These wish lists are getting weird now. Especially comparing them to the ones we use have during SF4 days. I feel like every Season needs to have some sort of structure to them. For one, you can’t do what they did in S2 and have all new characters. That’s alienating to your established audience and really doesn’t promise much success. Also, a lot of the stand out characters are in the game already. Maybe something like 20 left. Even then I see characters who weren’t all that popular years ago being in lists here like Sodom, Q, and Oro. Even then, it doesn’t matter. I think the perfect Season list has a good balance. At least 2 tent pole characters that we’d all love to see (Yun, Yang, C.Viper, Rose), then mix any of the following three catagories: 1-2 brand new characters (Menat, Rashid, Necali, G), 1-2 rehash characters (Birdie, Nash, Abigail, Kolin, Ed), 1 risk/classic (Dan, Necro, E.Honda)
Also why has Capcom not figured out how to develop a character yet? We never saw SF3 characters until Super SF4 and even then that was only three of them. And now we only have ONE SF4 character in SF5. Even now we have 6 SFZ and 3 SF3 characters. (5 and 4 if you want to be anal and ridiculously technical but then by the same logic you have to consider Ed a SF4 character and just no, come on that’s stupid) That Blanka slot would have been better suited for a SF3 character. Someone like Mokoto, Yun, Yang, Dudley, or I don’t know someone we could flesh out more. I mean, do we even imagine Dhalsim without Yoga Teleport or Chun-Li without her Kikoken. Those things came in Hyper fighting, not the original, not Champion Edition, they fleshed the characters out 2 games later and now those are a part of their identity. My list for S4 would look something like this:
C. Viper
Abel
Hakan
Mokoto
Kyosuke
New Character
So, Viper is a classic character and frankly she could always use a slight update to stay relevant and I’m sure she has a fanbase who’d agree with me. She was the stand out character of the original new 5 SF4 characters. Abel is a character who isn’t a bad character but has always been “ehh.” He fits in well with the cast, is story relevant, and there’s nothing really wrong with him. He just needs to be fleshed out more. For one give him a way to in and two give him some real mix up game. He’s mix martial artist, let him play like one. Maybe that’s what his V-Systems can be about. Hakan on the other hand is just perfect for the V-System. Like oil was basically his V skill and trigger in SSF4 anyway. Let’s do that, maybe update him a bit. Then I put Makoto, because intentionally I think Yun and Yang should be released together and Dudley is another boxer (I’ll explain in a second). Makoto is a great character in her own right and was more used in SF3 than a good amount of the cast. Now, I put Kyosuke from Rival Schools on here for a couple reasons. 1 I’m biased, it’s my favorite fighting game and FG character. 2 It’s been confirmed, canon same universe. 3 He’s a cool character and he’s not as Guile as people think. He’s closer to Nash if anything and even then he differs a lot. 4 We have seven Final Fight characters (including a palet swap) as playable characters and more as NPC characters in the story and then general NPC and background characters being promoted to playable before even one Rival Schools character is playable and that’s just an injustice to good game and character design. Come on, Capcom. Why do you hate this series? He even fits in story wise. I’ll even update his design for you right now. Make him come back as a Yakuza member, who is more antihero. Make him shirtless under his white blazer, give him a tattoo and a katana, and done. I updated him for you. Lastly I see this Lee and Drunken master concept being thrown around but isn’t that a little cliche? How about we spin that drunken master concept into the drunken BOXER. Make his design inspired from Cracker Jack, maybe Irish and use a golf club instead of a baseball bat. That way we get a brand new character who isn’t too much like every other drunken master in other fighting games. (Lei Wulong, Shun Dai, Chin Gentsai, Bo Rai Cho, Brad Wong) Honestly, why am I posting this? I feel like this is going in circles.
