Don't fuck with The Haggar part 2

When my boy, Grant, promised me a Final Fight painting for my birthday, I was both flattered and a little excited. Five months later and I am expecting some sort of renaissance masterpiece. Almost daily I shouted at this motherfucker to finish my goddamn birthday present but the prick teasing continued as the snow melted and the leaves turned green.

Fortunately, the saga is now at an end so it's without further ado, that I am honoured to present you all with a rendition of Final Fight's heroes that would make Leonardo proud.

Excuse the crappy photo.

MADAL GEAR SOLID

EPISODE 1:
click to embiggen


If you don't tell me to stop now I'm going to keep doing this.

This stupid idea is owned by Split-Screen but all the images used are the property of Capcom and Konami. Please don't sue us if you want this to go away, just ask nicely.

Don't fuck with The Haggar

If you're foolish enough to go start some shit in Metro City, then you should really watch this first. This delightful little ditty is the cautionary tale that Mad Gear probably wished they'd heard before they decided to swipe Jessica.

Face it dude, you're in love with a dude.

It's a harsh reality than some unfortunate males have had to deal with: you're eyeing up some broad, you may even cop a feel, and then you realise. It's a dude. That fine piece of ass that you were going to take home is packing more meat than you. What do you do now? Walk away embarrassed, or refuse to throw away all that ground work and live a life of denial, insisting that anal wasn't the only choice, it's just what you fancied that night. That sort of denial isn't healthy. You knew she had a rod. You probably even gave her a reach-around. You enjoyed it, that's fine: this is the twenty-first century after all. Gender is meaningless.

This is meant to serve as a wake-up call for all of you that spent this afternoon fapping over Final Fight's Poison and Roxy. They are dudes. Officially. Street Fighter 4 producer and Capcom luminary Yoshinori Ono said so himself [source]. So face it - you've got a boner for a dude and depending on what country you're from she's either still got that thing down there, or had it turned inside-out. When Final Fight was first ported to home consoles, Capcom deemed it inappropriate to be cutting, smacking and piledriving innocent, fragile streetwalking whores. So, to avoid controversy, they changed Poison's -and consequently Roxy's- back story so that he/she was a post-op transsexual. Inexplicably, In Japan she just 'tucks it away' kinda like Marylin Manson.


I'm not going to deny that the denim cut-offs, high heels, long legs and magnificent cans are enticing, but just remember what's in those shorts. A great, big, ugly wang.

If you really need more proof: NSFW

The Coolest Game Characters of All Time: Cody Travers (Final Fight, Street Fighter series)

If you want to talk about cool game characters then there is really only one place you need look: the house that Capcom built. Capcom have been showing character designers the world over how it should be done for decades now. Their characters exude a simple, timeless charm that sees personalities expressed in small visual nuances ; whether it be Ken's irritating thumbs-up, Dan Hibiki's tears or Barry Burton's magnum.To stand out as the coolest amid the inherent coolness of your brothers and sisters is no mean feat and one that is achieved by only one character: Cody Travers.

Despite my increasingly vocal professions of love for Mike Haggar, it is undoubtedly Cody who is the coolest motherfucker in Final Fight. The classic James Dean white t-shirt and blue jeans, coupled with those fly 80's shell-toes makes Cody Travers the kind of dude that mayor Haggar is happy to see railing his daughter. His only goals in life are to get all up in Mad gear's shit and save his smoking-hot girlfriend. Looking good whilst he does it just comes naturally to him.


When Capcom retired Cody from the Final Fight series he told them where to shove it. After saving Metro City and his girlfriend he just couldn't settle down. Cody was built to fight, so that's what he continued to do. You have to admire a guy who knows his purpose and managed to brawl his way from one fighting series and into another. Getting imprisoned for his violent temperament is little more than a slight inconvenience; he frequently breaks out, seeking more opponents, only to return for a meal and a roof over his head whenever it suits him.

Cody's coolness is not so much determined by his actions, but rather his mannerisms and the style he exudes in everything that he does. Opening fights by taunting his opponents to see if they can finally do something about his boredom, still wearing those shell-toes with his prison garb and wearing those handcuffs when he has the key. What a swaggering bad-ass.

Throughout this whole week of coolness, I can see no-one else that I would rather be. Cody is nonchalant about fights when I simply panic and by playing as him I effectively become cooler. If, like me, you think coolness is all about the style and the swagger, then Cody Travers has got it down to a fine art.

This isn't about Street Fighter....honestly

I've just spent the last hour scouring the Internet for gaming news that isn't related to Street Fighter. Plenty of it exists, but none of it is very interesting. I want to take this opportunity to apologise to the non-street fighters that come here. I'm doing my best to keep you interested, I promise to make it up to you eventually.

Today I learned that Final Fight will be making it's way to XBLA and PSN, with a brand-new HD skin. The download will also allow players to run the original graphics and, strangely enough, also comes bundled with 'Magic Sword'. No, this isn't some sort of game-breaking, kill-em-all super weapon, but rather another Capcom scrolling brawler that, if you're me, you hadn't heard of until 5 minutes ago. Here is a screenshot to prove that it exists:



I know that this is not exactly a million miles away from Street Fighter, but it's a start. Think of it as weening.

So, to summarise: Final Fight as an HD download, coming in April = good times.

Cody, Guy and Adon join the ranks of Super Street Fighter 4 *UPDATED WITH VIDEO!*

Look, it's not like the only thing I want to write about is Street Fighter tit bits, it's just that when they keep dropping little information nuggets, what am I supposed to do? Cast them aside like an unruly child? No, of course not. It is my duty to re-package and over-hype these things to breaking point.

For those of you not in the 'Street Fighter Club' there is a very simple solution if you are getting annoyed with this 'favouritism'. Just buy Street Fighter 4, or commit to buying Super Street Fighter 4. Get on the train. There's obviously going to be another awesome-as-fuck tournament which I'm going to be bullying everyone to take part in, so why not save yourself the trouble.

I'm going to hold back now. I've got an essay simmering in my brain, one where I gush over the importance of character and why Street Fighter does it best. This post did have a point at the beginning, and that was to show you these scans that confirm Adon, Guy and Cody as playable characters in SSF4.


By the looks of it, these scans come from Japanese gaming bible, Famitsu. Most hot-shit news scans do. If the Japanese gaming industry were a little healthier right now, I'd probably subscribe just to stay on top of announcements. Then again, I could just let Kotaku do all the work for me, which is, incidentally, where I swiped this news from.

Debate in the comments: good additions, or bad ones? Like the world needed a quicker Sagat, right? Prison Cody is rad. Still no Haggar.

UPDATE (cheers Cr0nt):

More Super Street Fighter IV News & Previews