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The X Button
Bug Hunts

by Todd Ciolek,

It was hard to avoid the Gamergate mess last week, and I didn't really want to try. It's the sort of thing I needed to see.

The alleged scandal started when game developer Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend posted a lengthy diatribe charging that Quinn cheated on him with various Kotaku editors and that she tried to undermine a GameJam development fundraiser. The post was an ugly piece of breakup wreckage, but it soon grew into something larger. On Twitter and YouTube and various message boards, game-playing folks adopted the term Gamergate (first popularized by actor Adam Baldwin) and proceeded to attack Quinn, her associates, and the larger vein of the video-game press as scheming Social Justice Warriors and collusive hacks.

It backfired. Whatever improprieties Quinn and Kotaku committed (and there's little evidence of them) were overshadowed by Gamergate supporters mounting a campaign of harassment, vitriol, and stalking around Quinn and her associates. The Gamergate contingent alleged censorship and sabotage after YouTube pulled videos of Quinn's game footage and message boards discouraged discussions, but these same Gamergate loyalists dug up personal details and hurled invective at any target on the other side, be it Quinn, Guardian freelancer Jenn Frank, disagreeable developer Phil Fish, or Anita Sarkeesian, who's still getting death threats over her fairly mild series about sexism in video games. It was all supposedly done in the name of rooting out corruption in video-game journalism.

Yet it wasn't about games, journalism, or integrity. As shown in Quinn's extracts of Gamergate discussions, the whole movement began as a way to embarrass, insult, and possibly destroy the careers of developers and journalists, particularly women, who dared bring up game-industry sexism and other social issues.

The entire affair makes me wonder. Who would do this? Who would care so much, so violently about video games that they would feel justified in ruining someone for the sake of their hobby? Who would look at the heart of Gamergate, in its misogyny and savagery, and say, “Yes, I want to be part of this” with a straight face?

I understand why game nerds are defensive. Male-dominated geek subcultures tend to react badly when confronting sexism, and gamers often struggle for identity atop that. Parents, friends, teachers, and Roger Ebert have told them that games are a piteous diversion and not real art throughout their young lives. Some game-players shrug it off. Some point out that as long as games convey narratives or themes, they meet the minimum standard for “real” art, low as it may be. Others never quite get past those little insults. They want to show the world that games are serious pursuits, and they hate it when game journalists, game developers, and actual games tell them otherwise.

For that matter, it's strange to see the term “gamer” adopted with a devotion one normally sees in violent junta overthrows. I always thought it was a term to be used with the same joking self-deprecation with which you'd call yourself a “comic-book geek” or a “Trekkie" or an "otaku." Yet there's a cadre of fans determined to defend the good name of “gamer” from slander and stereotyping. And they remind me of this. I still don't know if it's parody or not.

Game journalism suffers the same as any entertainment journalism. It can be frivolous, it can be ephemeral in its attentions, and it can be too cozy with the creators of the very media it covers. It should be criticized in meaningful and specific ways, but Gamergate folk haven't done that. They've just spammed Anita Sarkeesian's Twitter account with porn and put up conspiracy-theorist videos about the Independent Games Festival and preferential treatment. If they're so alarmed about game awards playing favorites, I have some bad news about the Oscars…

Video games remain perplexing chimeras of toys, movies, books, and comics. The press and the industry around them are just as muddled at times. And carpet-bombing it all with misogyny won't clear up anything. Some helpful discussion may result from this in the long run, but for now Gamergate only serves as proof that some game fans can't handle the maturity they seek.

NEWS

DRAGON QUEST: HEROES MELTS YOUR HEART, PLAYSTATION
Soon every game series will have its own battlefield-brawler in the style of Dynasty Warriors, and fans will queue up for their copies of Bubble Bobble Warriors and Cyberbots Heroes. This month sees Dragon Quest join the trend.

Dragon Quest: Heroes is a spacious action game where heroes and heroines fend off an invading force of slimes, drackies, skeleton soldiers, fat rats, golems, giant slimes, and other common Dragon Quest creatures. Just as Nintendo went with Dynasty Warriors maker Omega Force for Hyrule Warriors, Square Enix recruited the same developer to make Heroes. The game introduces four new characters for the leads, and the first trailer all but confirms appearances by Terry from Dragon Quest VI as well as Maya, Alena, and Kiryl from Dragon Quest IV. It'd be nice if they threw in Yangus from Dragon Quest VIII.

Heroes is headed to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, but only the latter gets a special-edition system. It's a silver PS4 with a removable USB Metal Slime burbling over the front of the console, and it's darned cute. Will any of this come over here? The be-slimed PS4 probably won't, but Heroes stands a chance. And what about Dragon Quest X or the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VII? And the just-announced-and-not-yet-seen Dragon Quest XI? There isn't an easy answer there.

GUILTY GEAR INTRODUCES NEW CHARACTER, POSSIBLE WEDDING PEACH CAMEO
In some ways, it's good to see another original character join Guilty Gear Xrd. Most of the game's roster consists of previous Guilty Gear combatants, all rendered sharp and cel-shaded and three-dimensional in Xrd's new engine. As much as I'd like to see Jam and Baiken and Bridget rejoin the series, it bugs me when a new fighting game does little more than re-clothe a familiar cast. So I'm glad that Guilty Gear Xrd has an all-new character named Elphelt.

On the other hand, Elphelt seems a reheated glob of everything popular in other anime-influenced fighting games. She wears a cleavage-baring, belt-covered, bouquet-adorned wedding dress with a rabbit-eared veil, and she packs firearms and a cheerful outlook. I was hoping she'd be a Miss Havisham nutcase at the very least, but early reports suggest that she's just the romantic type. Elphelt may be more interesting in gameplay, though. She has both a short-range Shotgun Stance and a sniper-friendly Rifle Stance, and players can swap between the two.

Elphelt will be a downloadable character, and early buyers get her free when they pick up Guilty Gear Xrd. And when will we be able to do that? The PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 versions of the game arrive in Japan this December 4 (with cross-play!), and Aksys Games hasn't nailed down a North American release date. In other words, don't be surprised if it slips to next year.

HOLMES, WATSON, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE TO APPEAR IN THE NEXT ACE ATTORNEY
CAPCOM's next Ace Attorney series now takes a similarly predictable approach to new characters. The latest game, The Great Ace Attorney, unfolds in 19th century Japan, and this primes it for a guest appearance from the most famous detective in literature.

Both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson join The Great Ace Attorney's protagonists Ryuunosuke Naruhodo and Susato Mikotoba, though the two classic ccharacters aren't exactly faithful Sir Arthur Conan Doyle depictions. For one thing, Watson is Iris Watson, an eight-year-old girl. With a medical degree. Is it a deliberate poke at the series' professional prodigies getting younger and younger? Or it is just playing to the current anime standard of turning every literary and historical figure into a young girl? Or does Ace Attorney creator Shu Takumi have something more clever in mind? It'll be a while before we find out, since the game's looking at a vague 2015 release date on the 3DS.

CROWDFUNDING FILES: CREEPY PARA-PATHS

CREEPY CASTLE
Status: Unfunded
Platforms: PC
Ends: Saturday, October 4

Far too many Kickstarter creations go for the look of an old 8-Bit game. No one could argue that the style works wonders in Shovel Knight, but it's tiresome to see so many projects shooting for the same NES nostalgia. At least Creepy Castle isn't trying to resemble a contemporary of Battle of Olympus or Astynanax. Its monochromatic characters and dark backgrounds suggest something from the ZX Spectrum and other computers that Nintendo-weaned American kids like myself never appreciated in their own time. And there's more to Creepy Castle than its appearances.

Creepy Castle sends Moth, a swordfighter and actual moth, through multi-directional castle innards full of platforms, ladders, treasure, vines, and other traditional villainous décor. Moth can parry enemies' attacks or take them out in a flash, and tilts with major villains turn into fighting-game faceoffs full of button jabbing and big dramatic cutaways. The characters are all appealing in their simplicity, and Moth's quest leads him to journals and other epistolary catalogs of the game's vast world. Moth also encounters Butterfly, a boxing bug who takes center stage during a secondary quest. Creepy Castle looks quite accomplished in its old-fashioned charm, and its creators seem to have laid a solid foundation for the gameplay; the engine itself is finished, and the Kickstarter has a modest goal. It's a fine way to get back some old computer nostalgia—or build some anew.

PARADIGM: SURREAL ADVENTURE GAME
Status: Unfunded
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Ends: Monday, October 6

It's hard to resist Paradigm's opening pitch: a video-dating profile for a deluded, bulbously mutated fellow. Named Paradigm, he makes a modestly pathetic living in the shreds of Eastern Europe, where an apocalypse apparently happened in the dead center of the 1980s. Paradigm shows off a world where oversized computers feed his electropop ambitions, a cone-wearing superhero presides over traffic fixtures, and the most normal-looking human is a decaying drug addict. The Kickstarter promises to deliver the “ugliest protagonist in gaming,” and I can't think of much competition. He's certainly got Boogerman and the cast of Last Armageddon beat.

Paradigm looks to the old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games in its interface and humor, and you can tell that without even reading the Kickstarter page. There's a Day of the Tentacle stencil in the scene with the talking eggplant, after all. And there's more to the game than Paradigm's humdrum life. He's the failed spawn of a company that breeds heirs for the wealthy, and that'll come back around throughout the game. Some of the game plays off memes and pushes the wacky-just-because overtones, but I really like the subtler deadpan humor and grimy Eastern Bloc aesthetics. It's like a Czech bootleg Zak McKracken forged in the heart of Reagan's nuked-out 1980s, and that's a compliment.

PATHOLOGIC
Status: Unfunded
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Ends: Tuesday, October 7

You might have played Pathologic already. The creation of Russian developer Ice-Pick Lodge, this grim real-time adventure game emerged on PCs back in 2005 and found its way across Europe, though it never made it to North America. Ice-Pick apparently wasn't satisfied with the original (or its English translation), and now a Kickstarter envisions a substantially improved version. It finds a town of bizarre traditions and strange sights stricken by an illness called the Sand Plague. Players control one of three characters and pursue various methods of finding a cure. This entails trading for supplies, fending off attackers, exploring the town, talking with the fearful citizens, and seeking the source of the pathogen. You can't rescue everyone you meet, and you might not even save yourself. The Sand Plague won't spare you just because you're playing.

Pathologic is about the town in all its gruesome sights: the streets, the abattoirs, the bizarre polyhedral maze that bends the laws of physics. Each playable character reveals a different side of the place: one is an experimental surgeon (no, it's not BlackJack), one is a more conventional doctor, and the third is a faith healer. Each of them is accompanied by two masked and ominous figures. The mimelike Tragedian seems irrelevant, but the crow-faced Executor presages death and the player's failure. Pathologic is grim in appearances, voluminous in playtime, and merciless in the decisions it heaps on the player. Like any good multi-path adventure, there don't seem to be any completely right decisions.

Ice-Pick promises that the original game's setting, characters, and overall plot won't change very much in the remake. Yet the Kickstarted version will have better graphics, a less tedious combat interface, improved AI for the townfolk, and smarter localizations for the English and German editions. Perhaps that won't be enough for players who went through the 2005 release…or perhaps they liked it enough to want the best possible Pathologic.

NEXT WEEK'S RELEASES

FAIRY FENCER F
Developer: Compile Heart
Publisher: NIS America
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: September 16
Best Faerie: Tori Amos
MSRP: $49.99 (regular edition), $79.99 (already-sold-out special edition)

It figures. You rarely see video games with the word “fairy” in the title. Even fairy-intensive games like Cotton and Sylphia aren't so bold. Then you see two of them in the same year. The first is Square Enix's Bravely Default: Flying Fairy, which wasn't shy about challenging the game industry's reluctance to advertise games full of pixies and sprites and twinkle-winged elfish spirits. The second is Compile Heart's Fairy Fencer F, and it's even less inhibited.

Fairy Fencer F results from a Manichean war by proxy, in which the Goddess and the Vile God create all sorts of fairy-imbued weapons called Furies. Long after the gods disappear, their tools remain, and mortals who wield Furies are called Fencers. This pairs up all sorts of mortals with fairies in combat. Foul-tempered swordsman Fang and the snooty, frill-clad pixie Eryn form one such union, though the rest don't follow such traditional fairy depictions: obsessed fairyologist Harley partners with hulking, bald-headed fairy warrior Bahus, elegant Fencer Tiara carries around a puppylike fairy named Cui, and cultured crusader Sherman's partner Ryushun looks like a Gundam construct. All of them appear in battles and join together for powerful attacks…and overblown animated sequences.

It's not hard to see Compile Heart's Neptunia series here. Fairy Fencer F's characters aren't sexed-up superheroine versions of game consoles, but they share character designer Tsunako and the same moving-cutout animation during their conversations. The battles rely on a 3-D field much like the Neptunia combat system, and characters pile up combo attacks and build up a tension gauge to “fairize” and morph into a much stronger form. Tsunako isn't the only recognizable name here; Yoshitaka Amano provided some concept art, and Nobuo Uematsu is among the composers. It's still more Neptunia than Final Fantasy, though.

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: ULTIMATE NINJA STORM REVOLUTION
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: September 16
Mecha Naruto: A nightmarish marionette
MSRP: $49.99

Anime-based games tend to be grunt work among developers, something that they'll labor on while nursing projects that aren't tied to Beyblade or Rave Master. Yet that never seems the case with CyberConnect2, whose anime offshoots seem meticulous and affectionate creations. It's not just the fact that company president Hiroshi Matsuyama dresses up as Naruto's lead ninja or Rohan Kishibe from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. CyberConnect2's Naruto and Jojo's fighters are gorgeous, nicely crafted tributes—not as deep as your Street Fighter or Virtua Fighter or Asura Buster, but perfect for fans.

Naruto Shippūden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution, now needing some load-bearing supports in its title, maintains the same mixtures of open-arena brawling, free exploration, and occasional gorgeous boss battles as prior Ninja Storm titles. Wide-roaming matches fill most of the gameplay, with ninja teams providing support, switching places, and joining together in elaborate combos. Revolution makes a number of small additions: guard breaks and counterattacks offer more options, a new customization mode is available to owners of the previous Storm title, and characters can select three types of jutsu in combat. If you don't know what “jutsu” is, go ask any kid slouched in the manga aisle at Barnes & Noble back around 2006.

For those who still carry the Naruto torch, Revolution's biggest draw lies in its cast of a hundred playable characters. The most striking is a mecha-Naruto designed by series creator Masashi Kishimoto, complete with a Mecha-Kurama mode, and speedy ninja Shisui Uchiha and Kushina Uzumaki—yes, Naruto's mother—are now fully playable. Ninja-mom ties into one of the game's new storylines, which shows the history of the elite Akatsuki ninja brigade, complete with new designs by Kishimoto. Just about everything in Revolution looks gorgeous, in fact. Even if you care not a whit for Naruto, Revolution merits a look if you want to sample some of the best cel-shaded cartoon imagery in any game out there.

THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY: CURTAIN CALL
Developer: Indies Zero
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: September 16
Best Music: Fat Chocobo's Theme
MSRP: $39.99

Is Curtain Call the last Theatrhythm Final Fantasy title? I hope so, because I'm tired of writing “Theatrhythm.” That's not really a knock at the original game, though. It's a cute little mixture of Final Fantasy dressings and rhythmic gameplay, one where characters roam overworlds, fight monsters, and watch grandiose Final Fantasy video clips. They do it all while matching beats from popular Final Fantasy music, and they'll do it again in Curtain Call.

Curtain Call assembles more big-headed Final Fantasy celebrities to take on some 200 tracks plucked from throughout the series. The roster now includes Edge from Final Fantasy IV; Lenna and Galuf from Final Fantasy V; Edgar from Final Fantasy VI; Barret from Final Fantasy VII; Laguna from Final Fantasy VIII; Eiko from Final Fantasy IX; Jecht from Final Fantasy X; Lilisette and Aphmau from Final Fantasy XI; Fran from Final Fantasy XII; Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII; Y'shtola from Final Fantasy XIV; Benjamin from Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest; Agrias from Final Fantasy Tactics; Rikku and Paine from Final Fantasy X-2; Kiaran from Crystal Chronicles; Zack from Crisis Core; Chaos from Dissidia; Noel From Final Fantasy XIII-2; and Rem, Machina, and Ace from Type-0. Most of the new crowd must be unlocked, though, and all of them have the same unflattering puppet-show faces as they did in the first Theatrhythm. Then again, a lot of these character already were cute little squat-scale creature in their original games. Square and Indies Zero had to mix things up.

The music spans as many games as the character lineup, with about ten tracks from the major Final Fantasies and even some selections from Chocobo's Dungeon, The Crystal Bearers, and Mystic Quest. More is available if you're willing to venture into DLC, where you'll find tracks from Romancing Saga titles. The downloadable extra characters are Rosa from Final Fantasy IV; Krile from Final Fantasy V; Yuffie and Vincent from Final Fantasy VII; Auron from Final Fantasy X; Cloud from Advent Children; and T.G. Cid from Final Fantasy Tactics (I assume he breaks the entire game). It's all a pretty blatant grab for Final Fantasy nostalgia, but the original Theatrhythm proved to be a solid di…wait, Rosa's full name is Rosa Joanna Farrell? Huh. Never knew that.

ALSO AVAILABLE:
The Cooking Mama series continues its cheerful domestic obsessions with Cooking Mama 5: Bon Appetit! for the 3DS. The game's 60 new recipes are carried out with 30 different culinary mini-games and the tutelage of Mama. Oh, and it appears you're cooking for cats in a few cases. Sometimes a can of Fancy Feast just won't do.

The Elminage series of dungeon RPGs made small inroads on these shores, but Ghostlight has Elminage Gothic coming to Steam next week. It's a port of a PSP game from 2012, though Elminage's challenging labyrinths and customized party reach back to much older dungeon-hack traditions.

This week brings Key's visual novel planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~ to Steam. Well, it's actually a KinecticNovel, which means that the player has no control over the story; it's a straight line of conversations, descriptions, and general plot. That plot finds a junk scavenger roaming the ruins of civilization and happening upon a planetarium kept by a lonely and possibly cybernetic woman named Yumemi. The two of them try to find meaning in a world of abandoned robots, constant rain, mournful soundtracks, and astronomy trivia.

ULTRA STREET FIGHTER IV CONTEST WINNERS

The recent Ultra Street Fighter IV contest had simple rules: suggest a character to join the next big Street Fighter game's roster. It could be any character from any game, which I thought would invite a good variety of responses. And so it did.

First up, the winners. Selected at random, the following folks won a digital copy of Ultra Street Fighter IV.

Craig Liley suggested Nagisa Furukawa from Clannad.

Misty De Meo suggested Karin, she of the haughty laugh and Street Fighter Alpha 3 debut.

Jacob Blais suggested Machamp from Pokken Tournament.

Jim Smith suggested Lucia from Final Fight 3. Plausible!

Michael Kruckvich suggested Nakoruru from Samurai Shodown. Nakoruru is supposedly dead in series canon, but SNK stopped caring about that and so should CAPCOM.

“Dylan” suggested Asura, who sorta ended up in Street Fighter by fighting Ryu in an Asura's Wrath mini-game!

And those were just a few of the suggestions. Check out the rest of 'em!

Rainbow Mika (and Karin) from Street Fighter Alpha 3 (William Brock)

Skullomania from Street Fighter EX (Joseph Reynolds)

Mike Haggar from Final Fight (Raymond Chong)

Shaq from Shaq Fu (Matthew Brenner)

Sky from Skyblazer (Ace Whatever)

Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters (John Do)

Bio from the Neptunia series (Stewart Mogg)

Black Dynamite from…Black Dynamite (Derek Freeman)

Karin Kanzuki (again!) from Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Chris Farris)

Twelve from Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Eli Friedberg)

Senel Coolidge from Tales of Legendia (Ryan Powell)

Tony Jones from Magi Nation (Blue&Armed)

Talim from the Soul Calibur series (T N)

Cyber Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters (Rodrigo Martin)

Rouge from Power Stone (Steven Patterson)

Batman from Arkham Asylum (Michael Turner)

Q from Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Simon Montana)

Madotsuki from Yume Nikki (Jesse Dorje Irwin)

K9999 from The King of Fighters 2002 (MrSkateEthan11)

Q-Bee from Darkstalkers 3 (Chaps)

I planned this contest as a quick-and-dirty deal, but two of you still sent in long-form entries. And since I can't deny your efforts, here they are.

InsaneBen has Robert Garcia from Art of Fighting and The King of Fighters in mind…

His entire backstory would consist of him trying to convince others that he is not Dan Hibiki (especially when he faces Ken Masters, who asks him how many people he had to scam to get such nice clothing). The penultimate showdown would come against Dan, who goes after Robert for dragging his good (or bad) name into the ground. After the inevitable fight (and triumph) against Dan (and Seth), Robert returns to the Kyokugen Dojo, only to find Ryo and Ryu in the midst of an argument/fight over who's copying whom (with Yuri, Sakura and Dan all dropping by). The sequence ends with Robert saying "Mama Mia!"
Meanwhile, Jacob contributed his suggestion and a response to my question about the most obscure Street Fighter entrant.

When I saw that we could pick any character we want for Ultra to enter this contest a lot of ideas instantly flooded my mind! Like Retsu from Street Fighter 1 or Skullomania from the Street Fighter EX Series, heck I even thought of other CAPCOM characters not even from Street Fighter Series like Jin Satome from Cyberbots, Junpei Todoroki from Tech Romancer, and even Doctor Light from Mega Man! (He has to learn how to do the Hadouken and Shoryuken in his lifetime so can get those capsules to X in the future! XD) But then I slowly began to realize that the later characters I was starting to list were either robotic or related to robots who "realistically" wouldn't show up in a Street Fighter game. So then I started to think of what character could actually appear in a Street Fighter game but sorta meet the Mecha-esque itch that I still had going....

Then I remembered Batsu Ichimonji from Rival Schools.

I mean yeah, technically he has no connection to Mecha or Robots storywise but he is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama and that's close enough in my book considering every time I hear him yell his attacks I get flashbacks to Gaogaigar or 08th MS Team. I think it would be interesting to see his move-set adapted for Ultra SFIV since his appearance in Tatsunko Vs. CAPCOM had abilities dialed up to meet Versus Series standards so I'm actually curious to see how it would look in a more traditional fighting game again, not to mention it would be cool to see him interacting with actual Ninjas since his fighting style is a very derived version of Ninjitsu. Besides with me choosing Batsu he might actually show up in a Street Fighter game one day!

Rival Schools does take place in the same universe as Street Fighter so I wouldn't put it past CAPCOM if they decided to include some of the characters as DLC for Ultra SFIV or even as major cast members for Street Fighter 5 whenever they decide to release it. After all Final Fight was a separate game series but majority of its characters were carried over to the main Street Fighter games because of its connections to it. If CAPCOM really wanted to they could bring over a lot of the Rival Schools characters to a new Street Fighter game and it would have less risks than introducing unheard of new characters to the audience because the series already has an established fanbase which can help reignite interest in Rival Schools in general.

Anyway to sum things up if Batsu (or any Rival Schools character for that matter) was added to Street Fighter it could potentially open up a lot of doors down the line and SF mixing things up in the future sounds great! =D

P.S. : If you're really looking for the most obscure playable Street Fighter character, for me I would have to say it's Shin from Street Fighter Online: Mouse Generation. While Street Fighter II: The Movie Video Game was very obscure I would argue that Mouse Generation was even more obscure title since it was a Free-to-play PC game that only used the PC's Mouse as the controller which dictated character movement and the command inputs for the supers! Plus throw in the fact all the characters were literally the Revoltech Action Figure versions of the all characters and as far as I can tell it's impossible to even play the game now since it was taken it offline after being online for only a year. I actually got a chance to play it while it was still active and it was a odd experience to say the least.

It also depends if you count Street Fighter Online: Mouse Generation as an actual "Street Fighter" game because despite the title it had a ton of crossover characters from Cyborg 009, Wuxia Novels, Space Sheriff Gavan, Rival Schools (Hey!), Detroit Metal City, Some weird realistic Cat photos, and even (I kid you not!) an Edible Chocolate Barack Obama Action Figure was supposed to be playable the game as DLC but I think the game was shut down before they got a chance to actually add him in.

Either way in terms of Street Fighter obscurity Shin still reigns supreme in my book because the only real thing we know about his back-story is that his dad was a Japanese Karate Champ, his mother was South Korean who taught him Taekwondo, and that Shin would rather be a musician than a martial artist.....So yeah.....pretty obscure.

That brings the contest to an end. And here's our top vote-getter, Karin Kanzuki!

Yes, she had a whopping two-and-a-half votes. I think that's good enough to get her in the next game. Right, CAPCOM?


Todd Ciolek occasionally updates his website, and you can follow him on Twitter if you want.


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