sporting pants proper up till the very finish. Once we made the sprites I assumed she didn’t look proper, so I had them modified to tights as an alternative.” Now, for SF6, her legs are once more lined, and all of the weirdos are up in arms about it…
Anyway, should you preferred studying some little historic tidbits about all these Road Fighter characters, try our Castlevania: Bloodlines historical past lesson and Phoenix Wright: Ace Lawyer historical past lesson for extra historic deep dives. Or, should you choose spooks over preventing, try our The Mimic information – it’s among the finest horror experiences on Roblox.
