Which Street Fighter IV Character Was This?

Try and figure out which new character in Street Fighter IV started off as an effeminate little French boy, if you’re Abel.

There I go, giving away the punch line. Yes, Street Fighter IV’s muscle-bound French fighter Abel might have wound up a small boy with pigtails, according to the game’s battle planner Taisaku Okada, who commented on the original design in a post on the Japanese SFIV website. As translated by Andriasang.com:

“With Abel, we wanted to make someone representative of ‘the weak can beat the strong,’ and so he was originally a small judo character who could be mistaken for a girl.”

I would have preferred the smaller look to the one Capcom eventually went with, but then I’ve always been fond of smaller characters kicking the crap out of bigger ones.

Along with the more feminine Abel, the developer post also takes a look at the difficulties of maintaining character appearance in the newer game, Honda’s skeletal structure, and raging staff fights over Street Fighter IV’s art direction. It’s all in Japanese, so make sure to bring along your closest squiggly-reading friend.

第2回 [Japanese Street Fighter IV Blog via Adriansang.com]